Chen, Dingding, Xiaoyu Pu, and Alastair Iain Johnston

Abstract
In “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?” Iain Johnston argues that China’s recent foreign policy is not as assertive as many scholars and pundits contend. Johnston’s study is a welcome addition to the literature on Chinese foreign policy in three respects. First, it is the most comprehensive study by a leading China scholar on China’s new assertiveness. Second, it challenges the conventional understanding that this assertiveness is both unprecedented and aggressive by design. Third, it addresses potential problems of overestimating the threat from China.
In this letter, we argue that Johnston’s definition of assertiveness is too narrow. In addition, he underestimates the significance of China’s new assertiveness in foreign policy more broadly.
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