Is China a Revisionist Power?

Abstract

China is rising, along with worldwide concern over the strategic implications of growing Chinese power. Among US scholars, those who argue for engagement focus on the possible socialization of China by promoting bilateral trade and involving China in international institutions. Greater interaction promotes interdependence between China and the system and reins in the rising power to play according to the rules of the game.1 Scholars who argue for containment warn that China should be constrained before its military and economic power become an overwhelming challenge to the USA, and that preventive measures, rather than engagement or appeasement, are necessary. This group of realist scholars emphasizes that China is a revisionist state doomed before long to clash with the USA. They propose that although China is a middle power that poses no serious problem, measures should nonetheless be taken to discourage China's efforts to achieve hegemony, either in the Asia Pacific region or worldwide.2