18,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: China Today
- Sprache: Englisch
China’s inexorable rise as a major world power is one of the defining features of the contemporary political landscape. But should we heed the warnings of a so-called ‘China threat?’ Is China set to become the next superpower? Or will its ambitions be tempered by economic and political realities both at home and abroad?
In this insightful and balanced analysis, noted China expert Stuart Harris explores China’s present foreign policy and its motivations, focusing in particular on the extent to which China will co-operate with the West in years to come. He considers what factors, international or domestic, will influence the foreign policies being shaped in Beijing, including how far the Chinese regime will adhere to existing global norms and the evolving international system. In contemplating this uncertain future, Harris assesses the considerable challenges and vulnerabilities likely to impact on Chinese foreign policy, leading it to be cautious and hesitant or assertive and aggressive on the international stage. Concise and authoritative, this book will be essential reading for anyone seeking a clearer understanding of the international relations of one of the world’s most important powers.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 364
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
China Today Series
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Map
Chronology
Preface
Abbreviations
1: Continuity and Change in China's Foreign Policies
The Role of History and Culture
The Leadership Challenge
An Outline of the Chapters
2: Foreign Policy Decision Making
China's Government
The Military
Global Diplomacy
Information Sources
3: China, the World and the International System
China's Worldview
China's Broad Foreign Policy Response
China's View of the Global Order
The UN and International Law
China As a Responsible Power?
Multilateralism
China and Human Rights
4: Insecurity and Vulnerability
Vulnerability of the Political Regime
A Historical Sense of Vulnerability
A Geographic Sense of Insecurity and Vulnerability
A Specific Vulnerability to the US
5: Military Threats and Responses
Iran
Nuclear Policy
China and Space
Cyber Warfare
Conventional Weapons
6: Economic Foreign Policy
Currency and Exchange Rates
The World Trade Organization
‘Going Out’
The Use of Economic Power
7: China, Its Neighbours and Beyond
ASEAN
The United States/Trans-Pacific Partnership
North Korea
South Korea
Vietnam
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
Russia
India/Pakistan
Myanmar
Japan
The European Union
8: Foreign Policy in Transition
Domestic Influences on Foreign Policy
The Economy
Markets and Resources
Consistency of Foreign Policy
Use of Force
Challenging the US
The Pivot
China and International Order
Values
References
Index
China Today Series
Copyright © Stuart Harris 2014
The right of Stuart Harris to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2014 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6246-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6247-3 (pb)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8423-9 (epub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8422-2 (mobi)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
To Pamela
Chronology
Preface
This is a book about China's foreign policy. It is not about China as a whole. The distinction is important. To implement foreign policy, states need to deal bilaterally and multilaterally with a wide range of countries. With some they will be comfortable; with others there may be elements of moral distaste or a lack of trust. States need to be able to co-habit with both, even where warmth and mutual trust are lacking, if they are to pursue effectively their interests and maintain peace. Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon were prepared to deal with each other despite the fact that China had long seen Nixon as a ‘warmonger’ and Americans did not trust Mao. Commonly, foreign policy involves dealing with people who think differently from us. Yet having been involved in international dealings with other countries over much of my career, I was often surprised by assumptions of colleagues that there is a similarity in how problems are seen and approached; or, at times, that others ought to think like us. Knowing not just where your counterparts differ, but understanding why they differ, facilitates handling of differences and makes cooperation possible.
One of Britain's most distinguished historians, Michael Howard, in his 1988 E.H. Carr memorial lecture, said that ‘[t]he first duty both of the theorist and of the practitioner of international relations … is empathy: the capacity to enter into other minds and understand ideologies which have been formed by environment, history and education in a very different mould from our own’.1 This book is sensitive, however imperfectly, to that requirement, and seeks to place foreign policy decisions in the context of the challenges and vulnerabilities that Chinese leaders believe they face in their international environment. It is less sensitive, for space reasons, in the use of the term ‘China’ despite acknowledging that in reality there are many Chinas; even more problematic is the use, lacking an alternative, of the ambiguous term, the ‘West’, often meaning the developed world and, for China, usually now the US and its allies in the developed world.
