Abstract/Summary

As China continues her ‘peaceful rise’, all arguments surrounding the potential risks of military confrontation in the region revolves around whether China will emerge as a status quo or revisionist power. The economic benefits and conflict potentials posed by a rising China arguably affects its neighbours in a differentiated manner resulting diverse understanding and actions creating a unique regional and global security dynamics. Expanding the status quo vs. revisionist power argument, this paper takes account of China’s cooperating behaviour at the international and regional level and its track record of using military force to understand whether the rise of China will remain peaceful or not. Highlighting China’s spectrum of differentiated relationship with her neighbours from unilateral bellicosity to multilateralism, the paper contends that, with the exception of Taiwan issue, there are not many compulsions and incentives for military confrontation as China continues to rise in the world as a status quo power.