China's Foreign Policy

The Emergence of a Great Power

Andrea Benvenuti, Chien-Peng Chung, Nicholas Khoo, Andrew Tan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032260778
• eBook ISBN: 9781000581560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume explains China's foreign policy from the perspective of its historical recovery after 1949 and the country's subsequent rise as a great power, including its transformation into a global power. It also illuminates how China has, in tandem with its rise, developed an increasing array of political, economic, 'sharp power' and military capabilities that is helping it to further its increasingly expansive foreign policy objectives. The volume examines two key questions: What have been the implications of China's rise for its foreign policy? And how has an increasingly powerful and confident China used a range of foreign policy instruments to pursue its expanding national interests in Asia and beyond?

The volume is divided into three parts, covering the conceptualization and drivers of China's foreign policy, China's relations with the world, and the instruments of China's foreign policy, namely its economic power, military capabilities and its 'sharp power' manipulation of information and relationships. It will be of interest to academics, students and researchers interested in understanding China's role in world politics.

Part I

Conceptualization and drivers of China’s foreign policy

DOI: 10.4324/9781003088288-1

1 Introduction

China’s foreign policy

DOI: 10.4324/9781003088288-2

China since 1949

On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong triumphantly declared that ‘the Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up’ (Mao 1949). Mao’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was hard-earned. It came after a long war with Japan (1937–45), and a civil war in which the Communist Party of China (CPC) defeated the Kuomintang (1946–49), which then retreated to the island of Taiwan. China was devastated after years of unrelenting warfare which had caused the deaths of some 20 million Chinese (World Population Review 2019). There was to be no respite. China was to find itself entangled in the Korean War (1950–53). With the Korean communists facing defeat following intervention by US-led forces, China intervened, battling the US-led United Nations (UN) forces to a stalemate (1950–53).

The Korean intervention reflected China’s decision to align itself with the Soviet camp in February 1950. This led to Beijing’s isolation from the West, thereby heightening its reliance on the Soviet Union for technology, economic aid and other forms of support. During the period 1958–62, the Sino-Soviet alliance collapsed in spectacular fashion. In the late 1960s, tensions with the Soviet Union led to border clashes, culminating in fears of a possible Soviet nuclear attack on China (Shambaugh 2021: 66–68). In a masterstroke, Mao worked with his bête noire Richard Nixon, to engineer a rapprochement, leading to the ground-breaking Shanghai Communique in 1972 (Shanghai Communiqué 1972). This resulted in Nixon’s dramatic visit to China, and subsequent normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979.

Despite having acquired its own nuclear weapons capability in 1964, China remained poor and underdeveloped. Wrecked by ideological and political disputes among its ruling communist elite, the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958–61) and Cultural Revolution (1966–76) were self-inflicted catastrophes. It was only after Mao’s death and the proclamation of the Open Door policy by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 that China abandoned the centrally planned economic model that it had followed since 1949 in favour of trade and investment with the outside world. Only then was China able to focus its attention on economic, social and political reforms that would enable it to participate effectively in the rapidly globalizing international economy (Silk 1985).

Since then, China’s economy has grown dramatically. From 1979 to 2017, apart from a short-lived economic boycott by Western countries and Japan following the Tiananmen Incident in 1989–91, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual average rate of 9.5% (Congressional Research Service 2019: 5). In 2018 and 2019, and despite the emergence of a trade war with the United States, China recorded economic growth rates of 6.6% and 6.1%, respectively (CNBC 2020). Economic growth has made it possible to both lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and to compete as a great power. In 2014, the size of China’s economy exceeded that of the United States. In that year, China’s GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms (adjusting for price differences) was US $18.2 trillion, compared to US $17.5 trillion for the United States.

In 2019, in PPP terms, China’s economy grew to US $25.3 trillion, in contrast to the United States’ US $20.1 trillion (IMF 2020). More significantly, China’s share of global GDP on a PPP basis rose from 2.3% in 1980 to 18.3% in 2017. During the same period, the United States’ share of global GDP on a PPP basis fell from 24.3% to 15.3%. It is not an exaggeration to say that China is on the way to reclaiming the dominant economic position that it has historically occupied. In 1820, before colonial predations and internal dislocations led to its decline, China was the world’s largest economy, with an estimated 32.9% of global GDP at the time. Indeed, measured on a PPP basis, it has been projected that by as early as 2024 China’s economy will be around 56% larger than that of the United States (Congressional Research Service 2019: 10). In July 2019, China also reported that it had US $3.1 trillion in foreign reserves, i.e. the largest in the world (Xinhua 2019).

Reflecting the impact of the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, during the first quarter of 2020, China’s economy slumped to a growth rate of 6.8%. Following the introduction of tough quarantine and isolation measures, China posted overall growth of 2.3% in 2020 (BBC 2021; Trading Economics n.d.). Indeed, China has been one of the first major economies to recover even as the pandemic continues to ravage the rest of the world. This economic reboot complements China’s adoption of a proactive stance towards sharing its vaccines with the rest of the world through the COVAX initiative for global cooperation on developing, producing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization. The United States joined the initiative in 2021 (The Conversation 2020; White House 2021). The global pandemic has thus underscored a longer trend whereby China’s relative power position has increased. In 2020, the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index ranked China second in terms of comprehensive power, with an overall score of 76.1 out of 100, second only to the United States which was ranked first with a score of 81.6. China also led the rankings in half of the Index measures, namely in economic capability, future resources, diplomatic influence and economic relationships (Lowy Institute 2020).

