ABSTRACT
China’s re-emergence onto the world stage poses a number of questions that scholars want to address, centring on China’s relations with the outside world. In this context, it has become all the more important to understand and grasp the Chinese way of thinking about the world. Increasingly, researchers realize that unless they dig deeply into the infrastructure of China’s international behaviour, they cannot understand the issue well. Looking back is an essential means to look forward and hence there is a growing research interest and related literature in traditional Chinese thoughts on inter-state relationships.2
