Since Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of keeping a low profile, his successors have embarked on a more active, and in some ways, controversial foreign policy path. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, Chinese “assertiveness” appears to have reached a new level, while the fortunes of the previous “charm offensive” appear to be waning. During the past decade we have witnessed the modernisation of China’s military, an extension of China’s ADIZ in the East China Sea and an increase in territorial challenges in the South China Sea. Yet China has hosted numerous international forums, including the recently concluded APEC summit meeting in Beijing, and focused on building an economic “silk belt”. These seemingly paradoxical developments form part of the debates and tensions around “China’s rise”, and whether it represents a “threat” or the greater engagement of a “responsible” world power. Only by looking at the national and global context and taking into account energy, security and strategic concerns, is it possible to identify and explain the “shift” in China’s foreign policy behaviour and expectations?

This is the task the China Policy Institute has set some of the world’s best known China/IR scholars.

Suisheng Zhao, University of Denver:  “From Hide and Bide to a New Model of Big Power Relations”

Yong Deng, U.S. Naval Academy: “From Responsibility to Revisionism: China’s Foreign Relations Take a New Turn”

Xiaoyu Pu, University of Nevada: “Two Faces of Xi Jinping’s Regional Diplomacy”

Malcolm Davis, Bond University: “China’s ‘Malacca Dilemma’ and the future of the PLA”

Gregory J. Moore, Zhejiang University: “1914, Air Sea Battle, and Sino-American Security Relations: Advantage Offense!”

Image credit: CC by Edz’sta/Flickr.