Promotional Information

This is a fascinating and intellectually stimulating collection of essays. It engages one of the most pressing issues underlying China's apparent rise in world politics, mainly how those in China, especially inside the elite foreign policy community, view the world. -- Allen Carlson, Cornell University Specialists in the field will definitely welcome the book. It deals with a recent trend among some Chinese establishment intellectuals that believe China should make the conscious attempt to shape the world system, which, they believe, is fundamentally flawed. -- Shiping Hua, University of Louisville

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Introduction: Tradition, Modernity, and Foreign Policy in China
Part I: Rediscovering Traditional Concepts
Chapter 2. Rethinking Empire from the Chinese Concept "All-under-Heaven" (Tianxia)
Chapter 3. The Possibility and Inevitability of a Chinese School of International Relations Theory
Chapter 4. Xunzi's Thoughts on International Politics and Their Implications
Part II: Mixing Past, Present, and Future
Chapter 5. Tianxia, Empire, and the World: Chinese Visions of World Order for the Twenty-First Century
Chapter 6. The Enduring Function of the Substance/Essence (Ti/Yong) Dichotomy in Chinese Nationalism
Chapter 7. Paradoxes of Tradition and Modernity at the New Frontier: China, Islam, and the Problem of "Different Heavens"
Part III: Tradition and Modernity in Popular and State Discourse
Chapter 8. Beyond World Order: Change in China's Negotiations over the World
Chapter 9. Confucianism, "Cultural Tradition," and Official Discourse in China at the Start of the New Century
Chapter 10. Conclusion: World Harmony or Harmonizing the World?
Contributors
Index

About the Author

William A. Callahan is a professor of international politics and Chinese studies at the University of Manchester (UK), and codirector of the British Inter-University China Center in Oxford. His research examine sthe nexus of identity and security in China and East Asia. His books include China: The Pessoptimist Nation, Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations, and Cultural Governance and Resistance in Pacific Asia. Elena Barabantseva is a British Inter-University China Centre Research Fellow and lecturer in Chinese politics at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on Chinese identity politics, nationalism, transnationalism, and cultural citizenship. She is the author of Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China.

Reviews

A welcome addition to the study of Chinese worldviews from historical and theoretical perspectives... -- Shaohua Hu Journal of Asian Studies