The ascent of China on the global stage is considered by most observers to be the most significant change in international affairs since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By any number of measures, China has emerged as a major international actor in the short span of three decades. Every day and everywhere, China figures prominently in global attention—soaking up resources, investing abroad, asserting itself in its Asian neighborhood, being the sought-after suitor in global governance diplomacy, sailing its navy into the Indian Ocean and waters off of Africa, broadening its global media exposure and trying to build its cultural presence and “soft power,” while managing a mega-economy that is an major engine of global growth. China’s global impact is increasingly felt on every continent, in most international institutions, and on many global issues. Thus, by many indices, China is now clearly one of the world’s two leading powers along with the United States.
While China’s rise is important for these reasons, it must also be viewed in the context of several other rising and aspiring “middle powers” (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey). These nations now share space on the regional and global stage with the more “traditional” middle powers Britain and France.
Taken together, this conglomeration of states is reshaping the landscape of international relations by collectively contributing (in the words of the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s recent report Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds) to an inexorable “diffusion” of global power over the next two decades. Understanding and predicting how these national actors may evolve internally and behave externally— individually and interactively—is a central concern of governments and private sector analysts worldwide.
