China’s Free Trade Area Strategy: an alternative avenue to China’s “peaceful” rise?

Publication date: Available online 15 November 2018Source: The Social Science JournalAuthor(s): Lei YuAbstractChina’s Free Trade Area strategy and its global network of free trade areas are providing new impetus to its rise at systemic (global) and sub-systemic (regional) levels. The research objectives of the paper are to explore China’s Free Trade Area strategy and its motivations and methods. It contributes to the scholarly discussion by analyzing China’s Free Trade Area strategy in the greater picture of China’s rise in the global power hierarchy and examining its global network of free trade areas in a comprehensive way. The paper finds that China’s free trade areas provide a convenient path to increasing economic cooperation and trade between China and its partners. China is able to obtain growing benefits from its free trade areas by intensifying economic, and by extension, political relations with its global partners and create an environment conducive to its peaceful rise. The paper concludes that given the enormous benefits, China’s partners gradually accept its concept of “peaceful rise” by viewing its rise as an “opportunity” for their growth. In this sense, China’s Free Trade Area strategy and its network of free trade areas may help China reap not only economic but also geopolitical interest.
Source: The Social Science Journal - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research