ABSTRACT
During the 1980s and 1990s, China’s stance on territorial sovereignty and border relations was most strikingly characterized by two strong patterns of continuity. First, Beijing con sistently promoted a boundary reinforcing interpretation of the lines between China and her neighbors through the repetition of a set of largely status quo territorial claims. Sec ond, foreign policy elites unfailingly analyzed these boundaries in a manner that sought to legitimize each aspect of the official Chinese position. These continuities have already been featured in the existing literature on China’s handling of border relations; however, against this well-publicized backdrop three less obvious, but nonetheless important, pat terns of change emerged.
