China significantly restructured its relationship with both Koreas during the 1980s and 1990s, but the most striking change occurred more recently: a rapidly strengthening economic alliance with South Korea. China and Korea closely examines this dynamic transformation - as well as its numerous, potentially far-reaching, economic, diplomatic, and military implications.

Professor Lee systematically evaluates three major considerations viewed as influencing China's changing policies toward both North and South Korea: shifting domestic and foreign policy priorities under Deng Xiaoping (particularly regarding ideology, security, and economy), a decisive tilt of the inter-Korean power configurations in favor of Seoul, and China's changing relations with Russia, Japan, and the United States after the cold war.

China and Korea focuses on military policy, diplomatic issues, and changing economic realities to trace China's dynamic emergence from Mao-inspired ideological isolationism to its embrace of the pragmatic, open-door practices of Deng Xiaoping's modern socialist state.