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The China model debate has come in three waves since the early 2000s and focused on the role of the state as an organizing force to lead China's modernization. Revisiting the debate, this article argues that while the alluring story of China's high growth blinded its dark side for a long time, the economic downturn after 2015 is nothing more than an expedient time for Chinese leaders not only to transform China's growth model from export and investment-driven to qualitative internal development, but also to build institutional checks on the state authority and to hold the state accountable. If China is able to complete the transition on both fronts, the China model will stand, but a sustained downturn or a lost decade or two could declare the end of the China model. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Exploring the causes of the China-US strategic rivalry and its possible mitigation, this article argues that President Xi's new model of big power relations represents a challenge to the US primacy in the Asia-Pacific based on China's rising power and deeply rooted suspicion of the US containment. But neither the US nor China can be the single dominant power in the region. The new model can be built only if China and the US demonstrate a strategic restraint and maintain a delicate balance of power to prevent their rivalry from boiling over into a new Cold War. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

While China has found niches based on its comparative advantages and gained a solid ground in Africa, its almost single-minded way of pursuing business interests without regard to many issues of local and international concern has caused backlashes. Learning lessons the hard way, China has made efforts to adjust such insensitive business practices in recent years, motivated by its changing economic and strategic interests. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This paper revisits the debate about foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism in the context of China's increasingly confrontational and assertive behavior in recent years. It argues that while the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls to take a confrontational position against the Western powers and to adopt tougher measures in maritime territorial disputes with its neighbors. This strident turn is partially because the government is increasingly responsive to public opinion, but more importantly because of the convergence of Chinese state nationalism and popular nationalism calling for a more muscular Chinese foreign policy. Enjoying an inflated sense of empowerment supported by its new quotient of wealth and military capacities, and terrified of an uncertain future due to increasing social, economic and political tensions at home, the communist state has become more willing to play to the popular nationalist gallery in pursuing the so-called core national interests. These developments have complicated China's diplomacy, creating a heated political environment to harden China's foreign policy. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Starting with an almost single-minded emphasis on shared interests to engage China, the Obama administration made a policy adjustment about one year later to shore up US leadership in the Asia-Pacific even if it meant challenging China's core interests. This paper argues that this adjustment was to bring hedge back to shape the regional context of China's rise. While the precipitating cause for the shift was China's newly founded assertiveness during the global financial downturn, the deep cause was the US anxiety about China's great power aspiration in the twenty-first century. The policy adjustment, however, was not to contain China's rise because a full-out confrontation against China would be self-defeating. It was a return to a centralist approach to engage China from a position of strength rather than weakness. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This paper explores how China's strategic motivations and calculations have both motivated and constrained its participation in East Asian regional cooperation. It argues that China's participation in regional economic and security cooperation is motivated first of all by the calculation of China's domestic interests to create a peaceful peripheral environment for its economic growth and political stability, particularly its frontier security and prosperity. The realist interests to enhance China's position in power competition with other major players in the region, particularly Japan and US, also play an important part in China's strategic calculation. These interest calculations, however, also set limits on China's participation in regional cooperation. These interest calculations have also shaped China's preference for an informal approach, emphasizing voluntarism and consensus building rather than legally binding resolutions, toward regional cooperation. This soft approach is a major barrier for many regional institutions to move beyond the stage of talking shops to effectively resolve conflicts in the region. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

China's economic success under an authoritarian political system in the past 30 years has raised a question about whether the China model will replace the Western model of modernization. This paper seeks answers to this question by exploring to what extent China offers a distinctive model of economic and political development and whether the China model represents a successful co-existence of a free market and an authoritarian state in order to maintain economic growth and political stability, as well as discussing what the appeals and limitations of the China model are. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

China has adopted a state-centered approach towards energy security to deepen political and commercial relationships with all energy producing nations and to aggressively invest in oil fields and pipelines around the world. Applying this approach to its relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbors has produced mixed results. While China's energy diplomacy has brought about opportunities for cooperation with some of its neighbors, notably some countries in Central Asia and continental Southeast Asia, it has become a source of conflict with some other neighbors, especially those with border disputes over maritime territories which may have rich natural resources. This paper examines China's state-led search for energy security and its implications for China's relations with Asia-Pacific countries. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

China has developed a unique approach of conflict prevention characterized by liangshou celue - literally, a "two hands" or a two-pronged strategy. It is a stick-and-carrot approach, involving an oscillating pattern of military coercion and peaceful offensive. After the fourth generation of Chinese leadership under Hu Jintao came to office, an Anti-Secession Law was passed by China's National People's Congress on March 14, 2005. Prescribing the conditions for military action against Taiwan, this law was described by some people in the West and Taiwan as a war authorization law, mainly driven by Chinese nationalism, to set a benchmark against nationalist pressure and show Chinese leaders' willingness to risk war across the Taiwan Strait at all cost. It thus is said to signify not only greater irrationality in China's policy toward Taiwan but also a change in the two-pronged conflict-prevention approach. Is Chinese nationalism in fact a cause of international aggression, making China's policy toward Taiwan irrational and inflexible? Does the Anti-Secession Law signal that Beijing is on a path that reduces its scope for rational choices? This article will explore the making of the Anti-Secession Law to find answers to these questions. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)