Beyond Balancing? C hina's Quest For Security and Power in E ast A sia

Observing the evolution of C hina's interaction with its international environment, Z hang B aijia argued that the advent of the X inhai R evolution marked the beginning of C hina's participation in the modern interstate system. Becoming a more “normal” player after seven decades of foreign aggressions and encroachments, C hina could hardly have been more aware of the realist rule that, in an anarchic international environment, security can never be taken for granted. The lesson regarding the price of weakness had lasting consequences for C hina, and, by the end of the century, C hina had become, in T homas C hristensen's words, “the high church of realpolitik in the post‐ C old W ar world.”