China has been intensively engaging with the West for over a century in its attempts to develop economic, political, and military power. At first limiting itself to appropriating Western technology, Chinese intellectuals eventually began to assimilate Western culture, literature, and ideas comprehensively, though of course doing so in a way that integrated them into their own cultural and political traditions. Its brand of communism, for instance, combines Western Marxism with forms of governance shaped by the long dynastic era of Chinese history. The Chinese assimilation of Western traditions establishes a basic openness to the West while also providing strategies for dealing with the West in times of conflict. On the one hand, China’s economic and political rise has been built upon a history of admiration for the West and the consequent ability to emulate Western practices. On the other hand, this intimate knowledge of the West has allowed China to take advantage of Western prejudices in order to undermine its structures, exploiting for instance the norms of free trade in a way that has undermined those very norms.

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