Should the World Fear China?

A revealing assessment of China’s place in the world, from one of its most respected foreign policy analysts.

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Our perception of China’s global role and influence depends on our vantage point. For the United States, the People’s Republic is a strategic competitor: the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological means to do so. For Europe, China is a ‘partner for cooperation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival’. For NATO, it is a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Yet Beijing enjoys a far more positive image in the Global South, of which the PRC considers itself a constituent member.


In this collection of essays and opinion pieces, Zhou Bo seeks answers to some of the most important questions relating to China’s role in global affairs of the twenty-first century. The landscape in which the PRC is operating is not only a world becoming less Western, but also—and more importantly—a West becoming less Western.


Are Moscow and Beijing really as closely aligned as some allege? What is the future of India–China relations? Is the West really facing a new Cold War foe in China? Or will transnational economic links move the two power centres ineluctably closer together, rather than further apart?