Critically examine the rise of People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a great power and its implications on Asian Political order. (2022, 20 Marks)
When Nicholas D. Kristof wrote “The Rise of China” in Foreign Affairs (1993), the economy had been growing at close to 10% a year since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms; a second decade of double-digit growth followed WTO entry in 2001. That weight has since become military, institutional and diplomatic power. Whether China is a full great power, and what its rise does to Asia, are separate questions.
The rise across domains
| Domain | Indicator |
|---|---|
| Economic | Largest manufacturer; ahead of the US at purchasing power parity; leading trade partner of most Asian states |
| Military | Spending of $336 billion in 2025 (SIPRI), second only to America; largest navy by hull count; about 620 warheads, roughly double the 2020 level |
| Institutional | Belt and Road Initiative (2013) with some 150 partner countries; AIIB; RCEP |
Beijing presents the BRI as mutually profitable infrastructure filling the gap multilateral lenders left; dual-use ports and corridors suggest strategy too.
Great power by which test?
On capability, China qualifies. But Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society, 1977) defined great powers as states others recognise as having special rights and duties in managing order. Here China falls short: it has partners (Pakistan, Cambodia, North Korea) but no allies of choice, limited soft power, and a population that fell for a fourth year to about 1.405 billion at end-2025.
Implications for the Asian order
The post-1945 order was a US hub-and-spokes system of bilateral alliances. China offers an alternative patron but also makes Asia the main theatre of Sino-American rivalry.
- East Asia: pressure over the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan pushed Japan to double defence spending to 2% of GDP; Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi brought the target forward to 2025, and Chinese economic pressure followed her November 2025 remarks on a Taiwan contingency.
- South-East Asia: trade and investment buy real influence, but the South China Sea claims, rejected by the 2016 arbitral award, keep clashing with the Philippines at Second Thomas and Scarborough Shoals in 2026, while a binding Code of Conduct remains unconcluded. Most of ASEAN hedges.
- South Asia: the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, Hambantota and lending across the neighbourhood raise the charge of “debt-trap diplomacy”, and an India-China rivalry runs from Galwan (2020) to the Indian Ocean.
Rival readings of the order
- John J. Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001) predicts that China will seek regional hegemony as the United States did in the Americas.
- Aaron L. Friedberg foresaw an Asia “ripe for rivalry” (1993).
- David C. Kang argues that a China-centred hierarchy was historically stable.
- Amitav Acharya (2014) sees a consociational order, with ASEAN-led institutions binding the major powers so none dominates.
A critical assessment
- The rise generates balancing. The Quad, AUKUS, the expanded US access to Philippine bases and Japan’s rearmament react to Beijing’s conduct.
- The debt-trap thesis is overstated. Deborah Brautigam shows Hambantota was a Sri Lankan proposal and Colombo’s debt was owed mainly to bondholders and multilateral lenders; leverage is real, deliberate entrapment unproven.
- Asian agency persists. ASEAN centrality, Indonesia’s independence and India’s multi-alignment prevent a bipolar split.
- India is pivotal. Xi Jinping‘s attendance at the BRICS summit in New Delhi (September 2026) produced a commitment to a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable” boundary settlement, but India still treats border peace as the precondition: thaw without trust.
Conclusion
China is Asia’s pre-eminent economic power and its leading military challenger, yet not a great power in Bull’s sense, because its neighbours have not accepted its claim to manage the order. The result is a contested, hedging Asia in which China is welcomed as an opportunity and watched as a threat; the neighbours’ anxiety, more than Beijing’s ambition, will decide whether the order becomes hierarchical or balanced.