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Chinese diplomacy has undergone enormous changes since the “open door” era began in the late 1970s. Moving away from the Maoist ideology-based revolutionary diplomacy, China began its pursuit of a more pragmatic economic diplomacy, which enabled it to take advantage of the more favourable international environment for economic development of the late 1980s-1990s, but China’s growing potential also made the notion of a “rising China” as a persistent topic internationally from the mid 1990s. Since the turn of the century, China’s energy diplomacy has attracted more attention from the international community, whose concerns are not only limited to the likely consequences of China’s global energy search, but also related to issues such as whether the “next superpower”, namely China, intends to challenge the world order. Faced with the concerns and suspicions from the outside world, the Chinese government has on the one hand maintained its strategic, non-market approach on energy security, but on the other hand claims that China will adhere to its commitment to a “peaceful rise”, and will be a “responsible stakeholder” at the international stage.Indeed, with the growth of its economic and political potential over the past couple of decades, China seems to have pursued an “energy diplomacy” that is more assertive in nature than its “economic diplomacy” in the previous two decades. China not only relies on oil supply from a number of “rogue states”, such as Venezuela, Sudan, Nigeria and Iran, it also created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, together with Russia and Central Asian states, an unusual move Beijing took to protect its energy and national interests. China’s renewed and expanded interest in the African continent, on political, economic and energy aspects, in the past couple of years has, again, triggered concerns and criticism, especially from the Western world. China needs to, and has begun to, seriously consider the criticisms related to its reluctance to engage these countries on internal matters of concern to the rest of the world, such as Darfur in Sudan. Nevertheless, the comments about China being “neo-colonialism” in African seem less sensible and may have been based on the realist “zero-sum” logic. The questions to be asked are two fold. Regarding the issue of energy security, one could ask what is the rationale behind China’s energy diplomacy, and to what extent could it sustain necessary energy supplies in a manner which would provoke less resistance from other energy consumers? At a more general level, it is worth asking whether China wants to accommodate itself fully with the current world order? If the answer is “yes”, how can China explain its controversial policies in order to convince the international community about its benign intention? If the answer is “no”, what can China do to “reform” the existing system whilst still maintaining its promise of a “peaceful rise”? The paper intends to examine China’s energy diplomacy over the past decade and the rationale behind such diplomacy, in order to illustrate the likely implications for international confidence in China’s “peaceful rise”... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]