Power Projections of the People’s Republic of China: An Investigative Analysis of Defensive and Offensive Realism in Chinese Foreign Policy
Last updated: July 31, 2008
Author
Eric Nathaniel Heller
Undergraduate Senior
Departments of Political Science and Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ACDIS Occasional Paper series
November 2003
Full text [PDF]Summary
On April 1, 2001, a collision between a United States Navy EP-3 Aries II Reconnaissance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter jet prompted a renewal of an old debate inside the Washington, DC Beltway and around the world concerning the intentions and direction of the rising Chinese power. That single event further polarized an already divided political community into their respective conservative and liberal beliefs about the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This paper strives to understand the intentions of the leadership inside of China through a theoretical prism. The epigraph from the work of Sun Tzu illustrates the motivations for exploring future relations between the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, the United States, and the Middle East. Only by analyzing Chinese military modernizations in the last decade, economic trends, human rights abuses, the behavior of the ruling Communist Party, as well as other indicators can international relations scholars predict whether China is emerging as a partner or a peer competitor to the United States.The paper considers Chinese policy, with an emphasis on issues of military buildup and nuclear weapons modernization. It also includes investigations of political rhetoric, and the policies of territorial claims.