Over the past two decades, China’s role in the geopolitical landscape has grown, particularly as a result of the country’s rising economic and military power. Thus, U.S. leaders now view China as a strategic competitor—one that seeks to upend the post–World War II liberal international order. An integral part of this competition is the contest for influence in the international system. This report examines China’s drive for power and influence around the world and the results of those efforts. More specifically, we assess China’s ability to use various mechanisms of influence to shape the policies and behavior of the 20 countries examined, as well as the lessons that these examples offer for the wider issue of influence in the United States’ strategic competition with China. With this study, we aim to produce a transferable framework and other tools of analysis that can provide reliable means of assessing bilateral influence relationships in other cases.
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