Looking at China, it is not hard to find examples of the good, but also the bad and the ugly. I have tried to avoid judgements about China and its policies, although clearly there are policies that reflect values that conflict sharply with our own. While there are many reasons for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party's often abused monopoly of political power, its claims to have maintained social and political stability in China, at least since 1989, improved the material wellbeing of its citizens, and increased China's standing and status in the world are not without substance. I have also been inclined to assess China's foreign policy responses not against absolute criteria, but relative to the general practice of other countries. While not done systematically, it is useful to remind ourselves from time to time that, where interests are involved, few, if any, countries are totally trustworthy or compliant with international rules and norms. The following study reflects a view that the international discussion on the rise of China underestimates its governing regime's perceptions, valid or not, of international and domestic challenges and vulnerabilities. It also draws out some of the implications of Western foreign policy that is looking for regime change.
When I first became interested in China, as a government official in the 1960s, most around me were sceptical that it could progress or were fearful of it – a yellow peril or a communist threat. I first visited China in 1973, during a period commonly seen as the latter part of the Cultural Revolution, and have returned on numerous occasions since. I come to this subject not as a Chinese linguist, but as one who has dealt extensively with China in the foreign policy field and studied China on and off for over four decades, both as a government official and an academic. I have negotiated with Chinese officials on a diverse range of subjects, including various bilateral issues (from export contracts to human rights), broad regional, political and economic cooperation issues, and specific issues related to Cambodia, Taiwan and Japan. Over the years, and on innumerable occasions, I have discussed many of the issues in this book with officials and scholars in China. I have also discussed and debated China extensively, at the official and scholarly level, with colleagues in the West, notably in the US and in Australia.
I wish to acknowledge the considerable support and encouragement I received in undertaking this study from the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University, under the headship of Professor Bill Tow. I have also been greatly assisted in writing this book by colleagues who have been good enough to read drafts. Special thanks are due to Kathy Morton who read a full draft and to Pete Van Ness who read almost every chapter. Both made many valuable suggestions. Others who read and commented helpfully on chapters or significant parts are Shiro Armstrong, Greg Austin, Paul Dibb, Frank Frost, Ian Hall, Michael Harris, Ron Huisken, Kirill Nourzhanov, John Ravenhill, David Shambaugh, Brendan Taylor, Ramesh Thakur and You Ji. Their input was substantial and is gratefully acknowledged here. Helpful comments were also received from two anonymous reviewers. I have benefited substantially from discussions on the ChinaPol listserv as I did from the earlier ChinSec listserv. Numerous translation sites, especially China Wire and BBC Monitoring, were very helpful.
Particular thanks are due to two special people. Mary-Louise Hickey, the Publications Editor of the Department of International Relations, was a continuing help throughout the development of the study and brought the manuscript into its final shape. My wife Pamela not only read each chapter and greatly improved the logic and consistency of the argument, but also provided sustained support and understanding of the demands of the book at the expense of time we would otherwise have spent together.
Note
1 Michael Howard, ‘Ideology and international relations’, reproduced in Michael Howard, The Lessons of History, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 150, emphasis in original.
Abbreviations
1
Continuity and Change in China's Foreign Policies
China is no longer just an emerging power; it is already a regional great power with major global significance. Although not yet a superpower, it is still rising, even if with some potential fragility. For the more than 60 years since the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, its foreign policies have been of particular international interest. Over that period, those policies have reflected both ideology and pragmatism, and have undergone considerable change and development as China has developed and global circumstances have changed. China is now more active in the international arena and there is considerable interest in whether its future foreign policies will follow peaceful lines or will become aggressive and eventually seek to dominate.
