Introduction

Chinese nationalists of every political colour were intensely concerned with the international situation during and between the two world wars, by necessity as much as by choice. Most politically articulate Chinese were making their revolution with the living lesson of imperialism before their eyes, in the Treaty Ports, on the railway lines, among the foreign enterprises which dominated Chinese industry and commerce. The Chinese view of the world, from a position which is Chinese as well as Marxist-Leninist, involves a serious attempt to understand the processes at work and how they affect China. Generally speaking, the Chinese worked out their own analyses of international affairs, using their own language and their own China-oriented terms of reference. China was better, not worse, off because it was oppressed by many foreign powers rather than dominated by just one. Foreign relations for China up until 1949 had been almost entirely dependent upon and reactive to the initiatives of the external powers.