ABSTRACT
US policies on legitimacy are founded in the liberal ideas of civil rights, democracy and market economy. This civilizational element in the US version of order is the long-term strategy for preserving US pre-eminence. Economic globalization is by and large accepted around the world as well as in China, which sees this aspect of liberalism as a strategy to resurrect China’s position as a role model for other states and nations to imitate. The United States considers China’s intentions with its integration into market economic structures to be potentially disturbing; however, Washington’s liberal understanding of international relations encourages it to entertain the hope that China’s economic integration will socialize the Chinese into adopting a favourable view on the political ideas of liberalism. The United States therefore adopts a positive attitude towards the fact that contemporary China is fully integrated into the international economic system (The White House 2006). The element of market economic structures is thus not at the top of the US-China security agenda, although issues of contention remain, such as Beijing’s reluctance to include the Chinese currency, the renminbi, in a system of floating exchange rates.
