Heartland, Contender and Periphery: A Critical Analysis of Chinese Foreign Policy

This study makes a critical analysis of Chinese foreign policy from 1989 to 2017 to evaluate China’s changing position in the world order from a historical perspective. Following Gramscian Critical Theory, it examines China’s relations with the United States, Russia and the Central Asian members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to figure out if China is challenging the US-led world order. Here, it is argued that while China has an intention of reforming the existing world order, it does not have the intention of replacing it with a completely new order since it has been among the countries that benefited from the existing one the most.