Inevitably, much of the international discussion of China's foreign policy has focused on the concerns of the international community. Among security analysts and media commentators, the focus is on China's military modernization/expansion and the future of China–US relations; among policy officials and academics, the spotlight is on whether China will support or challenge the existing international system of rules, norms and institutions. In the early 2000s, there appeared a widely held view that China was demonstrating broad acceptance of the status quo, accommodating to, and integrating with, the existing international system, with no strongly articulated views about changing that system (Johnston 2003; Kang 2007). In recent years, however, there has been heightened media attention on an apparent increase in China's self-confidence and assertiveness, even to the point, it is argued, of arrogance in its international dealings.
Examples of this apparent assertiveness include its responses to US ‘spying’ on China's military developments when, in 2009, Chinese ships harassed an American surveillance ship, the Impeccable, in China's exclusive economic zone; and abrasive responses of some Chinese officials to statements by US officials about the South China Sea. In the economic field, examples include China's strong response to criticisms of China's trade surpluses and to pressures to revalue its currency; China's criticism of US mismanagement of its economy and weakening of the dollar, threatening China's large investment in dollar-denominated securities; and its strongly stated views in Group of Twenty (G20) meetings and particularly at the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in November 2009.
To what extent do these examples portray China as a confident, assertive power, demonstrating hubris and increased nationalism, unwilling to accept the international system as it is and wanting, as is often argued, to push its own ideas on norms and policies, indeed wanting to remake the global rules? How much substance is there, as well, in the argument that China sees a faltering and weakened US and a failing Western capitalist model, whereas now there is a successful Chinese model that enables it to challenge the American leadership of the global system? These are important questions with major implications for the future.
China's greater self-confidence and pride in its achievements no doubt contribute to what can be termed ‘assertiveness’. Whether this is arrogance is unclear. Is it, as Swaine (2011b) has observed, that China is less willing to accept US positions, notably US arms sales to Taiwan, political leaders' meetings with the Dalai Lama, US coastal surveillance of China, and Western lectures on human rights?
Despite the priority given to domestic issues, China's elites generally aspire for China to be accepted as a global great power. The implications of this for China and its foreign policies are part of our more general consideration of which domestic and international factors will influence the formulation of China's future foreign policies. For this purpose, we start by noting on the one hand the substantial changes in China's foreign policies since 1949 and, on the other, various continuities that have framed the context in which these changes have taken place and that have influenced China's policies from 1949 to the present. The purpose is to identify, as far as possible, continuities that may remain significant in China's future foreign policies.
In practice, even today, China's foreign policies are unlikely to be fully consistent over time, for several reasons. These include: the idea that past experiences probably still affect decision makers, although not uniformly; China's integration in the international system continues to make its foreign policy increasingly complex; because of globalization, few domestic interests are now unaffected by international developments, and those people representing those interests have risen to influential positions in the foreign policy decision-making process; and debate within China about foreign policy objectives and the methods to be employed has become more active and widespread, with public opinion playing an important role. In China, as elsewhere, moreover, foreign policy is contingent, often simply responsive to events and based on incomplete information.
Finally, the influence of strong leaders on foreign policies can often be decisive. Although China's top leaders today have less personal power, the judgements that they will make in the future, and the decisions that will emanate from this more diffuse decision-making process, with less powerful leaders, are fundamentally important to the international community. We cannot expect to know what the decisions of China's leaders will be in the coming decades: China's leaders today would themselves not know. The intellectual challenge, however, is that we inevitably project our vision of what China's future decisions will be in discussions of China's foreign policies, and we need to examine why we have a particular vision.
In this book, we look at what were understood to have been China's foreign policy objectives since 1949, and the methods that China has used to pursue those objectives. China's ability to pursue those objectives has been shaped by international and domestic developments. Major international developments that have impacted on foreign policies include the Cold War, already underway in 1949 when the PRC was established, the war on terror that began in the early 2000s, and the global financial crisis of 2007–8. Critical events include China's rapprochement with the US in the 1970s, and three major developments outside China's control – the international response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy, the fall of the Berlin Wall in the same year, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, effectively, the fall of international communism in 1991.
