China and the Struggle over the Future of International Order

Abstract

This chapter discusses China’s changing attitude, doctrine, and policy actions towards international order and offers some tentative findings on the complexity of China’s role in the struggle over the future of international order. This complexity results from China’s efforts simultaneously to consolidate its presence in the existing international order but also to reform existing global governance institutions. The ambition to seek an alternative international order makes it, at least to some extent, a revisionist state. While pursuing an agenda to reform the existing international order from within, China additionally has begun to sponsor an unprecedented number of new international institutions and initiatives of its own, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). How this will play out will depend above all on the interaction of China with a USA still wedded to its hegemonic role in world politics.