ABSTRACT
Recently Beijing has made an intensive campaign of the “peaceful rise” concept worldwide. China’s State Council InformationOffice published inDecember 2005 a white paper titled “China’s Peaceful Development Road,” which is composed of five chapters: peaceful development is the inevitable way for China’s modernization; promoting world peace and development with China’s own growth; developing by relying on its own strength, reform, and innovation; seeking mutual benefit and common development with other countries; and building a harmonious world of sustained peace and common prosperity.4 The concept and its argument are filledwith specious rhetoric, but nomentioning onChina’s rapidmilitary buildup. The invention of the concept seems to have intended to followDengXiaoping’s philosophy to “lie low, hide capacities (taoguang yanghui) and bide time to wait for China’s turn to make meaningful impacts (yousuo zuowei).” Indeed, the idea is for China to minimize frictions with the outer world during its rapid development with much reliance on foreign direct investment and world market, until China one day becomes dominant enough not to care about such constraints.
