Slogan Politics

Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy Concepts

Jinghan Zeng

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9789811566820
• eBook ISBN: 9789811566837
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies the three most important Chinese foreign policy concepts under Xi Jinping's leadership – "New Type of Great Power Relations", "Belt and Road Initiative" and "Community of Shared Future for Mankind". Those signature concepts are often considered as China's well-thought-out strategic plans reflecting Beijing's concrete geopolitical vision. This book, however, argues that these views are mistaken. It develops a slogan politics approach to study Chinese foreign policy concepts. The overarching argument is that those concepts should be understood as multifunctional slogans for political communication on the domestic and international stages. This book shows how those concepts function as political slogans to (1) declare intent, (2) assert power and test domestic and international support, (3) promote state propaganda, and (4) call for intellectual support. The slogan politics approach highlights the critical role of China's academic and local actors as well as international actors in shaping China's foreign policy ideas. It provides critical insights to understand how Chinese domestic actors exert their influence and voice their narratives to influence China's policy agenda and debate. It suggests that the existing analyses vastly exaggerate Beijing's capacity to coordinate domestic actors including forging coherent Chinese foreign policy narratives and unifying use of China's policy concepts.

© The Author(s) 2020

J. ZengSlogan PoliticsCritical Studies of the Asia-Pacifichttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6683-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Jinghan Zeng¹

(1)

Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Jinghan Zeng

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Slogan politicsNew type of great power relationsBelt and road initiativeCommunity of shared future for mankindChinese foreign policy

End Abstract

Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has put forward a series of foreign policy concepts—most notably “New Type of Great Power Relations”, “Belt and Road Initiative” and “Community of Shared Future for Mankind”. Generally speaking, they represent China’s visions for China–United States (US) relations, globalization and a globalized world, respectively. This book studies these three concepts. Many international analysts interpret these concepts as Beijing’s calculated strategic moves to build a Sino-centric world order. In the relevant analyses, these concepts are often considered as coherent, consistent strategic plans, reflecting Beijing’s or Xi Jinping’s concrete geopolitical visions. The relevant arguments assume that China’s highly centralized authoritarian system can be easily mobilized to achieve Beijing’s or Xi Jinping’s geopolitical goals. Interestingly, while not directly responding to their international counterparts, similar arguments are made within China. Some Chinese academic and media analysts interpret those concepts as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy to lead China’s national rejuvenation. They are “top-level designed” products of the central government or the top leader, so, the argument goes, those diplomatic concepts reflect the wisdom of Chinese leaders to make China great again.

This book, however, argues that the above views are mistaken. It develops a slogan politics approach to study Chinese foreign policy concepts. The main argument is that those Chinese foreign policy concepts should be understood as political slogans rather than concrete strategic plans. In this book, slogans refer to short and striking political phrases used “as a means of focusing attention and exhorting to action” (Urdang and Robbins 1984: 17). The use of political slogans has a long history in China. This book argues that political slogans are not completely empty or rhetorical, but have several major functions in political communication: (1) declarations of intent, (2) power assertion and a test of domestic and international support, (3) state propaganda as a means of mass persuasion, and (4) a call for intellectual support.

The primary function of a foreign policy concept is to serve as a slogan to declare intention in order to attract attention and urge to action. Many international analyses focus on this part and tend to over-interpret the strategic rationale of those Chinese concepts, considering them as coherent, well-thought-out strategic plans. However, the nature of slogans decides that they are short political phrases and thus broad and vague ideas. As this book will show, when “New Type of Great Power Relations”, “Belt and Road Initiative” and “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” were put forward by Xi Jinping, they were very vague ideas that lacked clear definition or blueprint. The process of filling those ideas with meanings often occurred in a subsequent and incremental manner (Zeng, Xiao, and Breslin 2015). Their introduction and subsequent development follow a “soft” opening approach. As Ian Johnson describes, they are not “envisioned and planned thoroughly, then completed according to that design”, as many see in the West (Johnson 2017: 79). Rather, they “are first announced to big fanfare, structures erected as declarations of intent, and only then filled with content” (Johnson 2017: 79).

