ABSTRACT
One fundamental fact regarding China highlights how misplaced the idea is that Beijing somehow poses an existential threat to the neoliberal global system: in early 2016, the European Union Commission was discussing whether the EU should grant China “market economy status.” Just this point alone cuts the ground from those who argue that some sort of alternative economic model is being advanced by China that will transform the extant world order. Alastair Iain Johnston has explained how since the death of Mao Zedong, China has moved clearly from being a revolutionary revisionist state to a more status quo-oriented one.1 Similarly, Evan Medeiros argues that China is not trying to tear down or radically revise the extant constellation of global rules, norms and institutions on economic and security affairs.2
