The Assertive China Narrative: Why It Is Wrong and How So Many Still Bought into It

Dissenting assaults on the conventional wisdom that China's foreign policy became more 'assertive' in 2009-2010 have intensified. In this article I develop this revisionist critique in three ways. First, to make the most valid and cumulative assessment of the accuracy of the 'assertive China narrative' to date, I conceptualise its key empirical claim as a case of the general phenomenon of 'foreign policy change'. Second, based on this framework, I present a range of new empirical evidence that, taken as a whole, strongly challenges the notion of a new Chinese assertiveness. Third, since academic China and Asia experts played a pivotal role in creating the narrative, I raise a comprehensive explanation of why a great many scholars so strikingly went along with the flawed idea.