The purpose of this study is to go beyond the conventional debate about whether China's rise will pose a threat to the rest of the world, and to see how China's security strategy has been created and modified by political elites during the reform period. The research assumes that increasing emphasis on economic aspect of security by Chinese leaders today is the consequence of their attempts to protecting their power and interests in the process of the country's integration into the world economy. The interactions between the elites' attitudes toward the Open Policy and their reactions toward the changes of external security circumstance constitute a dynamic force modulating the security considerations of elites and security policies they made.