The People's Republic of China (PRC) is a newly emerging world power, and yet is still a developing state that must deal with the liabilities and opportunities of globalization. While integrating with the world economy, the PRC has had to articulate a newly defined role for itself as a world power. Moving beyond limited historical confines of bilateral relations with states in the Asia Pacific region, the PRC is developing a new perspective and arguably more sophisticated policy to deal with the changing international relations agendas of free trade, human rights, and security and economic cooperation. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the .