Beijing's new thinking on security strategy

Beijing is refocusing its foreign strategy in the Asian Pacific region. This article examines Beijing's new thinking on security strategy in the post‐Cold War Asian‐Pacific region. Drawing from the recent strategic debate in China, the author discusses three defining areas in the new security strategy: military strategy, defense development strategy, and foreign policy and security strategy. It is argued that thinking in security strategy has become more regional oriented, sophisticated and compatible with foreign policy. The implication of China's defense modernization for regional security is controversial. In the short run, China's military posture will not change balance of power at the regional level, but it will significantly affect outcomes of future territorial conflicts on China's periphery. In the long run, Beijing's role in Asian‐Pacific security remains uncertain.     

Discussion of 'China: A responsible great power'

Professor Xia seeks to answer the question of whether or not China will become a 'responsible great power' in the twenty-first century by examining the domestic and foreign factors which will influence that outcome in the decades ahead. Some of the most interesting and useful insights of his work come as much from what the paper does not say as from what it does say. While it does not expressly say so, this paper amply demonstrates two important points about what appears to be an idealistic Chinese worldview. First, we see how the Chinese worldview is 'conflicted' and uncertain. Second, we see how China's current and future situation are said to be determined by what others do to China. Four important policy-related ramifications result from the worldview described in Xia Liping's paper. First, the more Chinese foreign policy promotes a worldview packaged largely in ideals, the more outsiders will suspect that Chinese leaders are trying to hide their actual intentions. Second, it should be recognized that in many ways the views espoused in the paper fundamentally call into question certain principles which others view as critical to their national security (the stabilizing nature of alliances, for example). Third, the worldviews described by Xia Liping portray a largely inward-looking, self-absorbed, vulnerable and aggrieved power that may be prone to 'irresponsibility'. The paper implies that under such circumstances, it is up to the outside world to prevent China from acting on its sense of injured vulnerability. Finally, such an approach to the world may leave the impression that Chinese views are out of touch or unable to operate effectively within the current global structure. Such an impression might lead others to dismiss or discount Chinese points of view as simplistic at best or consciously obstructionist at worst. Either way limits Chinese aspirations to become a 'responsible great power'. In the end, a nuanced and realistic set of understandings about the world, which articulates not only the country's ideals, but acknowledges its contradictions, interests, contributions, and its regional and international impact, would more pragmatically support China's ascendance to responsible great power status.     

China's Rise in Southeast Asia: implications for the United States

During the past few decades, China's economic success has permitted it to pursue a greater role on the international stage. China is recognized both as a regional and aspiring global power. Nowhere is this more evident than within Southeast Asia, where China's more active diplomacy is reflected in growing trade relations, proposals for stronger security ties, and the signing of numerous cooperative agreements on issues as varied as environmental protection, drug trafficking, and public health. As a whole, the region has received China's activism with both enthusiasm and trepidation. China has expended significant effort to assuage the fears of its neighbors by adopting a foreign policy approach that is active, non-threatening, and generally aligned with the economic and security interests of the region. This positive diplomacy has clearly yielded some success, most notably in the trade realm, where China is rapidly emerging as an engine of regional economic growth and integration that may well challenge Japanese and American dominance in the next three to five years. In the security realm, China's diplomacy, while rhetorically appealing to regional actors, has yet to make significant inroads in a regional security structure dominated by the United States and its bilateral security relationships. Most significantly, however, if China is to emerge as a real leader within Southeast Asia, it will also need to assume more of the social and political burden that leadership entails. As China continues to advance itself as a regional leader, its policies on issues such as health, drugs, the environment and human rights will face additional scrutiny not only for their impact on the region but also for the more profound question they raise concerning the potential of China's moral leadership. For the United States, China's greater presence and activism suggest at the very least that it cannot remain complacent about the status quo that has governed political, economic and security relations for the past few decades. Shared leadership within Southeast Asia will likely include China in the near future, with all the potential benefits and challenges that such leadership will entail.     

Competing Realities in China–India Multilateral Discourse: Asia's enduring power rivalry

Asymmetric growth in foreign policy dynamics and power posture between China and India at the regional level is the new contour of current Asian politics. One vital aspect of it is the multilateral power politics or engagement through which rising powers connect and integrate with regional vis-à-vis global conditions in order to contend and compete with each other's strategic interests and primacy. This Asian rendezvous is part and parcel of the rhetoric of liberalist sentiments, which realistically do not work in favor of the developing countries' relationships. The history of the China–India bilateral discourse suggests that. In today's context, the increasing multilateral engagement between the two countries is a potential medium for denying space and holding an edge over each other's priority of acquiring assorted global resources, forming an Asian and a global identity, and notably in securing respective national strategic objectives. Current foreign policy contours of both countries are quite different from the previous order and politics. The boundary will continue to be the fundamental problem in their bilateral discourse, while the Asian discourse of Sino–Indian multilateral politics will be decided by their competition and power rivalry in resources and identity.     

