China’s rapid rise since the 1990s has triggered some concerns about how it is going to use its power. As a response to the growing “China threat” sentiment in some parts of the world, the Chinese government under Hu Jintao’s leadership (2002–2012) proposed policies of “peaceful development” (heping fazhan 和平发展) and “harmonious world” (hexie shijie 和谐世界) to ease anxieties about China’s global expansion of trade and influence. However, with the change of leadership in Zhongnanhai (中南海 the headquarters for the CCP) in 2012, such policies have been deemphasized somewhat, and external concerns about China’s rise have grown.
Conflicts, wars, and revolutions in different parts of the world pose serious challenges to China as it tries to maintain a peaceful environment for continued domestic growth. Security challenges in Asia directly affect China’s foreign policy outlook. East Asia is one of the most economically dynamic regions, yet it is also home to some of the world’s potentially most dangerous hotspots — the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea. China has been directly involved in all these cases since the very beginning, and any conflict in East Asia will affect China’s security and stability. In addition, China has unresolved territorial disputes with Japan, India, and several Southeast Asian nations. In 2016, almost 80 percent of China’s oil imports passed through the South China Sea via the Strait of Malacca and nearly 40 percent of its total trade transited through the South China Sea,6 yet China does not have a strong blue-water navy to protect its energy transportation and overseas interests. This “Malacca dilemma” will continue to frustrate China in the near future. While China has improved relations with its Asian neighbors, its security environment is far from satisfactory.
As globalization widens and deepens, China has begun to embrace multilateralism, which it shunned in the past. Over the past 40 years, China has transformed itself from a “taker” of the norms and rules in the international system to a combination of both a “taker” and a “maker” of these norms and rules. In 2001, it became a WTO member after some 15 years of tough negotiations. China has been an active member since, both following the existing trade rules and helping make new ones as part of WTO reforms. China is a founding member of the SCO and has worked with Russia and several Central Asian nations to cooperate on economic, trade, and security issues in the region. China has been a strong advocate of peaceful conflict resolution and opposes the use of force in international affairs. It played a leadership role in convening the Six Party Talks in an attempt to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue peacefully in the 2000s.
While the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” remain guiding principles of Chinese foreign policy, over the years China’s policies have been adapted to changing international conditions and its own capabilities.7 In the past when China was weak, it opposed international intervention in a country’s internal affairs as China itself was often the target of such intervention. Today as a major power in the world, it faces increasing pressure and demand for defending justice in international affairs and protecting its own interests overseas. China has been “free-riding” for long; now it is prepared to provide international public goods. For example, China has long been accused of ignoring genocide in Sudan. In response, China appointed a special envoy to Sudan in May 2007, helping to mediate between rebels in Darfur and the Sudanese government. China has also appointed special envoys to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. By doing so, has China interfered in other countries’ internal affairs? When China hosted the Six-Party Talks, was China interfering in North Korea’s internal affairs? These are interesting policy questions to ask as we study changes and continuities in Chinese foreign policy.
China is still clumsy in public relations. Its reaction to Liu Xiaobo’s winning of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize is quite telling of China’s poor public relations campaign. The Chinese government condemned the Nobel Committee and the Norwegian government for the award and exerted pressure on a dozen plus countries so that they would stay away from the award ceremony in Oslo. All this backfired and deeply hurt China’s reputation. The empty chair reserved for Liu at the award ceremony served as a powerful reminder that the international community was disapproving of China’s human rights record and its high-handed diplomatic approach.
China does not have much “power of discourse” or “pouvoir du discours” (话语权). Take the BRI as an example. This massive project will undoubtedly benefit China the most economically and diplomatically, but it will also obviously help many developing countries enormously in their development. It is a true opportunity for win–win cooperation in international political economy. However, Western media and governments have largely portrayed it in a negative light and focused on potential debt crisis in some developing countries and unsubstantiated assumption about China’s ambition to replace the United States as the global hegemon. The Chinese responses so far have been weak and ineffective.
Among all external factors, the United States obviously remains the most important for China. The U.S. presence in Asia has a direct bearing on China’s foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, the lone superpower and the emerging global power have developed a highly interdependent relationship. However, with the disintegration of their common enemy — the Soviet Union, the two countries have been struggling to find new common ground and they remain suspicious of each other strategically today. From anti-terrorism to climate change, and from trade to Asian security, none of the new shared interests have been strong enough to serve as the cornerstone of the relationship in the 21st century. Though China has expressed no intention to exclude the United States from Asia, it is concerned about renewed U.S. commitments in Asia. For example, the United States has reached out to countries including India and Vietnam, both of which feel uncomfortable living in the shadow of a giant neighbor. The publicly denied but widely understood rationale is that the United States wants to work with China’s neighbors as a check on China’s rise. This is reflected in the much touted new concept “Indo-Pacific,” which has replaced “Asia Pacific” as a preferred term by the U.S. government and which clearly reveals America’s intention to boost India’s status vis-à-vis China.8 The United States has also beefed up its alliance with Japan, South Korea, and Australia at the same time when its relations with China are experiencing some difficulties.
The United States has accentuated competition with the PRC while upgrading relations with Taiwan since Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016. In December 2017 and January 2018, the U.S. government published two documents regarding America’s overall security stance toward the world: the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Summary of the National Defense Strategy (NDS), respectively. Both documents mention China numerous times and portray China as a revisionist power and a strategic competitor that seeks to shape a world antithetical to American values and interests. In a public speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC on October 4, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence blasted China for undermining U.S. interests, accusing China of meddling in America’s democracy, stealing American technology, cracking down on religious freedom at home, and expanding global influence through “debt diplomacy.”9 Whereas President Bill Clinton championed Beijing as a partner and President Barack Obama accepted China as a competitor, the Trump administration has publicly identified China a national security threat. The Trump administration is particularly sensitive to “Made in China 2025,” which was unveiled by China’s State Council in 2015 to transform China from a big manufacturing country to a powerful one in a decade. The United States considers this industrial plan a direct challenge to its technological leadership.
The 2018 “Taiwan Travel Act” allows U.S. officials “at all levels” to travel to Taiwan to meet with their Taiwanese counterparts and allows high-level Taiwanese officials to enter the United States and meet with U.S. officials. Meanwhile, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan, completed its 14,934 square meter and $255.6 million new office building in Taipei in June 2018.10 Many people realize that the U.S.–Taiwan relationship is perhaps officially “unofficial,” but unofficially official. In Beijing’s