The Logic Behind China’s Expansion

History, dependence, vulnerability, and rivalry drive Beijing’s choices

China’s re-emergence as a central power is evidently not sudden nor accidental. Scholars such as Martin Jacques and economic historians like Angus Maddison have pointed to the long arc of Chinese history where the country dominated regional trade and production for centuries, and the last two hundred years of subjugation appear as an exception in a longer continuum. Jacques argues that a civilisation with three millennia of institutional memory cannot be permanently reduced by two centuries of Western intrusion. This historical depth explains Beijing’s insistence on framing present growth as a return rather than a rise. That language as much there naybe some element of symbolism, it largely functions as a claim that external actors must adapt to the inevitability of Chinese centrality rather than treat it as a conditional aspiration. Independent analysts such as Giovanni Arrighi reinforced the same argument, observing that economic gravity is shifting back towards East Asia and that no power can resist the arithmetic of demography and sustained growth.