Four Contradictions Constraining China's Foreign Policy Behavior

Beijing's foreign policy behavior is constantly tested by a set of conflicting variables. China views itself as a major power and wants to play a role accordingly in the world arena, while it always lacks an adequate material basis to do so. The open-door policy requires China to be fully integrated into international society, while strong concern over sovereignty makes it difficult for Beijing to embrace some of the mainstream values. China believes in a set of principles in international affairs, while consideration of its national interests causes Beijing to make a pragmatic compromise from time to time. Beijing has long been accustomed to dealing with others in bilateral settings while the post-Cold War era is witnessing a rise of mulilateralism in international politics, which is bringing more and more pressure on China's traditional diplomacy. These variables will continue to constrain China's foreign policy behavior while their influence will decline as a result of rapid change with China both materially and conceptually.     

Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: the strident turn

This paper revisits the debate about foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism in the context of China's increasingly confrontational and assertive behavior in recent years. It argues that while the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls to take a confrontational position against the Western powers and to adopt tougher measures in maritime territorial disputes with its neighbors. This strident turn is partially because the government is increasingly responsive to public opinion, but more importantly because of the convergence of Chinese state nationalism and popular nationalism calling for a more muscular Chinese foreign policy. Enjoying an inflated sense of empowerment supported by its new quotient of wealth and military capacities, and terrified of an uncertain future due to increasing social, economic and political tensions at home, the communist state has become more willing to play to the popular nationalist gallery in pursuing the so-called core national interests. These developments have complicated China's diplomacy, creating a heated political environment to harden China's foreign policy.     

China's Foreign Military Relations with Asia‐Pacific

The People's Liberation Army has always had a significant role in shaping and implementing the People's Republic of China's foreign policies. Over the past two decades, the PLA's role has increased considerably, and is likely to become even more important in the future as China develops its military capabilities and casts a broader shadow in the Asia‐Pacific region. The PLA's foreign relations program has several goals: to shape the international security environment in support of key Chinese national security objectives; to improve political and military relations with foreign countries; to enhance China's military and defense industry modernization; to provide military assistance to countries in the developing world; and, to acquire knowledge in modern military doctrine, operations, training, military medicine, administration, and a host of non-combat related areas. The PLA seeks to accomplish these goals through its military attache´ offices abroad and the use of an elaborate system of bilateral exchanges. Of these programs, the most visible relations involve high-level visits, functional exchanges, arms purchases, and ship visits.     

Re-interpreting China's Non-intervention Policy towards Myanmar: leverage,interest and intervention

China's non-intervention policy has long been criticized for prolonging the rule of many authoritarian regimes. Myanmar has become one of the classic examples. As China is expected to become a responsible great power, her behavioral patterns have aroused many concerns. This paper aims to re-interpret China's non-intervention policy. While explaining various constraints on China's capability to intervene in the Myanmar government, it shows how China is making efforts to seek a new intervention policy in dealing with countries like Myanmar. It argues that China's insistence on a non-intervention policy does not mean that China does not want to influence other countries such as Myanmar. To assess Chinese leverage and its non-intervention policy toward Myanmar as well as to supplement the current limited academic discussion on Sino–Myanmar relations, in this paper we first examine Chinese leverage in Myanmar through Burmese local politics, such as the power struggle between the central government and local rebel governments. Second, we disaggregate the Chinese interests in Myanmar into different levels (regional, geo-strategic and international) and discuss how these interests affect China's non-intervention policy. Third, we argue that China has indeed tried to intervene in Myanmar politics, but in a softer manner that contrasts with the traditional Western hard interventions, such as economic sanctions and military interference.     

Perceptions of Danger: The China threat theory

The People's Republic of China witnessed unprecedented growth at the end of the twentieth century and the manner in which it will choose to use its consequent power in the twenty-first century has become a hotly debated topic in foreign policy circles. Some have chosen to interpret China's emergence as an economic and aspiring military superpower as a threat to the national interests of the United States and Asian-Pacific security. This threat has been categorized as ideological, economic, and strategic. This essay explores the China threat theory through an in-depth analysis of the arguments of 'anti-China hands' as outlined in a variety of right wing publications.     

