It was the first single from their third studio album Come Clean, and was released on 18 November 1997 in the US and on 1 December 1997 in the UK.

A portion of the Lunatic Calm remix was included as a music track in the game FIFA 2001.

In August 2020, Bandcamp premiered a collection of mixes of "Chinese Burn" that were originally recorded to DAT.

These were mostly monitor mixes and instrumentals of the tracks "Chinese Burn", "Coming Up Roses", "Killer Baby" and "Dirty High".

All of the tracks were subsequently remixed-reproduced/revisited and mastered for the official album release version on Come Clean by Alan, Flood and Tim Simenon to name a few.