ABSTRACT
There is a proliferation of books and articles about the West's view of China. However, little is written about the way in which China views the West. This chapter presents a view of the way in which a senior official in the Communist Party of China might view the West. From the perspective of China today, the 'West' consists of the high-income countries, with Europe, including Russia, at the core, but including also the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Japan. The lens through which China looks at the West is fundamentally different from the lens through which the West looks at China. The West's view of China is powerfully shaped by its conception of its own history. Equally, China's leaders today view the West through the lens of their own history. Following a millennium of internal conflict within Europe itself, from the late fifteenth century onwards, European countries began their process of extra-European expansion.
