From rising power to peer competitor: reassessing Chinese power

China’s rise has generated an extensive literature assessing whether China is challenging or has surpassed the United States as the dominant global power. This review essay argues that recent scholarship has shifted from asking whether China is rising to examining how Chinese power is produced, accumulated, and exercised. Rather than treating power as an aggregate of material capabilities, these works emphasize its political, strategic, economic, and organizational foundations. These authors suggest China has emerged as a great power and a formidable competitor to the United States, but the exercise of its capabilities depends on the institutions, strategies, and organizations through which power becomes influence. The essay concludes that future assessments of Chinese power should examine the mechanisms through which resources become effective sources of power.