关键词: 国家能力, 时间性, 主权能力, 经济发展能力, 政治安全

Abstract: While the existing studies on China's national capacity have been basically synchronic and provided a snapshot view, this paper analyzes the implicit long cycle and visible temporal sequence of China's national capacity building from the temporal perspective. According to the typological understanding of national capacity, China's development from standing up, getting rich to getting strong is reflected in its national capacity building efforts concerning, in sequence, sovereignty capacity, economic development capacity, and comprehensive security capacity. This process of national capacity building reflects the consecutive shift of the focus of state building on politics, economy and culture, and demonstrates the “temporality” in the methodology of historical institutionalism in political science. From the temporal perspective, national capacity is not an inherent public good, but a complex project that would be delivered sequentially with its internal logical relations and serve for historical civilization developments. Therefore, the national modernization cause is to a large extent the national capacity building, which provides important implications for the construction of China's independent body of knowledge of social sciences. 

Key words: national capacity, temporality, sovereignty capacity, economic development capacity, political security