China's Grand Strategy under Xi Jinping: Reassurance, Reform, and Resistance

Professor Avery Goldstein (University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

China's grand strategy under Xi Jinping is clearly distinctive. It does not, however, fundamentally break with the grand strategy that China has embraced since the early 1990s—one that aims to realize what is now labeled “the dream of national rejuvenation.” Leaders in Beijing have implemented three different approaches to this strategy. In 1992, the approach to rejuvenation followed Deng Xiaoping's admonition for China to hide its capabilities and bide its time. In 1996, Beijing shifted to a more proactive approach, peaceful rise, seeking to reassure others that a stronger and wealthier China would not pose a threat. In 2012, Xi again recast the grand strategy of rejuvenation to realize the Chinese dream. His approach is distinguished by its combination of three efforts: (1) continuing earlier attempts to reassure others about the benign intentions of rising China, (2) moving China from rhetoric to action in promoting reform of an international order that has facilitated China's rise, and (3) resisting challenges to what the Chinese Communist Party defines as the country's core interests. Xi's bolder approach has further clarified China's long-standing international aspirations and triggered reactions abroad that raise doubts about the prospects for his approach to realizing the goal of national rejuvenation.

China's Grand Strategy under Xi Jinping: Reassurance, Reform, and Resistance

About the speaker

Avery Goldstein is the David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations in the Political Science Department, Inaugural Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and Associate Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on international relations, security studies, and Chinese politics. He is the author of Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford University Press, 2005), Deterrence and Security in the 21st Century: China, Britain, France and the Enduring Legacy of the Nuclear Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2000), and From Bandwagon to Balance of Power Politics: Structural Constraints and Politics in China, 1949-1978 (Stanford University Press, 1991). Among his other publications are articles in the journals International Security, International Organization, Journal of Strategic Studies, Security Studies, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, Comparative Politics, Orbis, and Polity as well as chapters in a variety of edited volumes. Goldstein is also a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Registration

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Chair: Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute)

Organiser: SOAS China Institute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk