Since gaining power in 2002 Hu Jianto and long-time ally Premier Wen Jiabao have been digging deep into the Communist-Chinese canon as well as ancient Confucian, and other traditional philosophical themes and practices to articulate President Hu Jianto’s foreign policy message “the Three Harmonies”. This message of the peaceful rise of China rang hollow in the ears of many politicians and analysts. (Lam 2006) Was Hu Jianto a leader who based his foreign policy on traditional Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism, or is China’s foreign relations ; as Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro put it “driven by nationalist sentiment, a yearning to redeem the humiliations of the past, and the simple urge for international power…” to become the dominant power or a new hegemonic power in Asia? (Zhimin 2005, 35)