the rise of china became a popular subject in china comparatively recently, gaining prominence only in the last decade. for those in china who were used to understanding modern chinese history as a history of victimisation at the hands of imperialism, recognising such a return to the world stage was an uneasy shift. in the context of international concerns that china’s rise poses a threat to world peace or a contribution to the clash of civilisations, chinese narrators initially refused to portray a ‘rising china’ because this could easily lead to china becoming the target of a us-organised containment policy in the post-cold war era. shortly before the chinese communist party (ccp) outlined new policy directions at its fifteenth congress in 1997, leaders in beijing began to think about a way of describing china’s rise as unthreatening. yet this was a reluctant change because beijing was willing to acknowledge china’s rise only indirectly. what came out of the congress was the recognition of the necessity that beijing should frame its foreign policy to emphasise its relations with the other great powers more than those with the third world. accordingly, they decided that beijing should develop a distinctive strategy specifically to deal with the other great powers.