Strategic Studies Quarterly

Abstract  Highlighting the significance of various patterns of the China behavior in different fields and with due attention to the fact that pluralistic international identity discourses have a crucial role to play, the author would like to answer the following question: why China faces different international identity discourses in its foreign policy? And in answering the question, he points out that there are effective elements that contribute emergence of such a situation and those elements are as follows: economic reforms, the leaders’ tendencies, social changes, nationalism, foreign policy norms, changes in international norms and geo-political challenges. Thus the author explains theoretical and practical aspects of the issue and focuses on some main elements like the relationship between identity and interests, the existing identity discourse in China and illustration of efficient internal and external causes with regard to this plural identity discourse.      

Abstract this article tries to explain a fundamental change in china foreign policy. The main question of article is that: what idealist interests in china foreign policy has been marginalized in the course of time?  The hypothesis of author is that: fragility of national security is a key factor in strengthening pragmatic signs in china foreign policy. This fragility is the effect of continuous security threats in domestic, regional and systemic levels. So that, author believes that national security has a big role in china's foreign policy priorities. In this situation, china has transformed from a revisionist and revolutionary actor to a conservative one, which is compatible to current international order. Although China is opposed to American unilateralism, but doesn't want to pay big costs to contain it.