ABSTRACT
The dynamics of legitimation challenge and response seems a promising way of capturing the unfolding tensions between the policies and the principles, the means and the ends, and the changes and the continuities of Chinese foreign policy. Jurgen Habermas' understanding of legitimation and legitimation crisis is of particular interest and relevance in the Chinese context because of a linkage it provides for domestic and external legitimation. Peking's expanding membership in international nongovernmental organizations has become one of the ten basic principles of Chinese foreign policy. The compulsive self-characterization of Chinese foreign policy as one of principled constancy and continuity persists as the way of acting out national unity on the international stage. The fundamentalist assault on the "peaceful evolution" strategy was also extended to convergence theory or what the Chinese call "the theory of approaching identities”. The logic of the revival of fundamentalism would seem to call for a most drastic restructuring of Chinese foreign policy.