The Evolution of China's Nonproliferation Policy since the 1990s: Progress,problems, and prospects

This article offers an overview of China's evolving nonproliferation policy over the past decade. It documents the key developments during this period and identifies both the internal and external factors that have brought about significant change in Chinese policy. It argues that China's growing recognition of the threats posed by WMD proliferation, image concerns, its interest in maintaining stable Sino-US relations, and the US policy initiatives aimed at influencing Chinese behavior are largely accountable for Beijing's gradual acceptance of nonproliferation norms, pledges to adhere to selected multilateral export control guidelines, and the introduction of domestic export control regulations. It suggests that the future direction of China's nonproliferation policy to a large extent will depend on how Beijing and Washington manage their increasing differences over missile defenses and the Taiwan issue.     

Sino‐US security relations: The PLA factor

Sino‐US security relations have evolved into a very complex and often precarious military relationship. The influence of the People's Liberation Army in China's national security strategy and foreign policy formulation is on the rise. The United States has begun to prepare for a strong and vociferous Chinese military by addressing this trend especially within the areas of China's nuclear programme, Asian disputes over territorial claims, and the Chinese military's modernization programme.     

China and Maritime Cooperation in East Asia: recent developments and future prospects

Future international relations in East Asia are likely to be largely shaped by the maritime strategies and policies of various actors. This paper examines China's policy and behavior in maritime cooperation in the East Asian region in recent years, a topic that has been insufficiently understood. I suggest that while it is necessary and useful to take into account China's naval power, more attention to Chinese intentions and policy on East Asian maritime issues is warranted to arrive at a more balanced, and arguably more accurate, understanding of China's role in East Asian maritime affairs. This paper takes stock of China's changing perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in maritime cooperation in the region. I describe China's new policy moves in the South China Sea and East China Sea. I also address some of the major Chinese concerns for further maritime cooperation in East Asia. I conclude that while a grand cooperative maritime regime is still not possible from a Chinese perspective, China is likely to agree to more extensive and substantive maritime cooperation in many functional areas, most notably in the non-traditional security arena.     

International Political Economy from a Chinese Angle

In the 1990s, international political economy (IPE) as a set of concepts to interpret the current and future world system caught on quickly among Chinese scholars and policy analysts. Recent events (the Asian financial crisis and the US role, WTO negotiations, US‐Japan trade disputes) combined with China's historical experience (imperialism, war, revolution) and aspirations (to be a regional power) have given IPE specialists a different perspective on and language for the issues and events of today's global political economy. Zhu Wenli highlights the divergence between US and PRC views and interpretations on concepts of hegemony (the role of the US in a unipolar system), globalization, development models, and economic security, arguing that understanding this theoretical gap helps us to understand the current policy gap. She concludes with a reference to the limited role that international relations concepts and ideas play in the formation of foreign policy.     

Rethinking the Chinese World Order: the imperial cycle and the rise of China

Looking to China's imperial history to understand how China as a great power will behave in the twenty-first century, some scholars have rediscovered the concept of the traditional Chinese world order coined by John K. Fairbank in the 1960s in the reconstruction of the benevolent governance and benign hierarchy of the Chinese Empire, and portrayed its collapse as a result of the clash of civilizations between the benevolent Chinese world order and the brutal European nation-state system. China was forced into the jungle of the social Darwinist world to struggle for its survival. As a result, China's search for power and wealth is to restore justice in an unjust world. China's rise would be peaceful. This article finds that while imperial China was not uniquely benevolent nor uniquely violent, the reconstruction of China's imperial past to advance the contemporary agenda of its peaceful rise has, ironically, set a nineteenth century agenda for China in the twenty-first century to restore the regional hierarchy and maximize China's security by expanding influence and control over its neighborhoods.     

China Goes to Africa: a strategic move?

Entering the twenty-first century, particularly under the reign of Hu Jintao, China began to pursue an increasingly pro-active diplomacy in Africa. Most analysis on China's offensive diplomacy in Africa focuses on Beijing's thirst for energy and raw materials, and for economic profits and benefits. That is why it is often called ‘energy diplomacy’ or ‘economic diplomacy’ as if China, just like Japan in the 1980s, became another ‘economic animal’. But if one looks at the history of the PRC's foreign policy, Beijing has seldom pursued its diplomacy from purely economic considerations. Is this time any different? This article exams China's diplomacy in Africa from a strategic and political perspective such as its geo-strategic calculations, political and security ties with African countries, peacekeeping and anti-piracy efforts in the region, support for African regionalism, etc. It argues that China's diplomatic expansion in Africa, while partially driven by its need for economic growth, cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration its strategic impulse accompanying its accelerating emergence as a global power. Africa is one of China's diplomatic ‘new frontiers’ as exemplified by new Chinese leader Xi Jinping's maiden foreign trip to Africa in 2013.     

