China’s rise, and a material level focusing on the economic and technological instruments that enabled China to reshape global power dynamics. The review also argues that Bauer conceptualises China as a " civilization- empire " that strategically utilises globalisation to restore its historical position, with a strong emphasis on the security–strategic dimension. At the same time, the review highlights key limitations in this framework, including the conceptual elasticity of " empire " , the overestimation of Chinese strategic coherence, and the underestimation of structural factors within the global economic system. Ultimately, the review concludes that the book’s primary value lies in its capacity to provoke critical questions about the nature of power and the future of the international order, while emphasising the need to situate its arguments within a broader comparative and multidimensional analytical framework. Keywords: China, globalisation, empire, power, international order.
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