When it comes to signature concepts, this declaration of intent signals two levels of power relations: (a) personal vision of the top leader and (b) China’s vision as a regional (if not global) leader. In this regard, the introduction of the concept is not only about communicating the vision but also about its attached power relations. In other words, it is much more than a declaration of intent. This brings in the second function of slogans: assert power and test support. When a critical slogan is put forward by a top leader, it does not only signal his vision but also expects to establish his personal authority. For example, in the first few years when a new leader takes power, he will introduce new slogans to signal his own leadership vision, representing a gesture of walking out from the shadow of his predecessors and thus asserting his power.

In this regard, domestic actors’ response to this slogan does not only represent their feedback to the vision but also political support to this leader. The leader expects domestic actors to echo his slogan in written and oral forms to demonstrate their loyalty. In other words, slogan politics sometimes contains a component of loyalty testing and thus is related to factional and elite politics. Despite foreign policy slogans being mainly external facing, signature ones including “New Type of Great Power Relations”, “Belt and Road Initiative” and “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” perform a similar function of loyalty testing in the domestic arena, in which political actors are expected to repeat those slogans in written and oral forms in order to signal loyalties to the “owner” of those slogans, i.e. Xi Jinping. This sloganization of policy concepts associates the outcome of the concepts with Xi and thus makes them Xi’s political legacy, defining his character and leadership for better or for worse.

In the global arena, Chinese slogans also function in similar ways. Key foreign policy concepts function as slogans to signal not only China’s new vision but also their implied power relations; in other words, the latter is a political gesture to assert China’s regional (if not global) leadership. Many in China believe that only when China becomes powerful enough will its ideas receive global attention.¹ This is also about agenda-setting power that is usually owned by great powers on the global stage. Clearly, if China is insignificant, its ideas are less likely to draw global attention and hence there will be mild or no response to its slogans. Thus, the Chinese government highly welcomes international actors to repeat and adopt those concepts in their speeches and writings, and such actions are often perceived as not only support to the concepts per se but also acknowledgment of China’s rising global status if not leadership. In short, the introduction of those concepts is an assertion of China’s power and functions like a radar to discern international support to China. Thus, the concept and its declared intention are sometimes deliberately kept vague to accommodate the interests of the relevant stakeholders in order to maximize their support.

A positive global response to Chinese slogans would be translated into convincing materials for domestic propaganda, which links with the third function of slogans: state propaganda as a means of mass persuasion. In the Chinese domestic arena, enthusiastic global response can be easily interpreted as evidence of China’s rising global significance and leadership. It helps to enrich the propaganda narrative about the revival of China brought about by the CCP leadership. The message is quite powerful when linking it with China’s historical education of “century of humiliation” in which the weak Qing dynasty let China be invaded and humiliated by Western powers, and now the CCP has led China on the trajectory of national rejuvenation and back to its “rightful” position in the world.

In other words, the positive global response to Chinese slogans provides concrete examples to support the CCP’s narratives about China’s national rejuvenation and thus significantly enhances its domestic political legitimacy. Though performing differently, these three Chinese concepts that this book examines—“New Type of Great Power Relations”, “Belt and Road Initiative” and “Community of Shared Future for Mankind”—have attracted considerable attention on the global stage and thus helped the CCP to achieve a domestic propaganda win. This global attention also grants both the top leader and the Chinese government greater international legitimacy to consolidate their power domestically.

Despite the domestic propaganda win, their international impact is a different picture. This book argues that the international communication of those concepts is not very effective. The Chinese government has invested enormous intellectual and financial resources in promoting those concepts on the global stage. Despite the attention those concepts have attracted, their impact in mass persuasion towards a global, non-Chinese audience has not matched up with China’s promotion investment. In this regard, for external-facing foreign policy concepts, their effectiveness of state propaganda as a means of mass persuasion mainly lies within the domestic instead of the international arena. This problem of international communication is not only a branding matter—such as those Chinese-coined concepts lacking key qualities of popular slogans, i.e. being catchy and simple.²

More importantly, it is also a result of the very shifting and vague nature of how those conceptual meanings are constructed within and without China, which brings in the fourth function of slogans: call for intellectual support. The development of Chinese foreign policy concepts often follows a “soft” opening approach, as previously mentioned. When they are put forward, they are often vague and undefined ideas that are subject to change. This is to say, they are immature ideas that need to be developed and improved. Thus, their introduction is also a call for intellectual support. Vague foreign policy slogans require intellectual power to translate them into more thoughtful ideas. Chinese leaders expect China’s intellectual and policy community to develop those vague concepts into something more concrete after their “soft” opening. In other words, the introduction of a concept serves as a slogan to mobilize domestic actors for intellectual support. As such, the introduction of a key foreign policy concept often stimulates an (semi-)open academic and policy discussion within China. During this process, the Chinese academic and policy community gradually fill those concepts with concrete meanings.