In this introductory chapter, we do two things. First, we look briefly at how history and culture have influenced and may influence China's approach to foreign policy. Second, we look at the main elements of the PRC's foreign policies under Mao Zedong and the first decade of Deng Xiaoping's leadership. We do this both to illustrate the major changes that took place over that 40-year period, and to provide a perspective from which to consider changes and continuities in China's foreign policies in the decades since. Subsequent chapters are concerned with China's current foreign policy starting with developments since the beginning of the 1990s.
The Role of History and Culture
This is a book about contemporary foreign policies, not about China's history or culture. We cannot, however, totally ignore the likely historical and cultural influences on the views of China's political leaders, on their perceptions of national interests, and on their foreign policies. Each state develops its own foreign relations culture, including not only strategic and military considerations, but also how peaceful intercourse with other states should be conducted (Stuart-Fox 2004: 119).
China's foreign policies since 1949 have reflected how China's leaders perceived world developments from within their worldviews that were themselves changing. Those worldviews reflected their beliefs and ideological conceptions of the way the world should work. The priorities given at any time to domestic needs versus its international objectives also influenced foreign policy judgements; this became clear over the past three decades with examples of China's reform programme and its related economic priorities and imperatives.
We can be confident that in some form, China's foreign policies will be a reflection of China's past and its culture, although there is considerable debate about what and how much influence each has had. If we examined US foreign policy without recognizing US self-perceptions of exceptionalism, we would fall short of a reasoned understanding of US foreign policy. Similarly, from discussions with Chinese scholars and officials over the years, it is clear that the Chinese people believe in China's exceptionalism, based on its different history and culture that is perhaps seen as superior to that of the West.
China's history, cultures and related traditions play important roles in its literature, public discourse, academic discussion and, indeed, in domestic political contestation; however, when looking at how these traditions have influenced foreign policy, problems emerge, as its history reflects many such traditions and many changes in cultures (Hunt 1996: 8). In the case of history, for example, these reflect the politically salient ‘humiliation’ in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, the patriarchal Middle Kingdom sinocentric worldview of much of the last millennium, the cosmopolitanism of much of the previous millennium, the cautionary lessons of the ‘warring states’ periods (whether in distant history or during the years of the Republic in the early twentieth century), and the quasi-imperialism that the Qing dynasty pursued to try to protect its core cultural areas from the potentially vulnerable peripheral areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. As Spence (2005) has noted, China's contemporary concerns about Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan stem from China's conquests in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and now constitute complex domestic grievances.
While today China's concerns for security have diminished in some respects – notably with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the altered if still prickly relationship with the US, and the return of the territories of Hong Kong and Macau – it maintains its historic sensitivity to threats to its territorial integrity in its peripheral areas. Particular security concerns about its periphery and its unity have not diminished. Hong Kong and Macau have been reunited, but Taiwan has not. Periodic international developments, some seen as assisted by the West, particularly the US – such as ‘colour revolutions’, redolent in China's leaders' eyes, of the US's Cold War ‘peaceful evolution’ strategy,1 and the Arab Spring – and some not, such as Islamic militancy and Buddhist activism, are considered potential threats to that periphery, notably to Tibet, Xinjiang and, to a lesser extent, Inner Mongolia.
China sees the world in a different way than countries in the West, for various reasons, but most notably because of the Confucian belief in hierarchy. Moreover, while Western analyses commonly assume that the characteristics of the global system are best understood as anarchic, for China this is not necessarily the case. Van Ness (2002: 132–3) argues that for China, it is hegemonic rather than anarchic. China (and Japan), he argues, ‘perceive a hierarchical world environment, structured in terms of a combination of US military-strategic hegemony and a globalized economic interdependence. They devise strategies based on the perceived benefits/costs of participation in that system, as compared with opting out of it’.
