Strauss Distinguished Scholar William Inboden recently returned from a trip to China with many different impressions of its state of affairs. He discusses six of them in a post for the Foreign Policy blog Shadow Government; Rising Power, Security Threat, Economic Dynamo, Fragile Kleptocracy, Reforming Autocracy, and Insecure Bully.

Inboden concludes with the realization that China is none of these identities alone but a mix of all of them at once. He asserts that these multiple realities defy historical analogy and will require a broader foreign policy vision from the U.S.