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The concept of ‘revisionism’ has caught the attention of international relations scholars amid intensifying rivalry between the United States and China. It is a trademark of rising powers, and China was likewise expected to become a revisionist power, intent on changing the status quo. However, history tells us that not all rising powers necessarily become revolutionary states, seeking to overturn the prevailing order and replace it with another through hegemonic wars. This paper presents a novel understanding of revisionism by distinguishing between strategic ‘contestation’ and ‘challenge’. In the context of declining unipolarity, a dissatisfied rising power will contest the rules and principles of issue-specific regimes and demand legitimate adjustments that better reflect the new distribution of power. A challenge emerges when demands are rejected, and a contestation leads to ‘deconcentration’ and ‘delegitimation’ of the established order. The establishment of the AIIB can be examined as an example of contested multilateralism that falls short of a challenge. This paper concludes that China is ‘contesting’, not ‘challenging’ the liberal international order and suggests a set of countermeasures that the U.S. can think of: selective accommodation, reinforcement of alliances and partnerships, and overcoming domestic challenges such as populism that undermine the liberal values, constitutive of the liberal international order.

China’s contestation of the liberal international order