For China's elites, global politics is concerned with the rise and fall of hegemonic powers. In this view, great powers rise to where they seek global domination and expansion, followed ultimately by the overextension of that great power and decline into passivity (Harding 1984; Shi 2012). This was reflected in China's recent close examination of the history of the various empires of the past, as China has sought to learn lessons as it rises to great power status. It is why China's leaders see that broader security in global terms, but also why they expect the US ultimately to decline, although with uncertainty about when.
Another dimension, however, comes from the different internal views about China's domestic relationship with the world. In the nineteenth century, views about how China should relate to the world were divided, in very broad terms, between a form of nativism (or nationalism) wanting autonomy, little global involvement and avoidance of contacts with foreigners who would contaminate China's culture and polity; and a cosmopolitanism or modernism that saw global involvement with importing technology, values and institutions as essential for China's development, which would provide means to counter imperialist depredations. Within Mao's PRC, nativism remained a favoured view among the more radical segments of the leadership, and Mao held both views at different times.
This division of views created tensions and sustained debates among the Chinese Communist Party leadership, as it had in China long before Mao, and as it does today.2 Under Hu Jintao, the domestic problems arising from China's rapid economic growth led to concerns with a ‘harmonious society’ drawing on Confucian thinking; it also led to divisions between those favouring continued acceptance of globalization, implied by the linked ‘harmonious world’ construct that Hu put forward in 2005 at the UN General Assembly, and those critical of globalization and its influence on society in China (Zheng and Tok 2007). This division accounts for some of the frequent shifts in China's foreign policies, as the influence of one or other interest groups varies.
A further perspective is a moral one in the sense of China's view of how the international order ought to operate over time. The PRC has sought different changes to the international order, being variously critical of capitalism, imperialism and, more recently and currently, hegemonism; it now seeks a harmonious world. Shih (1993: 201) argues that the changes to China's worldview are frequent, but that China is less interested in changing the world order than in establishing a position of moral superiority. In addition, while Mao saw a world of imperialist powers threatening China, he also viewed China's status as one of leadership, whether as a revolutionary state or in terms of the Third World. This reflected a carryover of Chinese history's concern with status and a conviction that China constitutes an exemplar.
While it is often convenient to talk about whether China is a ‘status quo’ power or not, that term lacks clarity. Johnston (2003) has argued that China wants the increased status and respect that acceptance as a great power and recognition of its increased material power will provide, including a bigger role in international institutions, but that it is difficult to see it as a status quo power, even if only ‘revisionist-lite’. At a broader level, its leadership has long held views as to how the international order ought to change, which is effectively a moral judgement. This is not surprising; the US is not a status quo power either, given its interests in the spread of democracy, human rights and market capitalism. As Van Ness has stated, the two states are the civilizing states (quoted in Shih 1993: 126).
As observed earlier, China aspires to be accepted as a global great power and to receive the status and respect that accompanies such recognition. On the other hand, to be acknowledged by others as having great power status is generally understood to mean that one should accept a responsibility to contribute to the preservation of the international order (Bull 1977: 199–222). A Maoist view would be that China had no responsibility, in the sense of obligation, to an international system that was run by two imperialist powers that had in the past humiliated China and continued to exclude it. Since gaining its permanent UN Security Council seat with the explicit special responsibilities of that position, and following Deng Xiaoping's economic reform and opening up programme that began in 1978, however, China has increasingly participated in the global system and benefited substantially from that participation. Moreover, since the 1990s, with its growing concern about its national image, China has increasingly argued that it acts responsibly in its international activities. Consequently, another aim of this study is to consider what constitutes ‘international responsibility’, and to what extent China is responsible in its foreign policies. This is not a simple matter as it is not always clear what is meant by ‘responsibility’, how it can be addressed and assessed, and what it implies for China (Chan 2001).
