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A leading foreign policy thinker uses Chinese political theory to explain why some powers rise as others decline and what this means for the international orderWhile work in international relations has closely examined the decline of great powers, not much attention has been paid to the question of their rise. The upward trajectory of China is a particularly puzzling case. How has it grown increasingly important in the world arena while lagging behind the United States and its allies across certain sectors? Borrowing ideas of political determinism from ancient Chinese philosophers, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers explains China's expanding influence by presenting a moral-realist theory that attributes the rise and fall of nations to political leadership. Yan Xuetong shows that the stronger a rising state's political leadership, the more likely it is to displace a prevailing state in the international system.Yan defines political leadership through the lens of morality, specifically the ability of a government to fulfill its domestic responsibility and maintain international strategic credibility. Examining leadership at the personal, national, and international levels, Yan shows how rising states like China transform the international order by reshaping power distribution and norms. Yan also considers the reasons for America's diminishing international stature even as its economy, education system, military, political institutions, and technology hold steady. The polarization of China and the United States will not result in another Cold War scenario, but their mutual distrust will ultimately drive the world center from Europe to East Asia.Using the lens of classical Chinese political theory, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers offers a provocative, alternative perspective on the changing dominance of nations on the global stage

This book predicts possible international changes that may occur between 2013 and 2023. It forecasts that China will become a global superpower no later than 2023, and that a bipolar world will be formed with a strategic rivalry between China and the US. China may also further reduce the disparity in capability with the US, while other major powers will witness an enlarged capability gap with both China and the US. Therefore, this bipolarization will drive the world center to shift from Europe to East Asia. In East Asia, Japan will become a lesser state, North Korea will keep its nuclear arsenal, but stop nuclear tests, and the maritime disputes in South China Sea will no longer the major problem to ASEAN countries by 2023. In Europe, Germany will dominate the EU while it is decentralized, the UK will withdraw from the EU, and Russia will deteriorate dramatically under Putin's rule. Globalization will also worsen polarization at both domestic and international levels, and India will lag behind China even further, the Middle East will suffer from the rivalry among regional powers, and Africa will be further marginalized.

Abstract
Leadership analysis has been a traditional paradigm for studying international relations. The theory of moral realism improves this paradigm's scientific rigour when explaining the relationship between the leadership of major powers and system-level international changes. Methodologically, moral realism uses morality as the criterion to categorise international leadership, the key independent variable. The theory is developed to improve realism's explanatory power regarding the common historical phenomenon of the rise and fall of great powers. Rather than being Sino-centric, the foreign policy recommendations extrapolated from the theory of moral realism—which are descriptive rather than prescriptive—are applicable to both China and other major powers. Since theories of systemic analysis have failed to explain the transition of global order from globalisation to the counter-globalisation, the paradigm of leadership analysis is worth consideration. It may indeed provide a vector of enquiry regarding the correlation between the current prevalence of populist leadership in major powers and the growing counter-globalisation trend.

Abstract
The year 2019 saw the curtain rise on a US–China bipolar rivalry quite different from the Cold War US–Soviet bipolarity. The fundamental difference between the current bipolar rivalry and that during the Cold War is that ideology is no longer the main engine driving international competition, but rather the new digital dimension of strategic competition that is emerging between the United States and China. Technological advancement over the past 15 years has led world history's entry into the early digital age. The development of digital technology has created new ways of protecting national security, of accumulating national wealth, and of obtaining international support. Cybersecurity is becoming the core of national security and the share of digital economy in major powers' gross domestic product dramatically increases. For the leading powers, strategic competition in cyberspace in this early digital age outstrips to a crucial extent that within physical geographic boundaries. This article observes that Cold War mentality and digital mentality will have mixed impact on foreign policy-making in the digital age, and that interactions between the nations whose foreign policy is simultaneously influenced by both mentalities will shape the emerging international order into one of uneasy peace, where there is no direct war and few proxy wars. It will rather be a scenario reflecting the dark side of globalization and downside of global governance, evident in the violation of agreements, double dealing, cyber-attacks, and technology decoupling between states. Although further digital advancement will indeed change international politics in ever more aspects, US–China bipolar configuration will nevertheless remain in place for at least for two decades, or perhaps longer.

Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers received 16 book reviews within 6 months of its publication. Among them, the one by Professor Rajesh Rajagopalan (which appeared in the India Quarterly, 75:3) is the most academically and theoretically compelling. I highly appreciate his sincere theoretical critiques that encourage me to rethink my theory. His review inspired me to have a written conversation with him about the epistemology of the international relations (IR) theory of moral realism.