macy to making it reflect our most recent thinking on China's multidi-
mensional foreign relations in the post-Cold War era. Without prema-
turely privileging any particular theory or methodology, each contribu-
tor has been asked to address some of the essential and enduring
questions mentioned above and to do so within the framework of a spe-
cific assigned topic. Adopting a variety of theoretical and analytical
frames of reference and combining a broad theoretical framework (Part
1) with interaction-specific and issue-specific case studies (Parts 2 and 3),
the contributors assess the relative weight of domestic and external fac-
tors and the changing domestic and international contexts reflecting and
affecting Beijing's policy goals and behaviors in different domains, to-
ward different reference groups, and across time. In doing so, they seek
to identify the changes and continuities that have characterized Chinese
foreign relations over the years and the reasons why the Chinese behave
as they do in the conduct of their international relations.

More than the previous editions, the fourth edition has been subject to
substantial rewriting and restructuring to take into account the issues
raised by China's increasingly complex and multifarious engagement
with the post-Cold War international system. Reference to "China" or to
"China's" foreign policy is not meant to connote a single-minded set of
decisionmakers in Beijing, much less a single, coherent, and unified
China. Indeed, there is now broad scholarly consensus that the Chinese
party-state is no longer the almighty Leviathan of yore. The term China is
used throughout the volume merely for analytical and semantic conve-
nience.

This volume is the continuation, not the culmination, of a collaborative
effort that was started two decades ago in the hope of remedying the dia-
logue of the deaf between China specialists and world politics analysts.
From the inception of that effort, it was our intention to combine looking
backward with going forward--and to link theory with practice. This
book represents a joint venture into the seemingly forbidden territory of
interdisciplinary inquiry in the study of Chinese foreign policy. In spite
of diverse intellectual backgrounds, methodological inclinations, and
theoretical orientations, the contributors are united in the conviction that
we can and must study Chinese foreign policy as if international rela-
tions really mattered--or, conversely, that we must study international
relations as if China really mattered. This volume, the offspring of an in-
visible college of bridge-builders, has been the work of many. For various
reasons, a number of scholars in the field could not contribute to the pre-
vious editions, and several contributors to the third edition could not be
persuaded to shift gears in the midst of other projects to do the necessary
revisions for this volume. I thank Thomas Bernstein, June T. Dreyer,
Melvin Gurtov, Harry Harding, James C. Hsiung, Andrew Nathan,

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