Abstract:

The rise of China and China has been a topic that has been much discussed and published since the beginning of the century. A large number of academic articles that study the position of Beijing can be accessed through the Internet and every year "Peaceful Rise", "Peaceful Development", "Triple Harmony", "The World in Harmony", "The Soft Power of China", etc. Many books and articles on the concepts are published. This article adopts a different approach. The article aims to explore the reasonable tendency of the application of the Western concepts of power to China. For this purpose, the article will follow the trace of the concepts of soft power, hard power and smart power in China’s self-conceptualization process, and will try to define which of these three concepts reflects China’s ascension in a way. The article begins with a brief review of the Western world’s understanding of the concept of power in the field of international relations. In the second part, the official statements of China will be examined. Then in the third and fourth sections, respectively, the soft and hard power of China will be discussed. In the last part of the article, the findings will be studied and it will be revealed that China’s self-conceptualization actually includes three concepts of power, but that Beijing has preferred to give priority to the smart power approach.

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