A thought on Chinese leadership- pm post

In the past an invader and empire, now a balancing power

" We are looking for balancing factors in the region and Japan could be a significant balancing factor", Albert del Rosario, Philippine's foreign minister

It is known that for every action, there is a reaction. Chinese assertiveness is starting to find this out as it claims more aggressively parts of the South China Sea and its neighbours turn to Japan as a countervailing power. With the Japanese going to vote soon  and the role of Japan's Self-Defence Forces an issue in the election we might be looking at a (one more!) really hot geopolitical spot in the world.

As Chinese leaders start to flex their muscles and betting on regional hegemony, it makes a sober reading the book "Ancient Chinese thought, modern Chinese power" by Daniel Bell, Yan Xuetong and Sun Zhe. By looking at the thoughts pre-Qin masters (770-476 BC and 475-221 BC) - Guanzi, Laozi, Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, Xunzi and Hanfeizi - Yan Xuetong, a leading chinese foreign policy thinker (some call him the Chinese most preeminent neocon) tries to meld them into modern foreign policy theory and give a direction to the ascent of China as a world power. And I say sober, because as Yan puts it, "...only when the international community believes that China is a more responsible state than the United States will China be able to replace the United States as the world's leading state. Whether a state is a responsible major power is not something that the state itself can decide; it is a matter of judgement by other states".

Or as Laozi said "the sea is a master of a hundred rivers only because it lies low". The rise to power is never easy as Wilhelm Germany (after discarding the prudent Bismark) discovered to its ruin. The United States rose to power by being a reluctant hegemon for 40 years and by tying itself to rules that limited its power after the second world war. One could add still that the diminished US power accelerated in the Bush years by openly flouting those same rules. So, if you want to lead there are lessons aplenty on how to do it.