China’s International and Societal Levels of Power Sources

Abstract

China’s institutional position in the regional and global international system is stable and relatively positive. China was relatively successful in managing international institutions to get the most from them in terms of stabilizing the international environment while not getting entangled in obligations which would go against its interests. But China’s geopolitical position is more complicated. China improved its importance in the regional international system; however, growing security worries have led other countries to hedge against China. Geo-economically, since the 1990s, China has become more sensitive to external development, yet it has not proven to be vulnerable to the external shocks of the 1997 and 2008 crises. On the other hand, the rest of the region has become even more sensitive to China. It was found that China’s soft power is not strong. In this respect, China lags significantly behind the USA, but also Japan and South Korea, and globally it is overtaken by much smaller countries. Quantitatively, the Chinese image has decreased during the 2000s and early 2010s. Overall, China’s soft power can be regarded as one of China’s problematic areas of power sources, and it is likely that the low level of China’s soft power contributes also to its problematic geopolitical position. On the other hand, the available data shows that the Chinese government enjoys a respectfully high level of legitimacy among its people. All in all, the examples of Chinese assertive policies in the SCS show no signs that any of the international or societal sources of power would be their main cause. While domestic legitimacy and geo-economics can be seen as positive contributors to the policies (but not as their triggers), China’s problematic geopolitical position and low soft power present major limitations for it and perhaps even prevented it from acting more assertively.