While this process allows the state to make use of intellectual power, it invites the participation of a large number of actors who often bring complexity. The vague nature of Chinese foreign policy concepts means that they are open to interpretation. This allows Chinese academics and policy actors to load those concepts with meanings in their preferred ways. This often produces a variety of narratives that sometimes conflict with each other. In some cases, this phenomenon will be intensified when a foreign policy concept involves substantial economic interests, in which various political and economic actors will actively participate in this process to seek influence.

Those powerful actors will employ their political and intellectual resources to interpret the policy concept in their preferred ways in order to maximize their interests. This often invites a difficult coordination problem that the Chinese central government is struggling to deal with. When it comes to international communication, this makes it impossible for the Chinese central government to forge coherent foreign policy narratives or unify the use of its concepts. It also means that Chinese leaders do not have full control of their concepts even in the domestic arena. In some cases, the academic and policy discussions about the concept may even depart from the leaders’ original intentions. When mixed with factional politics, this further muddies the water of slogan politics and makes it difficult to discern the actual intention of slogan manipulation.

In this regard, the slogan politics approach argues that, during this slogan communication process, it is not only about how top leaders or the central government use the slogan to signal messages to domestic and international actors, but also how those actors react to it. This two-way communication process shapes its conceptual meanings and the level of attention that the concept can focus and the action that it can exhort.

1.1 The Slogan Politics Approach to Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy Concepts

The slogan politics approach offers a series of different perspectives for understanding Chinese foreign policy concepts. First, this approach suggests that China’s foreign policy concepts are best understood as multifunctional political slogans instead of well-envisioned and clearly defined geopolitical strategies. When discussing Chinese diplomatic concepts, many international and Chinese analysts often point to concrete foreign policies backed by carefully calculated strategic plans, as previously mentioned. For example, the “Belt and Road Initiative” has been widely interpreted as a “well-thought-out” “clearly defined” grand strategy of Beijing, reflecting its global ambition to build a Sino-centric world order, as Chapter 4 will discuss. The relevant analyses suggest that the introduction of the “Belt and Road Initiative” was an announcement of Beijing’s carefully crafted masterplan that would be unfolded thoroughly according to the design. The slogan politics approach, however, suggests that the concept of the “Belt and Road Initiative” is a multifunctional political slogan to mobilize domestic and international actors. At its first inception, the “Belt and Road Initiative” contained no concrete meaning and was kept vague to accommodate the interests of domestic and international actors and thus secure their support. It was also an immature idea that needed to be further developed. Since its first inception, this concept has been constantly evolving according to domestic and international responses. In this regard, the introduction of the “Belt and Road Initiative” is a declaration of vague intent and call for intellectual support rather than an announcement of a concrete Chinese plan.

Second, related to the above point, the slogan politics approach focuses on domestic politics logic to explain Chinese foreign policy concepts—in other words, the domestic consumption of Chinese foreign policy ideas—and thus provides new angles to observe internal dynamics. It does not only examine how the top leader signals a slogan, but also how other political actors respond to this slogan. The slogan politics approach argues that the latter is equally (if not more) important than the former. In this regard, it highlights the role of local, subnational actors in shaping Chinese foreign policy concepts. As Chapter 2 will discuss, slogans in China are used to mobilize the political system to follow the leaders’ call as a form of governance. The top leader expects active response and participation from local actors to put his ideas into practice. Many international analyses simply take it for granted that this process is automatic in the authoritarian context. Yet, the reality is not so simple, as to what extent the idea will be received domestically depends on the power relations between the message sender and the receiver. When facing policy slogans from a weak or unfavourable leader, for example, local actors can choose to ignore the slogan from the top.

Not surprisingly, signature slogans are often as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Rationale for Slogan Politics
• 3. Slogan of “New Type of Great Power Relations”
• 4. Slogan of “Belt and Road Initiative”
• 5. Slogan of “Community of Shared Future for Mankind”
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter