ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses foreign policy and its relevance to political legitimacy. It dissects the main fallacies in Western thinking about Chinese external relations: faulty cognitive framework and bad analytical tools in modern international relations theories, because they are rooted in the Enlightenment orthodoxy. It also discusses the historical perception and its impact on Chinese leadership’s geopolitical sensibilities. It concludes that while Beijing has pursued an effective geopolitical strategy for over 30 years, now the sound premises are falling apart, largely due to miscalculation and extreme nationalism.
