This volume examines the factors shaping the Chinese political leadership’s strategic choices in foreign policy through an analytical framework centred on security, development, and ideology. Applying this triadic framework to a longitudinal analysis of China’s diplomacy from the late Qing dynasty to the Xi Jinping era (up to 2024), the book advances three core findings. First, security—defined in terms of territorial integrity, regime legitimacy, and political independence—has consistently constituted China’s paramount national interest, with the late Qing period as a notable exception due to limited socialization into the European international order. Second, since the post-Mao era, development has become the central organizing principle of China’s foreign policy, subordinating diplomacy to the goal of modernization. Third, ideology has exerted decisive influence only during periods of economic isolation and legitimacy insecurity, most notably in the late Qing and Maoist eras. The book argues that despite intensified strategic competition with the United States, China’s contemporary foreign policy under Xi Jinping remains fundamentally pragmatic, prioritizing development and institutional embeddedness over ideological leadership or the construction of a Sino-centric world order.