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Modern Diplomacy in Practice

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Abstract

Although China’s history of relations with other countries and peoples is an ancient one, the development of a modern diplomatic service came much later than for other countries. It was not until the early twentieth century that China established a fully functioning Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the full “professionalization” of the service under Communist rule came only after China’s opening to the outside world in the 1980s. Chinese diplomats are known for exceptional discipline and for linguistic and regional expertise rather than their diplomatic skills. The newer generation of Chinese diplomats has been recruited from a wider variety of international relations and public policy schools, however, with skills that match those of other leading diplomatic services.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    John K. Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” Foreign Affairs 47, no. 3 (1969): 449–63.

  2. 2.

    Generally, we have used the Pinyin system of romanization of Chinese words, with the Wades-Giles system that was common up until 1979 placed in parentheses, but for a familiar name like Sun Tzu, we have reversed the order.

  3. 3.

    A frequently cited quote of Confucius—“To have friends coming from afar, isn’t that a joy?”—is used by the state to indicate that the Chinese have always been a hospitable people. For insight to the recent debate, see Dengdeng Chen, “Chinese Foreign Policy Needs Major Reform: Tao Guang Yang Hui or Fen Fa You Wei?” The Diplomat, August 21, 2014.

  4. 4.

    Scott A. Boorman, The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch’i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Scott A. Boorman, “Mao Tse-tung and the Art of War,” Journal of Asian Studies 24 no. 1 (November 1964): 129–35 (Review of Sun Tzu: The Art of War, translated with an Introduction by Samuel B. Griffith, with a foreword by B.H. Liddell Hart. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).

  5. 5.

    See, e.g., Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective”; David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 53–67; and Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, China’s Search for Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 3–36.

  6. 6.

    Nathan and Scobell, China’s Search for Security, 24–25.

  7. 7.

    Its full name was Zongli geguo shiwu yamen, literally “office in charge of affairs with all countries.”

  8. 8.

    Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990), 199, 235.

  9. 9.

    William C. Kirby, “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era,” The China Quarterly, No. 150, Special Issue (June 1997), 433–58.

  10. 10.

    James Reardon-Anderson, Yenan and the Great Powers: The Origins of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy, 1944–46 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 1–4, 163–72.

  11. 11.

    Xiaohong Liu, Chinese Ambassadors: The Rise of Diplomatic Professionalism Since 1949 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2001), 14.

  12. 12.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was known to follow the principle of Taoguang yanghui (to keep a low profile) under Deng, and the precept of “peaceful rise” under Hu Jintao, but has been gradually shifting to a different principle that emphasizes Fenfa youwei (striving for achievement) since Xi Jinping took office.

  13. 13.

    Kishan S. Rana, “Diplomacy Systems and Processes: Comparing India and China,” China Report 50, no. 4 (2014): 297–323. Rana’s estimates for 2003 put personnel numbers at 2000 at the ministry and 2500 abroad. See Kishan S. Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic System,” China Report 41, no. 3 (2005): 224.

  14. 14.

    Markus Herrmann and Sabine Mokry, “China Races to Catch Up on Foreign Affairs Spending,” The Diplomat, August 9, 2018.

  15. 15.

    This figure was calculated for the year 2015. 中新社, “中国妇女发展白皮书:中国有 1695 名女外交官,” 中国新 闻网, http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2015/09-22/7537560.shtml. Accessed October 25, 2016.

  16. 16.

    Liu, Chinese Ambassadors, esp. 203.

  17. 17.

    Sabine Mokry, “Chinese Experts Challenge Western Generalists in Diplomacy,” Diplomat, August 15, 2018.

  18. 18.

    Hou Feng, “‘Translator Diplomacy’ Distorted Chinese Diplomacy.” September 29, 2012.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160520055556/http://www.21ccom.net/articles/qqsw/zlwj/article_2012092968634.html. Accessed March 2, 2019. See also Qiu Zhibo, “China’s Outdated Foreign Service Needs Rebooting for the Age of Trump,” Foreign Policy, January 23, 2017, which describes China’s diplomatic corps as “silent, passive, (and) isolated.”

  19. 19.

    China ranked second globally in the 2017 Global Diplomacy Index, a metric designed to compare diplomatic networks. “Lowy Global Diplomacy Index,” https://globaldiplomacyindex.lowyinstitute.org/country_rank.html. Accessed March 12, 2019. See also Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic System,” 223–24.

  20. 20.

    Rana, “The Structure and Operation and China’s Diplomatic System,” 227–28.

  21. 21.

    This paragraph is based largely on interviews with currently serving Chinese diplomats. See also Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic System,” 228–29.

  22. 22.

    Kishan S. Rana, “Diplomatic Training: New Trends,” Foreign Service Journal 93, no. 7 (2016): 41–43.

  23. 23.

    Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic System,” 228.

  24. 24.

