2.4.The Policies and Pathways of China’s New Era
How will the above-mentioned goals and characteristics of China’s New Era be accomplished? What are the policies and pathways for China’s New Era? These questions are obviously not simple ones and involve many dimensions of planning and undertaking. However, one of the most recent and interesting sources from which we may be informed of Xi Jinping’s thoughts on this matter is his speech delivered at the opening of the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) in Hainan Province on April 10, 2018. Established by political leaders from 26 Asian countries, including Australia, in 2001, the Boao Forum, which functions as an international non-governmental organization with its headquarters in Boao on the island and province of Hainan of China, has been recognized as the Asian equivalent of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As was remarked in the news reported by Xinhua, Xi’s presence and speech at this significant event of BFA was indeed his “first home-court diplomacy since he was unanimously re-elected Chinese president.” It clearly reflects, as the headline of the news states, a “New Chapter for ‘Xiplomacy’” (Lu, 2018a).
Towards the end of this speech, Xi Jinping succinctly summed up that “In short, China will enter a new phase of opening-up” (Xi, 2018, p. 10). Xi recounted China’s experience during the past 40 years after the reform and opening up, or “China’s second revolution” as he put it, was launched (Xi, 2018, p. 4). Under this long period of development and perseverance, Xi confirmed, “China has lived up to its responsibility as a major country. From ‘bringing in’ to ‘going global’, from WTO accession to the Belt and Road Initiative,... China has become a key anchor and driver for the world economy and a positive force in advancing the noble cause of global peace and development” (Xi, 2018, p. 4). And in this new phase China will pursue policies of further opening up, including, first, broadening market access, second, creating a more attractive investment environment, third, strengthening protection of intellectual property rights (including, of course, China’s intellectual proper rights), and fourth, taking the initiative to expand imports (Xi, 2018, pp. 8–9). Xi ended the speech by referring to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that has, to date, been joined by more than 80 countries in the world. He reemphasized its main objective as a project for international cooperation with a view to creating opportunities and outcomes for the benefit of the world and all peoples. It is by no means a part of any “geopolitical calculation,” and thus contains no agenda to create any international bloc among nations or impose any business deal on others. The development of the project, Xi insisted, will rely on “the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits” (Xi, 2018, p. 10).
That the BRI is geared towards a grand infrastructure for logistics and transportation across Asia and Europe and beyond is evident in itself. However, it should be remarked, as well, that the BRI constitutes one of the three initiatives that Xi often mentions in his speeches at domestic conferences. These schemes are called “Three Initiatives for Balanced Regional Development” and include: (1) the BRI; (2) the Coordinated Development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei; and (3) the Yangtze River Economic Belt. In my view, they are all part and parcel of China’s scheme to overcome the middle-income trap and spread economic development into existing remote areas. As Xi has pointed out, the BRI “offers good development opportunities to the eastern, central and western regions, and especially to some marginal areas in the west which will become centers with great development potential as soon as they are interconnected with neighboring countries” (Xi, 2017j, p. 258). In other words, the BRI along with the other two initiatives are strategic pathways for the achievement of the “First Centenary Goal” by expanding new space for development (Xi, 2017d, p. 79).
2.5.China and ASEAN in the New Era
How do these goals, policies, and pathways relate to ASEAN? What constitutes the significance of ASEAN in Xi Jinping Thought on the schemes for the new era?
While Vice President, Xi Jinping addressed a number of major issues in his speech delivered on September 21, 2012 in Nanning at the opening ceremony of three simultaneous events including the 9th China–ASEAN Expo, China–ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, and the 2012 Forum on China–ASEAN Free Trade Area. It is noteworthy that this was less than two months before Xi became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and around six months before he was elected President. The most important point Xi often repeated in this speech was that the relations between ASEAN and China “have taken an historic leap from being comprehensive dialogue partners and good-neighborly partners of mutual trust to being strategic partners sharing extensive common interests” (Xi, 2012).
The keyword here is “strategic partners”. The term “strategic partner” or its abstract form — “strategic partnership” — signifies differing ideas and courses of action in international discourses. In the context of Chinese diplomacy, as Li Chenyan points out, the term was first used after the end of the Cold War as “one of the important measures” in China’s approach to “adjust its relations with major powers and improve relations with neighboring countries” (Li, 2012, p. 54). Li further explains that the term “strategic partnership” is normally used elsewhere in international relations as part of “high political level dialogue” covering areas such as “politics, military affairs, and security”; but for China, strategic partnerships “are mainly involved in low political level cooperation with symbolic rather actual meaning,” focusing more on “economic, scientific and cultural fields” (Li, 2012, p. 61). This kind of meaning and discourse was quite evident in Xi’s 2012 speech when, towards its end, he made “a four-point proposal” for a China and ASEAN strategic partnership consisting of: FTA development, two-way investment, connectivity, and people-to-people exchanges (Xi, 2014c). Moreover, Xi Jinping has also been consistent in using this term. Five years later, in his speech at the 2017 APEC Summit, while “calling for closer cooperation between APEC and ASEAN,” he clearly reiterated China as “a strategic partner of ASEAN” and “backs ASEAN’s core role in regional cooperation” (China Daily, 2017).
In general, Xi occasionally mentions ASEAN in his addresses concerning global issues and broad areas relevant to the problems and solutions inherent in his vision of China. The availability of natural resources and the low cost of labor in ASEAN countries have made the old normal path of economic growth in China less viable, thus requiring the Chinese economy to put more stress on a new innovative model for further development (Xi, 2017k, p. 217). In the international arena, the ASEAN Regional Forum has become an important institutional basis for further free trade agreements and other global governance functions (Xi, 2017e, p. 489). Moreover, the Master Plan on the Connectivity of ASEAN provides leverage for effective policy coordination in China’s BRI schemes along with coordination initiatives in other regions of the globe (Xi, 2017l, p. 556). The only speech, included in the two volumes of The Governance of China, which deals directly with the region is the one Xi addressed at the People’s Representative Council of Indonesia on October 3, 2013. Understandably then, in this speech he focused on ASEAN as part of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”