This book critically rethinks the dominant narratives around the so-called ‘liberal international’/‘rules-based’ order, by examining how China discursively engages with, and mirrors, the very hegemonic order it contests. Moving beyond the commonplace representation of China as a paradoxically ‘revisionist’ yet occasionally ‘compliant’ power, it argues that what appears contradictory is, in fact, a coherent counterhegemonic strategy rooted in discursive rearticulation rather than outright r...