Between Core National Interest and a Harmonious World: Reconciling Self-role Conceptions in Chinese Foreign Policy

Why and how can historical cases support different assessments of China rising with respect to the possibility of its becoming China threat? Rationalists and strategic culture analysts, who predominantly look at China from an external position, debate the influence of power, strategic cultures, and identities in explaining this highly controversial question. We, however, develop an internal view from the standpoint of a China looking out, which argues that different sources of Chinese self-role concepts could yield different policy behaviour. We analyse two discourses on Chinese foreign policy that have emerged in the 21st century core national interest and harmonious world. We then introduce the dialectic approach of harmonious realism wherein indecisiveness is the essential characteristic. It is failure to decide on the specific purpose of Chinese foreign policy that creates China's self-role conflict. Harmonious disciplining, balance, racism, and intervention are the practical forms of China's harmonious realism through which the contemporary case analysis explains the forms, actual policy, and behavioural consequences of China's self-role conflict.