In the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen incident in 1989 and the subsequent end of the cold war, the People's Republic of China (PRC) found itself in presumably the worst – albeit brief – international crisis it had ever faced. The beleaguered and isolated country forged ahead, defying the enormous odds stacked against it on both domestic and international fronts. The PRC has since achieved remarkable success in diplomacy, notwithstanding the misgivings and uncertainties about its international trajectory. Barely several years into the new millennium, American news magazines began to declare the arrival of “China's century.” If in the early 1990s China's international environment primarily depended on the policy choices of other, outside players, today much of it is of the country's own making. There is no denial that China's rise is arguably the most important reality in contemporary world politics. Such a diplomatic track record in the past some twenty years cries out for a comprehensive dissection and fresh explanation. That is exactly the intent of this study. It does so by focusing on China's struggle for international status.

At the outset, several caveats on status are in order, because the concept is used in different ways. In sociology, treated analytically as separate from material factors, status is about social recognition that often leads to privileged treatment that may or may not lead to material gains. In international relations (IR), status is often neglected.