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China’s Foreign Strategy After the 18th Party Congress: Business as Usual?

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Abstract

Chinese foreign policy is still an undertheorized domain of international relations studies. One puzzle that preoccupies international observers is the impact of leadership changes on Chinese foreign behavior. Based on an in-depth reading of official statements made by China’s new political leaders and their first actions in office this paper analyses continuity and change in China’s foreign strategy. Following a combined multidimensional analytical approach the evaluation focuses on the interrelation between indigenous (leadership changes, subsystemic challenges) and exogenous factors (global crises, critical junctures) on the modeling of China’s international strategy. My main conclusion is that shifts and role changes in Chinese foreign policy should not be misread as the outcome of the latest leadership transition. Most “changes” that are now associated with the fifth generation have originally been introduced by their political ancestors. As a context-sensitive, historical-reflectivist analysis shows, China’s “new” approach to world affairs stands for a continuing, incremental adaptation of the PRC to socio-economic evolutions on the domestic and the global level.

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Notes

  1. Among these were the conferences “Research on international relations in China: Topics and directions“(September 22, 2012) organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as the conference at Fudan University entitled “Constructing a systematic “Chinese” theory of international relations – Welcoming the 18th party congress” (July 18–19, 2012).

  2. More recently, however, analysts of Chinese foreign policy have started to pay more attention to the role of institutions and processes of socialization.

  3. For an overview of China and the first image approach, see also Jean-Marc F. Blanchard’s introduction in this special issue.

  4. The ideational level also includes the cultural dimension of foreign policy, see [27].

  5. On the biographical background of China’s core cadres, see http://www.chinavitae.com.

  6. The Renmin Ribao’s webportal maintains a page that presents a collection of selected articles dealing with the theoretical underpinnings and the official definition of the “Chinese Dream,“see http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/40557/359404/index.html.

  7. For a critical discussion of the concept of soft power in China, see [62].

  8. On the implications of the harmonious world paradigm for China’s economic foreign policy, see [2].

  9. The budget plan 2013 is available online, see: http://news.xinhuanet.com/2013lh/2013-03/05/c_114898637_3.htm. Liff and Erickson ([30]: 22) decrypt China’s military expenditures and present some slightly different numbers of the overall budget, but finally come to the conclusion that “increases in the official defence budget are roughly consistent with GDP growth and constitute a declining percentage of central government expenditures.”

  10. See Yan Xuetong’s speech on shifting principles of Chinese foreign policy: http://www.fyjs.cn/bbs/simple/index.php?t558657.html

  11. For a critical analysis of China’s use of economic tools as part of its international strategy, see [3].

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  1. GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Rothenbaumchaussee 32, 20148, Hamburg, Germany

    Nele Noesselt

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Noesselt, N. China’s Foreign Strategy After the 18th Party Congress: Business as Usual?. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 20, 17–33 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-014-9325-z

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