These remarks by Chinese politician and diplomat Dai Bingguo at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2016 will sound familiar to anyone who has been following Chinese developments over the past few decades. They synthesize some of the key elements of the official rhetoric supporting China’s current rise as a global power and its quest for expanded sovereignty. A quest for sovereignty characterizes China’s modern history: charting an uninterrupted course since the nineteenth-century Opium Wars, it reflects the country’s tortuous journey within the history of international law. The current territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, the reunification with Taiwan, and the difficulties with the autonomous regions are all related to the most recent definition of China as a sovereign state, and to the introduction of international law.