A related interest here is the extent to which history is relevant to China's future decisions on foreign policies and, if so, which particular history? Considerable attention is commonly given, both in discussions with Chinese officials and scholars and in Western analyses, to the influence of ‘victimhood’ which arose from the century of humiliation; it is also important in official Chinese rhetoric. Although this notion of victimhood is perhaps declining in importance among elites, it remains one amongst a number of influential factors. China's related sense of insecurity and vulnerability has led to a historically conditioned emphasis on sovereignty and the development of comprehensive strength which are now key elements of China's foreign policy.
Besides the ‘victimhood’ period, there are various experiences that one could draw upon to illustrate the present. There are many cultural traditions in China that provide other precedents for ‘after-the-event’ explanations of almost any conceivable line of foreign policy. Notably, there is a different imperial history which could ultimately become more important in shaping Chinese views – whether thought of in terms of the Middle Kingdom or, in a regional context, as the hierarchical tributary system. More recent elements of history have also imprinted memories. For example, not only was China subject to sustained hostility from both superpowers in the 1950s and 1960s, but both the US and the Soviet Union implicitly and explicitly threatened China with nuclear weapons in the same period.
A further continuity, which is a legacy of the ‘victimhood’ period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the ‘traitor’ syndrome which stemmed from the need to blame someone for China's weakness in the nineteenth century. Whilst many Chinese officials negotiated from a weak position versus the foreigners' strengths, many others collaborated with the foreigners for practical or self-serving reasons, as happened under Japanese occupation. It remains a sensitive process to avoid blame for betraying national interests in dealing with international developments, notably over Taiwan. Lampton (2001: 15) reports a Chinese academic's comment to the effect that a hard approach to a problem, even if it fails, is understood, but a leader who has a soft approach that fails is seen as guilty in the eyes of future generations.
Culture is a problematic concept for foreign policy analysts. It generally refers to the norms and values of a society and the rules and standards, as set by law or custom, to reflect these norms and values. Culture matters and contributes, perhaps substantially, to differences in understandings and approaches among different countries. The question, however, of how it matters and how one can get a grip on something that is a mix of ideas is difficult to answer (Bobrow et al. 1979: 23). Under normal conditions, the issue of culture is not seen as relevant, because Westernization and modernization have been so successful in penetrating other parts of the world, that Westernization is assumed to equate to ‘civilization’. The distinguished historian Wang Gungwu noted that in international relations today, norms of behaviour and discourse have been established by the West. These are assumed to be accepted by people in all responsible countries and this is often taken for granted. When this happens, it is ignored that these norms have come from a distinct culture, and actually represent a large expansive political culture that has developed since the post-Enlightenment world of European nation states. Moreover, when we talk about international order, ‘what China sees today is not an international order at all, least of all the international order, but merely the product of the struggles among the Great Powers of half a century ago’ (Wang Gungwu 2008: 24). China now argues the importance of the UN and international law which, however, it believes is under challenge by the West.3 As we see in chapter 3, China has largely adapted to this international system, but with a degree of ambivalence, despite Western pressure to be more fully involved. China's integration within the international system is largely true in material and institutional terms; integration, however, is an ambiguous concept and is more limited in respect of China's values and identities, which relate to its participation as part of a changing international community.
At the general level, world cultures impact not only on values and the way a country pursues its international objectives, but also on what it sees as effective approaches to problems. In the strategic field, the idea that China's way of thinking is different from that of the US received some serious discussion when a US congressional report noted that ‘Chinese strategic thinking and military planning differ markedly from our own’ (US–China Security Review Commission 2002: 15). Henry Kissinger revived the idea that China's way of war and diplomacy is shaped by attitudes developed from the game of weiqi (or go in Japan), commonly linked to the writings of Sun Tzu, while in the West (or perhaps just in the Anglo-Saxon countries), the way of war and diplomacy is seen as more linearly oriented (Sun Tzu 1963; Lai 2004; Kissinger 2011). A strong case was made for the weiqi basis of Maoist strategy, both in the insurgency period to 1949 and in China's revolutionary strategy towards the developing countries after 1949. Kissinger emphasized that China's defensive concerns and its quest for territorial security of its long borders encompassing 14 countries could be linked to the relational non-linear approach of weiqi.
