The Development of "Four China" in Sino-Western Relations

Ever since its first contact with the West some centuries ago China has been a source of both fascination and worry for the West, and it has been seen as a nation of puzzle, mystery and unfathomably beyond comprehension. Even now when China has become an integral part of the capitalist world economy, China is still a country that the major western powers find it difficult to accommodate. Nowadays China finds itself to be a “middle kingdom” surrounded by jealousy, admiration, anxiety, worry and even resentment. This paper aims to provide an analytical approach to the understanding of China-West relations. It intends to construct a framework of conceptualizing and analyzing the evolutions and transformations of China-West relations in a historical nexus of “four China” so as to understand the most recent development of China-West relations as well as to foresee the general trend of China-West relations in the early 21 century. Introduction The long and dramatic transformations taking pace China in the 20 century makes it an ideal “case study” for scientific research of political and economic development and social changes. Very few societies like China had been so radically transformed in such a short time within one century. Politically, the Chinese state and society transformed from a long imperial system to a shortlived republic, and then from a fragile and predatory warlordism to a revolutionary centralized socialist state. Economically, the country underwent a state-led socialist industrialization project based on “politics in command”, planned economy and collective egalitarianism, and then moved to an all-round economic reform based on “economics in command” and market mechanisms. Ideologically, the Chinese value systems went through many “great leaps forward” from Confucianism to Marxism, from imperialism to republicanism, from feudalism to socialism and from collectivism to individualism. The Chinese political and economic landscape had experienced repeated shifts from crisis and failure to very rapid growth and achievement as well as from an orderand hierarchy-based society to mass mobilization movements and to mass pursuit of wealth. In China’s contemporary history, the search to ensure its existence as a prosperous strong nation and a united political entity has been a key concern for