Introduction

1 Jane Perlez and Chris Buckley, ‘China retools its military with a first overseas outpost in Djibouti’, New York Times (26 November 2015). Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/asia/china-military-presence-djibouti-africa.html.

2 Con Coughlin, ‘China is moving into the Middle East – why is no one worried?’ (17 December 2015). Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12055805/China-is-moving-intyo-Syria-why-is-no-one-worried.html.

3 Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

4 Han Fei Zi, Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 80.

5 For the next decade, initially under Chen Yi, poet and diplomat, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was convulsed by internal battles and attacks from radical Red Guard groups outside. See Ma Jisen, The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China (Hong Kong: Chinese University, 2004).