So we have, in the eyes of many Chinese, a China that deserves to be at the centre
of global politics. And promoting the idea of returning to the ‘great power’ status
that China held for centuries before subjugation by militarily superior Western
powers in the nineteenth century has a strong resonance within China. There is
also a widely held and strong popular sense of injustice that China is being unfairly
‘demonised’ by its enemies (Liu and Liu, 1997; Song et al., 2009; Song, Zhang and
Qiao, 1996). China is a great power in a world that is not of its own making, where
existing power structures have been established by others to serve the interests of
the developed West; a dissatisfied great power with myriad domestic developmental
challenges that remain the primary focus of China’s leaders – challenges that might
even undermine continued rule by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) if not
correctly handled.