"Why has the external environment changed?" asks a Chi-W nese scholar of international relations in Beijing, pondering a bad few months for Chinese diplomacy. Nothing big has changed in China, nor has its own foreign policy shifted. Yet it has lurched from quarrel to quarrel with all its most important partners. The temptation for Chinese nationalists is to see their country as the victim of a Western conspiracy to keep China down, just as it is beginning to take its rightful place in the world. A more plausible explanation may be the ineptness of Chinese diplomacy, made up so often of hectoring and threats.
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