"Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice" offers a survey of China's foreign relations since 1949. The contributors include leading historians, economists, and political scientists in the field of Chinese studies, as well as noteworthy international relations specialists. The principal purposes of the volume are to assess tlie variety of sources that give shape to Chinese foreign policy, and to explain and analyse four decades of Chinese interaction with the world. The first section considers ttie historical, perceptual, economic, and political domestic sources of Chinese foreign policy, and argues that China's rulers have long, believed in their nation's centrality in world affairs, and that China has felt an overwhelming need since the start of the Cold War to ensure its own security and regain freedom of initiative in its foreign relations. The chapters analyze not only nation-state contacts but a broad range of economic and social interactions, giving an enriched sense of the totality of Chinese foreign policy. The role of ideology in motivating the elites and institutions forming and implementing foreign policy is also explored both at formal and informal levels.One major variable in China's foreign relations is the economic development strategy, and this is considered in depth in one chapter in this first part. The second part reviews the international systemic sources of China's foreign relations, such as strategic systems, and scientific and technolocical imperatives. China is seen as searching for a redefined role in a multipolar rather than a bipolar world order. The complex and cyclical US-Sino and Sino-Soviet relationships are analysed, using the narrative to bring to light the underlying patterns and systemic forces, as well as interpersonal relationships, shaping China's foreign policy. Other chapters deal with China's relationships with Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and with China's international behaviour in the sphere of economics, trade, and aid. The last part of this book relates the study of Chinese foreign policy directly to International Relaltions theory, concluding that the foreign policy can only be understood when the theory of international relations is supplemented by an area-specific knowledge of China's strategic and domestic viewpoint. .