Sociological and anthropological studies of China in the late twentieth and early 21st centuries have highlighted a trend in Chinese social life : in a time of unprecedented social change, increasing numbers of Chinese citizens are asking the question, “Who am I?” According to Kleinman and others, the structural changes in Chinese society resulting from the political turmoil of the twentieth century have led to a substantial severing of ties between the individual and the family, as well as between the individual and broader society.. Among Chinese citizens there is a “curious mix of positive and negative feelings” intertwined in their understanding of Chinese politics – a “pessoptimist structure of feeling,” as Callahan puts it. What can we say about Chinese national identity and how this internal conflict is playing out in China's interactions with the wider world, particularly in the realm of geopolitics? More importantly, how is China's political worldview influenced and shaped by its national identity, and how is Chinese exceptionalism used to construct an understanding of China as “good” and “different” from the West?

As discussed in Chapter 2, Chinese international relations theories frequently allude to the need to differentiate China from the West. This is premised on the assumption that China and its citizens tend to imagine themselves in ways that are distinct from others from elsewhere in the world, thus rendering a need for scholarly insights that are peculiar to the Chinese lived experience.