ABSTRACT
China’s overall policy aims have been the focus of a number of studies over the last few years (e.g., Goldstein 2005; Shambaugh 2004/05). For the next ten to twenty years, the Chinese leadership has been deemed to have five main inter-related goals:
a) to become, as that leadership would put it, “an all-round affluent society” and to achieve recognition as a great power;
b) to sustain access to the resources needed to sustain high levels of growth, to redistribute that growthmore fairly and thus help to build amore “harmonious society”;
c) to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains in power and unchallenged politically in any meaningful sense;
d) to prevent a Taiwanese declaration of independence or other threats to territorial integrity, such as those that might arise from unrest in Xinjiang () or Tibet ( ); and
e) to ensure that the Chinese leaders’ focus on domestic development goals is not diverted or undermined by regional and/or global tensions and conflict. Central to this challenge is that Beijing must promote these objectives in a world and region where the United States has long been the preponderant power.
