There are four main lessons that stem from this exploration of Sinowestern relations, in addition to some more tangible recommendations that can be inferred from these. This book has showed that it is not possible to discuss or even think about the modern or contemporary history of China without considering its relationship with the West. Since the First Opium War, China's trajectory has been influenced by the West, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. European, American and Japanese imperialism, and open-door policies have contributed to China's desire for catching up and playing hard in a competitive international system of states. The US, since 1972, has actively supported efforts of the PRC to become a prosperous country. Likewise, there is no modern history of the West without discussion of China. Without the meeting between Mao and Nixon, the Cold War might have lasted longer; without Deng Xiaoping's reformist agenda, the LIO would not have been global from an economic point of view.

Currently, both China and the West, especially the US, are locked in a problematic interdependence which has led them to consider options for decoupling and recovering national sovereignty over different aspects of economic and social life. Indeed, while the liberal order has trapped the West into a China conundrum, the more China engages with this order the more it faces dilemmas between competing interests. If current diplomatic quarrels between China and the West worries us a lessening of such interdependence through decoupling could lead to a degree of geopolitical stability, because interdependence remains a source of tensions.

Another major historical lesson concerns the need to look at history in the longue durée. In 1972 Nixon and Mao were agreeing on a process of “rapprochement” between Washington and Beijing, which led to “normalization” under the Carter administration, and which allowed both powers to survive through events that shook the fundaments of the relationship – Tiananmen Square (1989) and the Taiwan Crisis (1995–96). By the standards of contemporary western-centric pundits, this seems like an age ago. Yet, in only a few decades we have managed to move from the Cold War to a time of potential order-unravelling and to the brink of a new Cold War, or the return of great power politics at the very least.