Zhou Enlai and the Foundations of Chinese Foreign Policy offers a comprehensive survey of China's foreign relations from 1949-76, while focusing on the significant role which Zhou Enlai played. Through in depth analysis, the book explores the formation of Zhou Enlai's world view and his conduct of Chinese diplomacy throughout all the critical periods of the People's Republic of China. This study makes it possible to understand some of the most important and persistent factors aside from political ideology that have shaped China's foreign policy decisions and will be very useful to students of international relations and Chinese foreign policy.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Zhou Enlai, China's first premier, is overshadowed by Mao, but Zhou's influence in his own time and since has been vast. Chen Jian shows Zhou using his political and bureaucratic skills and centralism to mitigate the damage caused by Mao's radicalism and argues that Zhou created conditions for the post-Mao reforms that have made China a superpower.

Is the Confucian tradition compatible with the Western understanding of human rights? Are there fundamental human values, regardless of cultural differences, common to all peoples of all nations? At this critical point in Communist China's history, eighteen distinguished scholars address the role of Confucianism in dealing with questions of universal human rights.