Abstract
The assessment of China’s present power status in the world, to a certain extent, reflects people’s concern about the rise of China in the future. There is a significant difference between a country that takes 30 years to rise and one that takes 300 years. The former is a human exertion and the latter is destiny. The former requires strategy while the latter depends on mere luck. For the sake of developing a correct strategy for its rise, China has to make constant efforts to understand its current power status. Ever since the early 1990s, scholars including the author, began assessing China’s international power status.¹ More than 10 years have passed, yet scholars still have not reached any agreement on China’s power status today. This article will set aside the popular index methodology, and as a replacement, adopt a power–class approach to assess China’s power status based on our common knowledge of international studies. I hope this new approach will provide a simple and convenient method for judging China’s power status and also create a common foundation for understanding the character of China’s status and the conditions for China’s ascent to a superpower.
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