A clearer consensus on China's basic foreign policy line began to emerge among party leaders in 1996. This consensus, tantamount to the country's grand strategy, has provided a relatively coherent framework for China's subsequent international behavior and the expected contribution of diplomacy to the country's security. Concerned about the adverse international reaction to its expanding, yet still limited, power, Beijing has forged a diplomatic strategy with two broad purposes: (1) to maintain the international conditions that will make it feasible for China to focus on the domestic development necessary if it is to increase its relative (and not just absolute) capabilities; and (2) to reduce the likelihood that the U.S. or others with its backing will exploit their current material advantage to abort China's ascent. These considerations have resulted in efforts to reassure potential adversaries who had grown increasingly worried about China's rise and also efforts to encourage the world's major powers to view China as an indispensable, or at least attractive, international partner. The author examines the principal reasons for adopting this diplomatic strategy, describes its key elements, and considers its durability and implications for international security in the coming decades.

This article uses a 1999 six-city survey of Chinese urban residents, along with several earlier public opinion surveys, in order to compare views on regime legitimacy between Deng and post-Deng eras. Posing the broad question of whether China's regime is seen to be in crisis or increasing stability, the author analyses data to measure public opinion in the areas of reform satisfaction, political support and political efficacy. The data reveals elements of both scenarios, possibly suggesting that the leadership was doing a good job at deepening economic reforms while successfully silencing public dissatisfaction at both the pace and content of market reform policies. Unlike in 1989, when urban residents took their issues to the street, in 1999 they became more politically conservative, even when dissatisfied with reform. Together with their heavy-handed control, the post-Deng leaders seemed to be successful in consolidating political power, using nationalism as an appeal while pushing for further market reform.

Examining the policies of the PRC towards Chinese overseas, this paper argues that since the 1990s China has been actively extending its territorial reach to encompass Chinese living outside the sovereignty of the Chinese state. Gradual changes in conceptions and methods to establish allegiances and attract increased financial investments and remittances have re-configured the Chinese state's relationships to Chinese living overseas. By analysing official documents, and through interviews with officials in Fujian (1998–2000), the author identifies two major political shifts in conceptualization. The first appeared in the late 1970s when Chinese citizens living mainly in South-East Asia were again recognized as an important source of revenue to China. A decade later, new policies were introduced appealing to ethnic Chinese and “new migrants” who had left China after 1978. It is discussed how this political adjustment fundamentally transformed the approach towards the Chinese overseas from passive anticipation of being able to gain resources to active state liaison with ethnic Chinese by calling upon their cultural and national loyalties to China.