Emerging China and Critical Geopolitics: Between World Politics and Chinese Particularity

Abstract

A prominent political and human geographer assesses the rise of contemporary China through the lens of critical geopolitics. In doing so he challenges both (a) conventional world political views of China as merely the most recent world power to emerge through a natural process of linear succession ("the linear narrative") and (b) conceptions of the country as a completely unique phenomenon shaped by a distinct historical experience and cultural particularity ("Sino-centrism"). The paper develops the argument that China's rise rather is shaped by a contradictory amalgam of Western-style nationalism and a traditional totalistic conception of world order that is reactive to and dependent on current world politics.