    Interviews with currently serving Chinese diplomats, Washington, D.C., August 24, 2018.

  25. 25.

    The PRC employs a mandatory national retirement age of 50 (male)/60 (female) for blue collar workers, and 55/65 for white collar workers. A detailed plan for increasing the mandatory retirement age has yet to be completed, and may not begin until 2022. Owen Haacke, “China’s Mandatory Retirement Age Changes: Impact for Foreign Companies,” The US-China Business Council, April 1, 2015, https://www.uschina.org/china’s-mandatory-retirement-age-changes-impact-foreign-companies. Accessed March 3, 2017.

  26. 26.

    Interviews in Washington, D.C., August 24, 2018. See also Liu, Chinese Ambassadors, 204.

  27. 27.

    Interviews in Washington, D.C., July 16–17, 2018. See also Qiu Zhibo, “China’s Outdated Foreign Service Needs Rebooting.”

  28. 28.

    Liu, Chinese Ambassadors, xv.

  29. 29.

    Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic System,” 228–29.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 224. Rana reports that as of 2005, when his article was published, Party membership was no longer mandatory for MFA officials, but this seems to be the case for lower-level administrative staff, not for the diplomatic corps.

  31. 31.

    Mokry, “Chinese Experts Challenge Western Generalists.”

  32. 32.

    Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic Service,” 228–29.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 228–32, and Mokry, “Chinese Experts Challenge Western Generalist.”

  34. 34.

    The officials surveyed were the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and ambassadors to Brazil, France, Germany, India, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For brief profiles of these officials, see Robert Hutchings and Jeremi Suri, eds., Developing Diplomats: Comparing Form and Culture Across Diplomatic Services (Austin, TX: The University of Texas, 2017), 53–58.

  35. 35.

    For good overview analyses, see David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 60–72; Marc Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign Policy: An Introduction (London: Routledge, third edition, 2016), 23–46; and Robert Sutter, Foreign Relations of the PRC: The Legacies and Constraints of China’s International Politics since 1949 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013), 119–47.

  36. 36.

    Rana, “The Structure and Operation of China’s Diplomatic System,” 221–22.

  37. 37.

    Li, Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era, 10–13.

  38. 38.

    See Julia G. Bowie, “International Liaison Work for the New Era: Generating Global Consensus?” Party Watch Annual Report 2018 (October 18, 2018), 41–49: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/183fcc_687cd757272e461885069b3e3365f46d.pdf; and: The International Department of the Chinese Communist Party,” China: An International Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 2007): 26–52.

  39. 39.

    Richard H. Solomon, Chinese Negotiating Behavior (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, second edition, 1999).

  40. 40.

    Richard C. Bush, The Perils of Proximity: China-Japan Security Relations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), 129–30. See also David M. Lampton, “Xi Jinping and the National Security Commission: Policy Coordination and Political Power,” Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 95 (2015): 759–77.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 129.

  42. 42.

    “Xi Stresses Centralized, Unified Leadership of CPC Central Committee over Foreign Affairs.” Xinhua, May 15, 2018.

  43. 43.

    Thomas Eder, “Chinas New Foreign Policy Setup” The Diplomat, August 1, 2018. https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/chinas-new-foreign-policy-setup/. Accessed March 12, 2019.

  44. 44.

    Lampton, “Xi Jinping and the National Security Commission,” and Cheng Li, Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Reassessing Collective Leadership (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2016), 17.

  45. 45.

    Bonnie S. Glaser and Evan S. Medeiros, “The Changing Ecology of Foreign Policy-Making in China: The Ascension and Demise of the Theory of ‘Peaceful Rise’,” China Quarterly, no. 190 (June 2007): 291–310.

  46. 46.

    Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy Since the Cold War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 101–23.

  47. 47.

    Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds Its Way,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 68–79; and Li Xue, “China’s Foreign Policy Decision-Making Mechanism and ‘One Belt One Road’ Strategy,” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 5, no. 2 (2016): 23–35.

  48. 48.

    Li, Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era, 8–26.

  49. 49.

    Liu, Chinese Ambassadors, 200–209.

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Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank the following diplomats and scholars who were consulted in researching and writing this chapter: Richard Bush, Iris Ma Eisenman, Joshua Eisenman, Zhu Haiquan, J. Stapleton Roy, David Shambaugh, Andrew Scobell, Jun Wang, and Lanxin Xiang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 2018 Master of Arts Degrees, Global Policy Studies and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Michael Deegan

  2. 2017 Master of Arts Degrees, Global Policy Studies and Asian Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Joel Keralis

  3. Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Robert Hutchings

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  1. Michael Deegan
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  2. Joel Keralis
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Correspondence to Robert Hutchings .

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  1. Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Robert Hutchings

  2. Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Jeremi Suri

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Deegan, M., Keralis, J., Hutchings, R. (2020). China. In: Hutchings, R., Suri, J. (eds) Modern Diplomacy in Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26933-3_2

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