While some features of post-Mao foreign policy, such as the development of strategic partnerships in the 1990s and the political links associated with the ‘going out’ process of the early 2000s may seem consistent with such thinking, the connection is not clearly established. Indeed, given the interactive process of strategic interrelationships and changes over time in strategic structures, China may have simply absorbed lessons from others. Sisci (2011) has argued that the difference between the US and the Chinese traditions of dealing with problems can be likened to the difference between a scalpel – reflecting the US inclination to solve a problem, often by militarily eliminating its cause – and a needle, reflecting the Chinese medical tradition of preventing a problem through the practice of acupuncture.4
Strategic culture reflects, among other things, the circumstances in which coercion may be judged appropriate. Some analysts see the Chinese approach as a realpolitik one (Christensen 1996), but today it lacks a realpolitik response such as balancing or alliance building as Van Ness (2002) has argued. Periods of Chinese history, however, such as that of the ‘warring states’, lend support to the realpolitik argument. Nevertheless, cultures are changeable. Although ideology has not completely declined in importance, as evidenced by the ‘upholding socialism’ mantra, a greater Chinese aim is likely to be one of achieving increased national power through its foreign policy. China's realpolitik is more likely to be time and circumstance-related, rather than an inherent collective personality of the Chinese people. After an examination of China's response to its membership of multilateral institutions, Johnston (2008: xviii–xxvii) concludes that certain parts of China's decision-making processes have been weaned off realpolitik calculations. Moreover, as noted earlier, a moral component can also be found in China's traditional approach that continued in Mao's foreign policy, and indeed that of Hu Jintao's with his ‘harmonious world’. Whether China's leaders will seek to present themselves again as ‘the supreme moral rectifiers of the world order’, as Shih (1993: 243) implies, is an open question.
We will return to these issues in later chapters when we look at how history, culture, values and China's political and strategic views, as distinct from its interests, influence China's foreign policies. Our purpose is ultimately to see what will influence China's future foreign policies and what changes to the status quo we might expect.
The Leadership Challenge
Turning to the second purpose of this chapter, we noted that, regardless of institutional arrangements, strong leaders can have an important impact on foreign policies. This is true of both Mao and Deng. In the Mao period, Mao made or greatly influenced most major foreign policy decisions until his death in 1976. He was driven by ideological and traditional influences. As Lu Ning (2000: 190) argues, he was heavily influenced by China's history and traditions, unlike the more pragmatic Deng. Mao's ideological belief about the world was concerned with international proletarian solidarity and world revolution, but his pragmatic belief was that war-torn China needed the international community's aid. Even when he was close to gaining power in 1949 and spoke of ‘leaning to the left’ (towards the Soviet Union), he foresaw the possibility of also developing relations with the West, including the US. That became impossible as a consequence of the Cold War. The major powers saw the Nationalists, who had fled to Taiwan, as anti-communists fighting communist China. In 1950, China's support of the North Koreans in the Korean War meant that Chinese troops were fighting troops allied under the UN flag. The PRC was denied UN membership, and the Security Council seat remained with the Nationalists until 1971. For the PRC government's first two decades of existence, few countries recognized it as the legitimate government of China.
In the early 1950s, dependence on the Soviet Union, and China's membership of the socialist bloc, was deemed by China's leaders as essential to ensure its security. Within a few years, however, that relationship soured and led to Chinese feelings of neo-colonialism that rubbed up against its idea of foreign policy that desired equality and was strongly opposed to both imperialism and great power hegemony. This triggered a shift back to self-reliance, tapping popular energies through the disastrous 1958 Great Leap Forward.
