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.

Indian justification of its May 1998 nuclear tests in terms of Chinese threats to India prompted a multifacited Chinese campaign pressuring New Delhi to retract its offensive statements. One significant element of Chinese concerns with Indian statements was apprehension over an Indian drift toward alignment with the United States. Beijing's efforts were successful and within two years New Delhi had given Beijing the requisite assurances and the normal state of Sino-Indian amity was restored. Sino-Indian interactions in the period after India's May 1998 tests demonstrates the extreme sensitivity of both powers to the other's alignment with the United States in the post-Cold War world.

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.

In the 2000 presidential election, the Kuomintang (KMT) lost badly, but it remains the majority party in the Legislative Yuan. In the foreseeable future, it will continue to be a formidable force in Taiwanese politics as long as it is able to hold itself together. Its strength derives essentially from its unique position along the national identity spectrum, the most salient division underpinning Taiwan's party structure. Given the stability of voters' distribution on the national identity issue, the relative strength of the pan-KMT and the pan-Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) camps – referring to the two major parties and the parties split from them – will remain roughly the same. Under the circumstances, the major challenge confronting the KMT does not come from the DPP, but from within the pan-KMT camp. Here, other issues and even personalities may play a much more important role in shaping the configuration within the pan-KMT camp, thus affecting the KMT's overall strength.

Since its inception in 1986, Taiwan's main opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has struggled to establish itself as a competitor for national political power. The victory of DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian in the 2000 presidential election marked a major breakthrough, not only for the DPP, but for Taiwan's young democracy as well. This article examines the party's history with an eye to explaining both its extended failure to win national office and its eventual success. The paper identifies two sets of factors: aspects of Taiwan's political system that worked to the advantage of the ruling KMT and historical errors committed by the DPP. It then shows how the KMT's advantages degraded in 2000, just as the DPP overcame its self-imposed liabilities, resulting in a DPP presidency.

Based on interviews with scientists who have received the Distinguished Young Scientist award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the paper examines the backgrounds, experiences, and attitudes of China's rising scientific elite, and explores how this new generation of scientists thinks about the conditions necessary for scientific distinction. The new elite scientists in China show signs of having mastered the institutional environment for research; individually, they seem to be able to find the resources and autonomy to build successful research enterprises. At the same time, as the elite seeks to bridge the norms and practices of the best of international science and Chinese realities, their collective lives are subject to tensions, uncertainties, and contradictions which make the building of a dynamic scientific community especially challenging. As the institutional environment within China changes, scientists receive mixed signals as to the balance between professional and commercial values of research.

This research reveals a new consensus among scholars in both Moscow and Beijing that the 1969 Sino-Soviet border crisis was a premeditated act of violence orchestrated by the Chinese side. International and domestic causes are investigated for their strength in explaining China's belligerence. There has been a widespread belief among sinologists that China acted out of desperation against Soviet strength and aggressiveness, which had been demonstrated most clearly by the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and the associated “Brezhnev Doctrine.” The author presents evidence that challenges this traditional interpretation. Rather, a stronger explanation for China's aggressiveness in March 1969 is Mao's need at that particular time for an external threat to unify the country. The article additionally explores the implications of these revelations for the study of Chinese foreign policy and international relations generally.

On 22 September 2001, Jürgen Domes passed away after a week of fighting a sudden illness. It was six months before his 70th birthday. Within hours of the news spreading, tributes flooded in from China scholars all over the world, colleagues and friends mourning his passing and paying their respects to one of the leading figures of contemporary China studies in Europe. Indeed, Jürgen Domes was one of the first German political scientists to work on contemporary China. He approached his subject from a strictly disciplinary perspective, his fluency in Chinese allowing him to base his analyses on primary sources. For almost four decades, he was one of the most internationally renowned German scholars working on contemporary China.