ABSTRACT

Beijing's post-Mao turn toward rapid economic development and the associated foreign policy of peace and opening toward the outer world was coterminous with this new emphasis. Analyses of Chinese foreign policy thus incorporated the assumption that Deng Xiaoping and his associates were equally susceptible to these global currents and equally eager to modify China's foreign policy in the benign directions pointed out by the interdependence thesis. Many new concepts were springing up to describe the exploding nature of post-Cold War international reality. Globalization was the most popular of the new terms, so interdependence was no longer the locus of analytic attention or diplomatic interest and concern. Interdependence has always been a fact of human activity, as people and institutions depend on each other to survive and achieve their goals. Interdependence is also a fact of international relations and foreign policy.