Introduction : the re-emerging China and its implications in East Asia and beyond

The discourse on China’s rise and its implications for the world has attracted wide international interest and equally intense scholarly debates. While earlier studies predominantly focused on big-power relations, the “China threat” theory, military expansion and collective containment, another body of literature has grown in recent years that broaches new topics, such as soft power, public diplomacy, and new tides of emigration and their impacts on the realisation of China’s strategic ambitions. The proliferation of disciplinary approaches and focal points involved in these debates is reminiscent of the multifaceted dimensions of China’s rise, a prominent global phenomenon that has far greater implications than the country’s deeper involvement in global governance, the worrisome increase in its defence budget, or its rapid economic expansion.