China's Struggle for Status The Realignment of International Relations

At the end of the Cold War the People's Republic of China found itself in an international crisis, facing severe problems in both domestic politics and foreign policy. Nearly two decades later, Yong Deng provides an original account of China's remarkable rise from the periphery to the center stage of the post-Cold War world. Deng examines how the once beleaguered country has adapted to, and proactively realigned, the international hierarchy, great-power politics, and its regional and global environment in order to carve out an international path within the globalized world. Creatively engaging with mainstream international relations theories and drawing extensively from original Chinese material, this is a well-grounded assessment of the promises and challenges of China's struggle to manage the interlacing of its domestic and international transitions and the interactive process between its rise and evolving world politics.

1. Introduction; 2. International status and Chinese foreign policy; 3. Negotiating the human rights standard; 4. Reacting to the 'China threat theories'; 5. Strategic partnerships with Russia, the European Union, and India; 6. Independent rivalry with Japan; 7. Rediscovering Asia and Africa: the multilateral turn; 8. Taiwan and China's rise; 9. China's foreign relations and the emerging great-power politics.

Yong Deng is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy. He has published widely on Asian international relations and Chinese foreign policy.