With its rising influence on the world stage, scholars believe that China is likely to adopt a more hard-line foreign policy direction, says an op-ed piece published by The Boston Globe on June 26, 2011.

Admittedly, today's China still isn't considered a global superpower as "its military doesn't have worldwide reach, and its economy, while prolific, still hasn't made the transition to producing technology rather than just goods for the world marketplace". But China's arrival as a power is considered inevitable "because of its sheer size and the dispatch with which it has moved from Third World economy to industrial powerhouse".

So it is becoming increasingly important to understand its foreign policy, says the article. There is a tug of war between two schools of thought in China. While hard-liners prefer "a nationalist, even chauvinist stance", more globally-minded thinkers want China to "tread lightly and integrate more smoothly into international regimes". And the Chinese public who display boisterous nativism in China's online forums might be "a major factor pushing Chinese foreign policy in a more hard-line direction".

In a widely read article in the most recent issue of The Washington Quarterly, David Shambaugh, a China expert at George Washington University, writes that tougher, more hard-line schools of thought are on top – a consensus he describes as "truculent," and pushing the nation "to toughen its policies and selectively throw China's weight around", says the piece.

Because China's identity is so fluid today, Shambaugh argues that American actions have significant impact. But he also warns that policy making is almost inevitably going to have unwanted repercussions within China. Tough American positions can reinforce the fear, even paranoia, of China's chauvinist nationalists, he says. But more conciliatory policies could strengthen another hard-line group, the China-first realists, who would claim American concessions as the fruit of Chinese aggression.