Analyzing Rising Power from the Perspective of Soft Power: a new look at China's rise to the status quo power

A rising power has traditionally been considered as a revisionist power in realist international relations theories. However, a preliminary analysis of the rising China's foreign policy behavior doesn't uphold such conventional wisdom. Through the case study of China's rise, this article investigates whether the soft power concept provides a new approach in analyzing a rising power. Firstly, empirical connections between soft power and the rise of China are established by discussing the Chinese idea of soft power. This is followed by an examination of how China adopts a soft power-based global strategy and wields soft power in its rise to a status quo power. The findings suggest that the soft power concept can be applied to analyze a rising power. Moreover, when a rising power tries to develop its soft power resources and wield its soft power, its revisionist policy orientation will greatly decrease. This in turn allows for a smoother transition to a status quo power.     

Towards an Integrated Theory of Chinese Foreign Policy: bringing leadership personality back in

This article tries to integrate the theories of personality type and Chinese foreign policy studies. It finds that theories of personality offer a new perspective on the study of Chinese foreign policy and help to better explain the differences in China's foreign policy under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, including their international orientation, the main themes of China's foreign policy during their respective times in office, their policies towards the major powers, as well as those towards small countries. Theoretically, such integration contributes to the development of a more general theory of foreign policy analysis that would travel better beyond the borders of the American case. Empirically it highlights the necessity and benefit of an integrated approach bringing leadership personality back into the center of the analysis while taking into account other levels of analysis in the study of Chinese foreign policy.     

Conditionality and Path Dependence in Chinese Lending

China's long insistence on non-interference in sovereign states' domestic affairs has contributed to a widely held impression that China also lends abroad without attaching policy conditions. In this article, we debunk the notion that China's bilateral lending is entirely devoid of conditionality, by showing that it involves elements of political conditionality, embedded conditionality and cross-conditionality, stemming from the varying concerns of Chinese foreign policy-makers and state-linked lenders. We then draw on the path-dependence literature to explore the possibility that there may also be more indirect forms of conditionality associated with Chinese lending practices. By ‘emergent conditionality’, we refer to structural lock-in effects that may cumulatively restrict or redirect recipient countries' policy-making choices similarly as more direct conditionality would do, even if the PRC government officially shuns conditionality.     

‘Rise of the Great Powers’=Rise of China? Challenges of the advancement of global history in the People's Republic of China

Ever since it was first broadcasted in 2006, the Rise of the Great Powers, a popular Chinese TV mini-series of 12 episodes, has received great attention both at home and abroad. Some have suggested that the showing of this series marked a new orientation in China's foreign policy and a new perception of its position in the world. Using oral interviews and written works by the historians who masterminded the project, this article analyzes the view of the Chinese historian, and of current Chinese leadership, about the globalizing world today and China's position in and relation to it. Using the documentary as a starting point, it discusses the status quo of world-history study in China today and argues that though receptive to the incentive for globalizing history writing, historical scholarship in China remains grounded in a Eurocentric understanding of modern world history. China's recent economic expansion has paradoxically reinforced this tradition, as the country is bracing for its own world power status.     

Multilateral versus Bilateral and Regional Trade Liberalization: explaining China's pursuit of free trade agreements (FTAs)

In recent years, at the same time it has pursued multilateral trade negotiations via membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has embraced a regional approach to trade liberalization by negotiating a number of bilateral or regional free trade agreements (FTAs) with its trading partners. This paper examines China's increasingly active FTA diplomacy and seeks to explain China's motives for pursuing expanded FTAs. Specifically, this paper argues that while China's FTA activism reflects considerations about enhancing China's influence in the Asia–Pacific region, capturing the economic gains of FTA participation, and minimizing the trade and investment diversion resulting from the competitive dynamics of regional trade liberalization, the move toward expanded FTAs is also consistent with the desire to create alternative bargaining forums over trade issues that could help to stabilize expectations as well as the need to use FTAs to control the pace of trade liberalization so as to accommodate protectionist pressure emanating from domestic interest groups. In particular, this paper highlights the impact of domestic politics on China's FTA negotiations through a detailed discussion of how pressure from protectionist seeking interests influences the scope and depth of China's FTAs.