Is there a detailed blueprint of what a China-led international system would finally look like in the inner recesses of the Chinese leadership? At this stage, I doubt it. As discussed in earlier chapters, that is not the way China has approached large-scale policy projects in the past—either at home or abroad. China’s preferred approach is more iterative. Beijing tends to announce an all-embracing concept and then throw it to its think tanks for further analysis before beginning a series of trials in the real world. In the domestic context, the CCP typically trials its policies in various
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