Many Western analysts and international relations scholars take the intellectual and historical foundations of statecraft for granted. They invoke the “Thucydides trap” when pondering whether the world will be able to accommodate China’s rise and cite Machiavelli when thinking about Beijing’s practice of realpolitik. While these perspectives are important and useful, they tend to interpret the problem of Chinese global power in analytical terms derived only from the Western intellectual and historical experience. Chinese foreign policy thinkers know the Western canon, of course. But China has its own rich intellectual tradition that informs its statecraft just as deeply as the … Continue reading How China Sees the International Order: A Lesson from the Chinese Classics