China’s Power from a Chinese Perspective (I): A Developing Country versus a Great Power

Abstract

China’s self-image of its power has evolved from a developing country after the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s to a great power after the global financial crisis in 2008. Chinese leaders have not defined developing country versus great power in terms of absolute economic or military capacities. Instead, they have taken a structural realist approach to define power in relative terms as the general capacity of a state to influence the behavior of others or as the ability to get others to do what they otherwise would not do. In the structural realist image of international relations, the state is under imperatives to increase, decrease, maintain, or use the capacity, depending on whether it views the trend in the international balance of power or its own strength vis-a-vis its adversaries as favorable or unfavorable. Chinese leaders are always sensitive to liliang duibi (力量对比 balance of forces) in the world. “Chinese leaders are in essence realists. Their making of Chinese foreign policy often starts from a careful assessment of China’s relative power in the world.”1 In this case, when Chinese leaders identify China as a “developing country,” they actually talk about China’s relative weak power position in comparison with the United States and other great powers as well as some of its neighbors. When they identify China in term of great power, China, in their mind, has built more or less equal capacity of the United States and other great powers and can influence their behavior and get the weak neighbors to do what they otherwise would not do.