The core suggestion of this article is that we make best sense of the concepts of power, legitimacy, and responsibility within a framework of international society. However, to do so effectively we need also to think about international society in a distinctive way. This concept thus becomes the key framing device of the discussion and in this way the article takes further the author’s recent attempts to contribute to a revision of English School theory. This framework is illustrated by, and applied to, the specific case of China’s rise. It is exactly the material rise of China that is believed now to render suspect assumptions about the continuing normative stability of international society. For those reasons, any putative normative accommodation between China and international society represents a particularly fascinating case study of the theoretical problem in general. Accordingly, and in the light of its historical background, China faces a major paradox. Seemingly, the prerequisite for it to exercise greater influence on the norms of international society is yet further assimilation into them: in order to become a respected norm maker, China must first be seen to be fully integrated as an appropriate norm taker. This is the nub of the dilemma, as it is widely perceived in the literature. To be in a position to influence the norms of international society, it must seemingly firstly resolve any lingering ambiguities about its membership. In short, should the debates about China’s status be understood as an expression of the power of norms (where China is assessed relative to some universal standard of responsibility), or are they better viewed as the deployment of the norms of power in such a way as to impact its social distribution to China’s disadvantage (by imposing the self-interested standards of the liberal states)? The heart of this debate about China’s responsibility can then be seen as one, less about the roles that it actually plays at the moment (within an already existing framework of normative expectations), and instead more about the kinds of putative qualities that need to be displayed (within a revised normative framework) to fit it for undertaking specified future roles. What insight does an international society approach bring to this much-debated topic? Building on the work already undertaken by Chinese scholars in this field, the article demonstrates that the general theoretical issue concerns the relative potency of the power of norms versus the norms of power. Specifically in relation to China, the question is then about whether international society’s norms are constraining China’s power, or whether we should expect to see these norms transformed in proportion to China’s new international roles. Neither the power of norms nor the norms of power, however, is likely to issue in any pure and absolute form: international society is a much more variegated normative terrain than either of these two perfect outcomes would suggest. Instead we will undoubtedly face the messy middle ground. The paradox is that the more successfully does China pass the first test of ‘responsibility’ as presently conceived, and thereby alleviate concerns about its ambivalent membership, seemingly the less leeway remains to act as any source of normative transformation. This leaves an unresolved tension in China’s relationship with international society, insofar as its socialization within current norms as presently configured might be corrosive of its social power in the interim, and hence undermine its effectiveness as a norm maker in the future. The teasing question remains nonetheless exactly how that society’s operative norms evolve, and whether they do so as part of some relatively autonomous process of development, or mostly in reflection of the normative preferences of the most powerful states. This problem palpably emerges during any period of "power transition": how is China to become fully compliant with an ‘alien’ normative structure, without thereby losing any scope to press for its future modification? What must be stressed at this point is that there is a profound confusion in any suggestion that the trajectory of international norms follows slavishly from shifts in the distribution of power, as if the latter were entirely devoid of all normative content. To the extent that the latter includes – as it assuredly must - a measure of social power, then international norms are already a fundamental part of it, not something set wholly apart. The notion that there is any straightforward causal relationship between the two is, for this reason, highly disingenuous and logically deeply flawed. Accordingly, it becomes readily apparent that power and legitimacy are not to be thought of as two wholly separate things: we should not conceive of power, on the one hand, as radically distinct from legitimacy, on the other. Instead, legitimacy is constitutive of social power. Once this association is understood, it becomes evident that power is not merely a material phenomenon. At the same time, it is not only that any powerful state or group of states is incapable of imposing its entire set of normative preferences upon international society but, in an even more deep-seated way, international society is unlikely ever to demonstrate the requisite degree of consistency and homogeneity that any such portrayal would seem to assume. In such a contested space, all powerful actors have to earn their varying degrees of respect and legitimacy, and are unable to command it at will. This very unruliness underscores the pluralistic character of international society and paradoxically makes the business of its practices of legitimacy all the more serious and arduous: it is the reason also why legitimacy matters so much, rather than any reason to dismiss it as irrelevant. The core puzzle then is to make sense of that fundamental tension between what international society enacts as an expression of a basic consensus amongst most of its members, and what it otherwise enacts in response mostly to its dominant players. In turn, this conception is specifically revealing because it suggests that finding space for China within its normative structure is not some unusual or exceptional event, but is rather a routine characteristic of the behaviour of international society. Continuous mutual adaptation and contestation within its diverse membership is how the norms of international society evolve and, to this extent, there is no static "it" that China seeks to join and to modify: both are remade in the same continuous process.