Taoguang Yanghui in the context of "Foreign policy of China"

The People's Republic of China emerged as a great power and one of the three big players in the tri-polar geopolitics (PRC-US-USSR) during the Cold War, after the Korean War in 1950–1953 and the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, with its status as a recognized nuclear weapons state. Currently, China has one of the world's largest populations, second largest GDP (nominal) and the largest economy in the world by PPP.

In 1950–1953 it fought an undeclared war in Korea against the United States. Until the late 1950s it was allied with the Soviet Union but by 1960 they began a bitter contest for control over the local communist movement in many countries. It reached détente with the United States in 1972. After Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping led a massive process of industrialization and emphasized trade relations with the world, while maintaining a low key, less ideological foreign policy, widely described by the phrase Taoguang Yanghui, or "hide one's talent and bide one's time". The Chinese economy grew very rapidly giving it steadily increasing power and ambition.