ABSTRACT
Given that balance of relationships is intellectually accessible and applicable to all countries, the decision to adopt a relational foreign policy, as opposed to a realist or liberal one, can often prove to be almost intuitive. We draw on four cases from the Qing Dynasty to illustrate how cultural memory acted as a mechanism that framed China’s experience of joining (European) international society. Cultural memory is shown to orient China towards a choice between developing a civilizational relationship, which encourages minglingand a cultural relationship that reproduces the binary. The cultural memory mechanism displayed at the moment of China’s entry to international society in the 19th centuryrepeats in China’s decision to participate in global governance in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Cultural memory provides a frame to analyze what relational orientation is to be deemed rational in the long-term, even when it defies the logic of power politics. For example, a decision to confront in the 1860s, regardless of the certainty of losing, has preservedthe imagined binary of China and the West. The practice has undergirded a relational position that has re-emerged repeatedly in the nextcentury.
