China's potential threat to the existing global order is not derived from her rapid economic growth and military expansion, but from China's potential domestic chaos. The workable solution of China's democratization under the current Chinese political system is not to dissolve the Communist Party of China, but to begin with freedom of media, religion, and citizen participation.

China's rapid development has attracted worldwide attention in recent years. The implications of China's rise, from its expanding influence and military muscle to its growing demand for energy supplies, are heatedly debated in the international community. Jintao's officially proposed concept of 'peaceful development' has become the underlying principle behind Chinese foreign policy under the fourth generation leadership. However, is 'peaceful development' possible in the broad context of domestic and international development? This comprehensive and timely study examines the conditions and challenges of China's 'peaceful rise' and addresses the central question of whether it is possible for China to 'rise peacefully' in the 21st century, bearing in mind the implications for China and the rest of the world. It is ideal as a supplementary course book in foreign policy, Asian politics and development.

Contributors to this insightful volume on topics in Chinese history from the past 1,400 years highlight the complexity at hand inside and outside modern China, while exploring issues related to political and social dynamics, economic structures, modernization, identity building, and Chinese interaction with the outside world. The articles presented here provide new insight on events as broad-ranging as the interreligious court debates of the Tang, the Jiaqing reform of the Qing, the Chinese display at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, China’s rise, and its current Internet regulation, making this highly interdisciplinary collection an important contribution to current scholarship on the nation of China.

"Abstract: With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in world politics. This Handbook is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject of peaceful change in International Relations. It contains some 41 chapters, all written by scholars from different theoretical and conceptual backgrounds examining the multi-faceted dimensions of this subject. In the first part, key conceptual and definitional clarifications are offered and in the second part, papers address the historical origins of peaceful change as an International Relations subject matter during the Inter-War, Cold War, and Post-Cold War eras. In the third part, each of the IR theoretical traditions and paradigms in particular Realism, liberalism, constructivism and critical perspectives and their distinct views on peaceful change are analyzed. In the fourth part papers tackle the key material, ideational and social sources of change. In the fifth part, the papers explore selected great and middle powers and their foreign policy contributions to peaceful change, realizing that many of these states have violent past or tend not to pursue peaceful policies consistently. In part six, the contributors evaluate the peaceful change that occurred in the world's key regions. In the final part, the editors address prospective research agenda and trajectories on this important subject matter. Keywords: Peaceful Change; War; Security; International Relations Theory; Sources of Change; Systemic Theory; Realism; Liberalism; Constructivism; Critical Theories"--

A critical analysis of David C. Kang’s China Rising, which is a fine example of an author making use of creative thinking skills to reach a conclusion that flies in the face of traditional thinking. The conventional view that the book opposed, known in international relations as ‘realism,’ was that the rise of any new global power results in global or regional instability. As such, China’s development as a world economic powerhouse worried mainstream western geopolitical scholars, whose concerns were based on the realist assumption that individual countries will inevitably compete for dominance. Evaluating these arguments, and finding both their relevance and adequacy wanting, Kang instead turned traditional thinking on its head by looking at Asian history without preconceptions, and with analytical open-mindedness. Producing several novel explanations for existing evidence, Kang concludes that China’s neighbors do not want to compete with it in the way that realist interpretations predict. Rather than creating instability by jockeying for position, he argues, surrounding countries are happy for China to be acknowledged as a leader, believing that its dominant position will stabilize Asia, and give the whole region more of a hand in international relations. Though critics have taken issue with Kang’s conclusions, his paradigm-shifting approach is nevertheless an excellent example of developing fresh new conclusions through creative thinking.

Adopting a constructivist approach, this book argues that China's prospects for achieving 'great power' status peacefully depend more on perceptions of the country's development than on concrete measures of power or economic benefits. Incorporating historical perceptions, survey data and general analysis, the authors explore Chinese foreign policies in international organisations, international trade, security relations and as a model for global governance, as well as the reactions to those policies within the context of China's relations with Asian neighbours (India, Japan and the states of South-east Asia), existing international powers (the European Union, Russia and the United States), and emergent trading partners (Africa).

"As the rest of the world worries about China's economic prospects, Will China's Rise be Peaceful? Worries about the effect a more powerful China will have on international peace and stability. Applying the logic of international relations theory, historical analysis, domestic politics and regional politics and great power politics, the authors argues that the most populous nation on the globe--and its second largest economy--may continue to rise peacefully, but that potential dangers abound"--