Lying Low or Striving for Achievement

Abstract

This chapter analyzes China’s strategic spinning during the global financial crisis. Facing two types of global audiences (the global South and the West), China sometimes highlights its profile as an emerging great power and other times downplays its profile by emphasizing its developing country status. A developing country status serves multiple purposes for China. Targeting the West, signaling a developing country status sends a reassuring message, and it allows China to shirk greater international responsibilities. Targeting the global South, signaling a developing country status plays the solidarity card. The tension between China’s great power status and its identity of developing country is bound to increase as China seeks a new role in the twenty-first century.