Since the opening-up and reform in 1978, China has emerged as a rising power based on its steady economic growth. As a result, Western developed countries, mainly the United States, that designed and established the existing international order, have raised concerns that China, as a rising power, will seek to change the existing international order. China argues that it has grown within the existing international order and therefore has no reason to revise it. As a result, the attention of the international community has been focused on China’s state orientation, whether it is a status quo power or a revisionist power, and many related research results have been produced. However, there is no consensus on China’s state orientation, and it seems that there are more views on China, though discontent with the established order, as a status quo power, than as a revisionist power. Besides, there are claims that, rather than concentrating on defining China’s state orientation, there needs to be more comprehensive and future-oriented researches related to the emergence of China, including the desirable international order, the problems of the existing international order and the status and role of China in it, China’s vision of international order, etc.
This paper focuses on the fact that China has consistently raised complaints and required reforms to the existing international institutions and rules, despite the existing research results and China’s own claim that China is a status quo power. Accordingly, this paper examines the content of the complaints and reforms that China has raised as a rising power and its related actions based on its multiple identities such as socialist country and Asian country, and argues that such actions are intended to supplement and reform rather than to make a full-scale revision, being pursued as part of China’s great power strategy.