How Can China Rise Peacefully? Information, Commitment, and China’s Peaceful Rise Strategies

China’s rise has become a defining political phenomenon of world politics in the 21st century. While most scholars debate over what will happen after China rises and how the United States should deal with China’s ascent, we focus on exploring China’s strategic choices in the course of ascent, i.e., how China can rise peacefully? Borrowing insights from the bargaining theory of international conflicts, we argue that China needs to alleviate the information and commitment problems if it intends to rise peacefully. Since 1990, China has conducted two major diplomatic strategies to ensure its peaceful rise: signaling its intentions across the Taiwan Strait and binding its economic and security commitments through various institutions. In the next 20 years, China needs to continue sending a credible signal to the outside world about its peaceful intentions. China should conduct its “core interest diplomacy” with great caution and the core-interest list should be limited and constrained in order to be credible and convincing. In addition, China should initiate a security-community- building process with its neighboring states to strengthen its peaceful rise commitments.