History, as written by the Party, sees 1949 as a dividing line between the Old and the New China. That is nothing exceptional: Every new dynasty presents itself as the founder of a new order that casts aside its old and depraved predecessor. Since the first days of its nearly seventy-year-old existence, this New China has gone through unprecedented changes: Not only as a result of Mao's ambition to change China into a Communist utopia, but also because of Deng Xiaoping's 1978 decision to liberate both the peasants and businesses – with the result that China is well on the way to becoming the largest economy in the world. The core of this new state cannot be easily interpreted. A hybrid creature has emerged, one that venerates its founder like a demigod, while discarding the bulk of his policies; one that clings to Marxism- Leninism as its state ideology, while behaving like a Confucianist emperor; and one (perhaps the biggest ‘contradiction’) that allows its people to enter the modern world, while telling them that the West and China can ‘in essence’ not be reconciled. In short, a schizophrenic country that does not know what it is, what it stands for or where it is going. Its foreign policy has a similarly split personality: Beijing talks incessantly about the ‘peaceful development of China’ and ‘a harmonious world order’, but in practice its behaviour has become ever more assertive and nationalistic. To understand these two constituent elements – aggression and cooperation – in China's foreign policy better, we must take a closer look at its two creators: Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Despite their difference in policies, both these leaders adhered to the sacrosanct principle that no single leader of the People's Republic tampers with: The sovereignty of China.

The Ideological Basis

The founding of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949 was accompanied by great optimism.