Understanding China's Transformations: The Dialectical Nexus between Internalities and Externalities

The objective of this paper is to offer a framework of understanding the dialectical nexus between China's internal evolutions and the external influences with a focus on the century-long "challenge-response" dynamism. That is to explore how external factors helped shaping China's internal transformations, i.e. how generations of Chinese have been struggling in responding to the external challenges and attempting to sinicize external political ideas in order to change China from within. Likewise, it is equally important to understand how China's inner transformation contributed to reshaping the world. Each time, be it China's dominance or decline, the capitalist world system has to adjust and readjust itself to the opportunities and constraints brought about by the "China factors".