China is now a global economic player. As David Shambaugh has observed, ‘the world has never witnessed a trading power like China … the United States and Japan’s foreign trade did not expand nearly as fast or as broadly as has China’s’ (2013: 157–58). China’s global ambitions are reflected in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; also known as One Belt One Road), which was launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping. The BRI involves (1) the creation of a sprawling network of railways, energy pipelines, highways and streamlined border crossings, connecting China with the rest of Central, South and South-East Asia; (2) the building of some 50 special economic zones modelled after its successful Shenzhen Special Economic Zone; and (3) a network of ports linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans with Europe and Africa. China itself is likely to spend up to US $1.3 trillion by 2027, with more than 60 countries having either signed up or expressed an interest in joining the initiative (Chatzky and McBride 2019). In 2016, to rival the US-led World Bank, China established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. US allies, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Philippines and the Republic of Korea, have agreed to join (Reuters 2016).

China’s dramatic economic growth has enabled it to vastly increase its defence spending. In 2001, its defence budget was estimated to be around US $50 billion. By 2017, this had grown to US $228 billion (using 2016 as the base year). This represented an increase of more than 350% (CSIS n.d.). In 2015, a RAND study concluded that China possessed effective A2/AD (Anti-access, Area Denial) capabilities, such that it is likely that China’s armed forces would prevail over the United States during the initial phase of any conflict in East Asia (RAND 2015: xxxi).

China’s rise since 1989 and its impact on foreign policy

China’s dramatic rise, particularly since the ending of the Cold War in 1989, has enabled it to pose a serious challenge to the US position, both in Asia and at the global level. Thus, in the South China and East China Seas China has backed up its claims to disputed maritime territory by using its armed forces to assert those claims. Since 2013, Chinese military incursions in the Senkaku islands region have led to a ‘new normal’ of escalating tensions in China-Japan relations (Hughes 2013).

In the South China Sea, China has promulgated the so-called nine-dash line, claiming much of the maritime region as its sovereign territory. It has occupied a number of islets, reclaimed land around them, and established military outposts to assert its claims. Beijing has also rejected the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruling in 2016 (PCA 2016). Instead, it has adopted a position that conflicts with international law, one that is premised on historical occupation. The United States and its closest allies in Asia, as well as other claimants to the South China Sea, oppose China’s position. Thus, the US navy has been running Freedom of Navigation Operations (known as FONOPs) in the South China Sea, leading to protests from China (Kang 2017). However, the United States is constrained by the fact that it has not yet signed the Law of the Sea Convention. Moreover, its defence treaty with the Philippines does not contain automatic provisions for the defence of the Philippines, let alone its South China Sea claims.

China has responded by issuing increasingly bellicose pronouncements through its ministries for foreign affairs and defence. For instance, when referring to the trade war between China and the United States during his speech given in June 2019 at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, China’s Minister of Defence stated bluntly that ‘if the U.S. wants to talk, we will keep the door open … if they want a fight, we will fight till the end … bully us? No way’ (Wei 2019). The language and tone adopted by China today is thus in stark contrast to its earlier, more diplomatic face, particularly prior to the global financial crisis in 2008. China’s confidence has grown in tandem with its economic and military rise, and with it has come the desire and expectation among its increasingly nationalistic population that China should reclaim its rightful place of dominance in the region and influence in the world.

As President Xi vowed in his address to the Chinese people in 2017, the party will ‘strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, and work tirelessly to realize the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation’. More ominously, Xi also declared that ‘we have stepped up weapons and equipment development, and made major progress in enhancing military preparedness … the people’s armed forces have taken solid strides on the path of building a powerful military with Chinese characteristics’ (Xi 2017). From China’s perspective, reclaiming its status as a true great power is a natural corollary of having ‘stood up’. This explains the aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy that has come to characterize China’s foreign policy since 2019. A phrase that became widely used by the Chinese media, the term ‘wolf warrior’ is the title of a series of popular patriotic films made in China which feature Chinese special forces in action defending China’s interests. For instance, the film Wolf Warrior 2 which was released in 2017 features Chinese soldiers rescuing Chinese civilians in an African country. It bears the tagline ‘even though a thousand miles away, anyone who affronts China will pay’, thereby encapsulating the essence of wolf warrior diplomacy (CNN 2020).

In 2019, an ugly trade war was launched by the Trump Administration against China. There is now a bipartisan political consensus in the United States that China is its main economic, technological and military peer-competitor, a remarkable development considering the fractiousness and divisiveness of the Trump Administration. This consensus has continued in a post-Trump United States (Leung and Depp 2019; Bloomberg 2021). Indeed, China’s developments in a range of areas, such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce and hypersonic missiles, pose a serious challenge to the United States’ global dominance in technology. Various studies have pointed out that China now possesses an arsenal of increasingly impressive conventional military capabilities such as precision strike cruise missiles, and larger and more sophisticated air and naval forces. These studies suggest that US forces in East Asia would face rapid defeat in the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Authors
• Acknowledgements
• PART I: Conceptualization and drivers of China’s foreign policy
• PART II: China’s relations with the world
• PART III: Instruments of China’s foreign policy
• Index