Survival, Volume 43, Issue 3, pp. Home Online Resources Table of Contents Survival, Volume 43, Issue 3, pp. Geneva A central premise of the Bush foreign-policy team is that China is trying to challenge the status quo.
China is seen as a rising power with a grudge against the international system.
In short, we are said to be entering the twenty-first century equivalent of the early twentieth century, when a democratic England struggled with a rising, authoritarian Germany. At the very moment of China's decision to integrate fully into the international system, the United States seems to have started the process of changing the rules. As China goes multilateral in its foreign relations, America turns unilateral.