China is not a revisionist power.

Ultimately, while there are inevitable disconnects between, and within, words and actions, these initiatives represent the discursive mechanism through which Chinese officials articulate their preferences for the international order and, therefore, warrant deeper engagement. Importantly, their articulation of the international order precludes the binary of status quo-revisionist power competition.

In a traditional sense, China cannot be a revisionist power if it centers core bodies and principles of the existing order in their vision of the future. This complicates general arguments that China seeks to upend the existing system. However, China is not a status quo power either. Despite centering key international bodies like the U.N. and associated institutions, the promotion of multipolarity and particularistic universalism indicates that Chinese officials seek to erode what they view as American hegemony and the centrality of the Western liberal values the U.S. promotes as universal.

China’s foreign policy discourse does not necessarily represent an inherent threat to international order per se. After all, the international order has never been static and has always had competing interpretations, including by officials in Washington. However, these global initiatives do challenge the current dominant interpretation of the international order promoted by the United States. which is espoused in its “rules-based order” discourse. Consequently, to the extent that the current order must be unipolar and defined by universalist Western liberal values, China clearly represents a challenge.