Identity Politics in the Post-American World Order: ‘The Great America’ versus New China Identity

The realist paradigm in International Relations Theory argues that the recent rise of China as an economic power would push China to offensive politics as a ‘threat’ to other states. Specifically, to obstruct the rise of China as a regional hegemon the USA follows a containment strategy towards Beijing. Contrary to that, in the Chinese Studies it is claimed that peace and harmony policy in China’s foreign policy has been maintained since the Imperial period and it is highlighted that ‘the new China’ does not pursue great power politics. With a purpose of testing these rival argumentations, this study looks at the USA’s China threat perception from a perspectives of post-structuralism. For this aim, first it searches the historical evolution of China’s foreign policy and observes in which direction China has been rising in the 21th century. On doing so, this research exposes two findings: Despite China has a traditional pacifist foreign policy discourse, the USA’s perception of new Chinese identity as a ‘threat’ serves to its redefinition and empowerment of its place in the world in the 21th century; this perception of the USA paradoxically makes new China follow an ‘active defence strategy’ which would orient its foreign policy to offensive politics