Revisionism is an important concept in international relations discourse, and it is especially prevalent in discussions about relations between China and the United States in the context of a possible power transition. Yet, this concept has until recently not received the systematic research attention that it deserves. We present in this essay different strategies that a revisionist state may pursue. It builds on recent scholarship by other colleagues and is drawn from a larger project of ours to study revisionism historically and develop it conceptually. We argue that military conquest and subversion—or in our terminology, hard revisionism—have become less likely in today’s world compared to the past. Instead, different approaches of soft revisionism intended to advance institutional changes should be given more attention. We provide a typology of these soft revisionist strategies and offer examples from recent Chinese and US conduct to illustrate them.

中文翻译：

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重新思考世界政治中的修正主义

修正主义是国际关系话语中的一个重要概念，尤其是在权力可能交接的背景下讨论中美关系时尤为普遍。然而，这一概念直到最近才得到应有的系统研究关注。我们在这篇文章中提出了修正主义国家可能采取的不同策略。它建立在其他同事最近的学术研究基础上，并从我们的一个更大的项目中汲取灵感，从历史上研究修正主义并在概念上发展它。我们认为，与过去相比，军事征服和颠覆——或者用我们的术语来说，硬修正主义——在当今世界变得不太可能。相反，应该更多地关注旨在推进制度变革的不同软修正主义方法。