LONDON — For a long time, Chinese foreign-policy thinkers and the political establishment have been trying to convince the world that China's rise is peaceful, that China has no expansionist intentions and that China will be a different kind of great power.
What's striking is how many liberals in the West have taken these assertions at face value. There is an entire industry in the West that would have us believe that China is a different kind of great power and that if the West only gives China a stake in the established order, China's rise will not create any complications.
Now, however, one of the most prominent foreign policy thinkers in China is suggesting that establishing bases overseas is a Chinese right that the government cannot ignore. Shen Dingli, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, asserts that "it is wrong for us [China] to believe that we have no rights to set up bases abroad."