ABSTRACT
A s the twentieth century came to its close, China, which in 1900 had been one of the extra-European empires that had been brought to its knees by the might of the West, was emerging as a nascent superpower. By the 1990s it
appeared as if the PRC was engaged in an inexorable cycle of growth that had the potential in the long term to transform it into the second largest economy in the world. This economic power in turn led to the prospect that the world’s most populous country, possessing 1.2 billion people, might pose a substantial potential threat to American hegemony and the Western-dominated international system.
