The Past as a Prologue

Abstract

At the 1988 Cyril Foster Memorial Lecture, Sir Geoffrey Howe, then the British Foreign Secretary, spoke of China’s ‘rejoining the rest of the world’.¹ To characterise the process of China’s integration into international society in the 1980s as a process of ‘rejoining’ the world, however, begs three general assumptions. First, China had been a member of international society; second, there was a period when China was ostracised; and third, China is being reintegrated into the contemporary universal society of states. All three assumptions are to be examined rigorously. This inquiry starts with a review of the historical process through which China was drawn into the universal international society.