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«The Great China»: Image, power and globalization [AUGUSTO SOTO] Throughout the last two decades Chinese policy has been very much concerned with two types of issues: enhancing economic prosperity and search for global influence.
Surprisingly, China is now widely considered as a great power or global actor. But traditional strategic concept of power applied to the most populous country pays too much attention to a state's aggregate power (as inferred from its as yet unconverted resources and possessions) and too little to its more dynamic and interdependent notion in a globalized world. China's opening to the world economy has had far reaching consequences for the way in which the country is governed and important elements of sovereignity have irrevocable slipped from grasp of a once far more centralised state.
The paper discusses China's real power, including traditional and non traditional factors, such as the image projected abroad, and Beijing's foreign relations, from the strongly ideologized times of the cold war to the highly pragmatic stance followed in the last twenty years. It is argued that China is an overrated power of the third world with regional significance, which contains the largest potential market but whose influence is nowadays rather re of much of the human race rests on China's evolution, Beijing's growing leverage in the international arena is likely to be enhanced.
