Does our understanding of China’s long and complex history of foreign relations help us to understand the rapidly changing involvement of China in the twenty-first century world? The contributors to this volume have written and thought about aspects of this question for many years. This many-sided volume, the result of a recent conference, offers a remarkable variety of approaches to these issues. “Tribute,” “empire,” “asymmetry,” and recent discussions of China’s “peaceful rise” and of the “Chinese model” for developing countries all come into the discussion. This book will be basic reading for policy analysts, concerned citizens, students of history, political science, and international relations, and their teachers.