ABSTRACT
Sovereignty, as embodied in Westphalia, is not only organised hypocrisy, it is also an ambivalent ideal. It is the deep-seated ambivalence of this concept and its diffusion that allows China to constantly re-imagine its meaning since its incorporation into international society in the second half of the nineteenth century. The historicity of the idea of sovereignty has been clearly demonstrated through China's discursive engagement and historical understanding of sovereign statehood. The historical transformation of the identity of the Chinese state both informs and is informed by China's discursive engagement with the Westphalian ideal of sovereignty. At the heart of each transformation, from a universal empire to a civilisational state in the nineteenth century, and from a revolutionary power to a globalised state in the twentieth, are on the one hand the diffusion of the sovereignty norm to China and on the other, China's sometimes-contradictory conceptions of the sovereignty ideal and often reluctant acceptance of changing legitimate practices of sovereign statehood.
