The Meaning of China’s Rise to Great Power Status
China’s rise changes the international order. This transition has political, economic, and military aspects, and its consequences are evident on every continent.
From a European perspective, China’s rise offers new opportunities for a trans-Eurasian cooperation, but also poses some fundamental challenges. Areas of concern include the need to safeguard economic and technological interests, but also the problem of vastly different value systems between Western liberal democracies and the Chinese Leninist one-party state. In the field of security policy, strategic rivalry between China and the US is steadily on the rise, while Russia and China seem to edge towards closer cooperation. Both developments have indirect ramifications for Germany and Europe. But above all, China’s military modernisation affects threat perceptions across the entire Asia-Pacific region.
The objective of our research is to examine the multifaceted changes, challenges and chances arising in the Asia-Pacific region, and to assess their strategic implications for Germany and Europe. Several subprojects of the Center for Asia-Pacific Strategy and Security with different research objectives and methods are devoted to this task.
