The aim is to de-mystify China, by tracing the rationale for contemporary developments to their roots in the country's tradition (as well as borrowings from foreign sources) and to unravel the puzzle about the sustained, incredibly rapid economic growth over the past 30 years, which defies conventional economic theory.

The book looks at China in the light of its living civilization, which is the only one of the world's oldest civilizations that has survived to this day. It also contrasts China with the West and Japan in their comparable stages of development. Combining both internal developments and external relations (from the silk routes, the tribute system, to the modern day), it unravels existing myths, puzzles, and paradoxes surrounding China, and questions the adequacy of much of our Western-derived theory (such as realism in international relations) in attempts to explicate a re-rising China.