1 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journal of Chinese Political Science. Please quote as follows: Turcsanyi, R.Q.: Assessing the Power of China: Insights from the Conceptual Thinking about Power. Journal of Chinese Political Science (2017) 22: 473-486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-017-9499-2. Available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11366-017-9499-2 Assessing the Power of China: Insights from the Conceptual Thinking about Power Richard Q. Turcsanyi Abstract The paper seeks to enrich the discussion of China’s power by critically engaging with existing literature on the topic, presenting a conceptual analysis of power, and suggesting a framework for future research. Firstly, it is shown that only a few scholarly publications approach China’s power in a more comprehensive and conceptually rigorous way, and even these still contain spaces for improvement. It is argued that the main fault of the existing literature on China’s power is confusion surrounding the concept of power. For this reason, secondly, the article presents a conceptual analysis of power and it puts forward a comprehensive framework suitable for analytical use in international relations. In this place, the article argues that an exhaustive assessment of state power should contain an analysis of state’s intentions, its sources of power on (at least) three analytical levels, and outcomes of interactions. Thirdly, an analysis of Chinese policies in the South China Sea is offered as an example of applying the framework to a concrete issue. Finally, the article identifies further directions for researching China’s power and foreign policy using the presented model of power. Introduction As a major structural change in the recent international system, the rise of China provoked much thinking about power. At first, China’s rise looks like a textbook example of power transition, which in the past led to some of the most devastating wars in human history. This line of argumentation produced some of the most influential works interpreting China’s rise and its impact on the world, which predicted a major clash between China and the U.S. (Mearsheimer 2010, Friedberg 1993). Nevertheless, there have been many who disagreed with this view and offered more optimistic views of the future development of the Asia-Pacific order. G. John Ikenberry (2013) thinks that the current power shift in the region would not follow historical examples due to various reasons, including the pacifying effect of nuclear weapons, the primacy of liberal democracies and the capitalist world economic order. Steve Chan (2008) offered a critical reading of the past power transitions and argued that the thesis of the general necessity of hegemonic war is faulty, which downgrades the validity of the theory in the case of China’s rise. David Kang (2007) argued that while the European diplomatic tradition might have been structured according to the thesis, Asia in general and China in particular are different. The historic acceptance of Asia’s hegemonic unipolar system, which centered on a benign