China's assertive international behavior during the recent global downturn has raised an important question: if China has abandoned its low profile foreign policy and reoriented it toward a more aggressive direction? This paper argues that while China is rising and built increasing national power to wield significant influence, it is still obsessed by its immediate or so-called core interests in response to the daunting internal and external challenges to its regime survival, economic development and territorial integrity. China still struggles to find a balance between taking a great power responsibility and focusing on its narrowly defined core interests. This paper starts with an analysis of China's newly founded international assertiveness and goes on to explain the driving forces behind this assertiveness. The third part provides an answer to the question what type of great power China is rising to be.

Read Professor Zhao's full article in The European Financial Review.