Although comfortable, therefore, in the early 1950s as part of the socialist bloc, by the 1960s, Mao saw the socialist bloc as equally imperialistic and threatening to China as the US. The situation between China and the Soviet Union became serious. The Soviet troop build-up on China's border continued, and although China increased its own troop numbers, China was so fearful it would be attacked that, starting in 1964, Mao created a military industrial complex far inland, secure from foreign attack (People's Daily Online 2003). By 1969, China's relations with the Soviet Union had deteriorated to the point of open conflict across the Ussuri River, on the China–Soviet border. Reflecting both China's rejection of the Soviet Union and Mao's continuing siege mentality, feelers were sent out to the US that eventually led to Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972 and provided a ‘US card’ to play against the Soviets.
China's domestic politics became more radical in the late 1950s and 1960s. This radicalization and Mao's fear of reactionary subversion was ultimately reflected in the Cultural Revolution. Radical domestic politics also reflected a revisionist international agenda. Chinese revolutionary rhetoric argued that the Chinese revolution constituted one part of a world revolution; China launched fierce verbal attacks on the existing international order presided over by the two superpowers. At the peak of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, China broke off relations with the Soviet Union, which led to an economic policy of self-sufficiency, or no dependence on major powers (Loehr and Van Ness 1989), and to working towards the 1972 Nixon visit.
In the 1960s, China argued that it portrayed an example of a revolution to the Third World that the post-colonial countries could emulate in order to become a revolutionary force to overturn the existing world order. Later in the 1960s, China viewed the Third World as a third force apart from the Western and the socialist camps, and in the early 1970s, Deng and Mao articulated the Three Worlds theory. Yet China did not join the institutionalized forum of the Third World, the Group of 77.
Views differ about the importance of ideology for Mao's foreign policy. Many Western commentators saw Maoist ideology as the most important factor behind Mao's foreign policies and his alliance with the Soviet Union, which helps explain the West's antagonism towards China in the early years of the PRC. Chinese analysts, however, tend to view the Cold War and anti-communism as critically determining China's ‘leaning to the left’ and its subsequent attempts at autonomy and self-sufficiency. Certainly, most of China's big foreign policy issues – supporting North Korea in the 1950–53 Korean war, the 1950s Taiwan Strait crises, the 1962 clash with India, involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s, and the 1969 Soviet border dispute – can just as easily be explained by traditional security concerns as by ideology (Hunt 1996: 28).
This is not to deny the importance of Mao's ideological belief, especially in domestic affairs, in communism (or socialism) as an important basis of China's identity, and in the Leninist theory of the inevitability of war. This was illustrated in the Sino-Soviet split, where China claimed to be the legitimate defender of Marxism–Leninism. An ideological basis may have existed, perhaps, for the concept of the Third World that, from the 1960s onwards, was intermittently given important attention by China depending on its need, as a united-front response to the domination of the global order by the two superpowers. In practice, however, that attention can also be seen as coalition building or as part of a competition with Taiwan for diplomatic recognition and international legitimacy.
Mao's PRC is commonly seen as isolationist and inward-looking, whereas Deng is commonly viewed as the architect of change, including of the outward-looking policies that followed Mao's death in 1976 and that continue today. Both views need some qualification. For decades, the PRC faced not only US non-recognition, hostility, and encouragement from the US to its allies to isolate the PRC, but it was also denied the UN seat held by Taiwan. As Zhang Yongjin (1998: 156) argues, alienation may be a more appropriate term than isolation. Moreover, Mao's adoption of Marxism–Leninism can be seen as a form of the cosmopolitan or ‘self-strengthening’ movement. Again, for part of the period, Mao looked to the Soviet Union for support, committed to an alliance, and argued for world revolution and international proletarian solidarity.
