Rediscovering the Transition in China’s National Interest: A Neoclassical Realist Approach

Recently, China’s core national interest proposal has drawn significant attention from scholars, triggering a wide range of discussions on this interesting phenomenon. However, the existing literature remains largely limited to single-case studies and has neglected several crucial questions: What is the major difference between China’s national interest and core national interest? What factors may cause a transition from a national interest to a core interest? How can we understand this long-term transition? Based on these questions, this article constructs a neoclassical-based analytical framework to trace that transition, arguing that the major difference between these two concepts is the scope of their application. Meanwhile, the transition in China’s national interest can be categorised as “defensive national interest,” “constructive national interest,” and “adversary core interest” from the beginning of the 1980s to 2017 – with the scope expanded accordingly from the domestic and regional levels to the inter-regional one.