ASSIGNMENT
Chinese Foreign Policy

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Does Chinese Foreign Policy reflect the concerns of a status quo power or a revisionist power?

INTRODUCTION

Before addressing this question, it is essential to establish what is meant by a status quo or revisionist power. Hans Morgenthau described a status quo power as one that favours and aims to maintain “the distribution of power as it exists at a particular moment in history”,. Similarly, proponents of power transition theory use the concept of the “rules of the game” regarding nations’ power relations to define status quo and revisionist states, the latter desiring to “redraft the rules” out of a “general dissatisfaction” with their share in the system. Randall Schweller furthers this point by adding military force as a requisite of such ambitions to amend the status quo. For the purpose of this essay, whether a power is status quo or revisionist will be determined by whether its policies aim at acquiring a new power order in its favour. Using this yardstick, this essay will elaborate China’s current behaviour and underlying aspirations to argue that it would be inappropriate or at least premature to stamp the country ‘revisionist’. I will also incorporate Morgenthau’s viewpoint on a status quo’s ‘minor adjustments’ into my reasoning of China’s policy to argue that what could be currently perceived as evidence of Chinese aggressive ambitions are not attempts to reverse the current power relations but merely manifestations of a self-defensive behaviour and natural adjustments in fair proportion to its multidimensional growth.

I will first establish that China’s seeking hegemony contradicts with its Confucian principles and therefore is not reflected in its observed conduct of politics, with emphasis on its bilateral relation with the US. In the second part of the