Will China's rise as a global superpower be peaceful?

China's territorial disputes and alliances

Question: Will China's rise as a global superpower be peaceful?
Position‹2 of 2: No, China's rise will not be peaceful
Argument1 of 3›: China's territorial disputes and alliances

China continues to have territorial disputes with its neighbours and military alliances with pariah states.

The argument

Conflict between China and the rest of the world remains a strong possibility, and the argument for expecting it rests on where China's claims sit and whom it stands beside. The territorial claims come first. China has outstanding claims in the South China Sea with Brunei, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and a historical claim over the island of Taiwan, which the USA has promised to protect in any military conflict. The number of counterparties matters, because a dispute with six neighbours cannot be settled bilaterally without each concession becoming a precedent for the others. The Taiwan claim matters for a different reason: a US commitment to defend it converts what would be a regional dispute into one in which the two largest militaries are pre-committed on opposite sides. The pattern of alignment is the second element. China also regularly aligns with pariah states such as Vladimir Putin's Russia, offering them support in the UN Security Council by vetoing any attempts at sanctions. This includes recent attempts by the West to sanction the regime of Bashir Al Assad for the use of chemical weapons, which was vetoed by China. What these vetoes indicate is a settled position on the mechanism itself: the body designed to resolve such disputes without force is the body China uses to block collective responses, which narrows the range of peaceful instruments available to everyone else. Capability and posture complete the case. Increased military spending in China and a more assertive foreign policy has led many to speculate that China's territorial claims and alliances will be backed up by force — the inference being that claims which are not being relinquished, and which are increasingly backed by the means to enforce them, are unlikely to be resolved peacefully.

Premises

[P1]China maintains active territorial disputes across the South China Sea and over Taiwan, the latter of which the United States has pledged to defend militarily. [P2] China consistently aligns with pariah regimes like Russia and Assad's Syria, shielding them from international sanctions through UN Security Council vetoes. [P3] Rising Chinese military spending and a more assertive foreign policy suggest these claims and alliances will increasingly be backed by force. [C] Therefore, China's rise as a global superpower will not be peaceful.

Counter-arguments

Those who expect a broadly peaceful rise reply that territorial disputes and diplomatic alignments have persisted for decades without escalating to major war, which they read as evidence of deterrence and pragmatic restraint rather than an inevitable slide to conflict. They argue China's prosperity depends on stable trade and access to global markets, giving it strong incentives to avoid war, and that vetoes at the UN and assertive rhetoric are normal great-power behaviour rather than proof of violent intent. Rising military spending, on this view, tracks China's growing economy and its need to secure trade routes, and need not mean its claims will be pressed by force.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Longstanding territorial disputes have so far been managed without war, so their existence shows friction, not that conflict is the likely outcome. [Rejecting P2] Aligning with other states and using Security Council vetoes is ordinary great-power diplomacy, which does not by itself indicate a willingness to use force. [Rejecting P3] Higher military spending accompanies economic growth and the protection of trade routes; it is consistent with deterrence and does not establish that China intends to back its claims with force.