By Shannon Tiezzi
China’s assertive foreign policy may be new, but the thinking behind it is decades old.
Recently, The Diplomat has featured several pieces exploring the nationalism behind China’s foreign policy. Guest author David Gitter looks at Chinese admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and argues that Chinese people and officials alike find something missing from Beijing’s own policies in Putin’s actions. Putin is celebrated for his willingness to stand up to the West (read: the U.S.), something Chinese hardliners want to see Xi Jinping doing more often. Today, China Power blogger Zheng Wang points out the immense perception gap between China and other regional countries. China sees itself as the victim, not the aggressor, in territorial disputes, Wang writes. What other countries see as bullying, China sees as standing up for itself.
Both Gitter and Wang recognize and identify a prevalent strand of Chinese foreign policy thinking — the idea that China can and must stand up to the West (particularly America) after centuries of national humiliation. This foreign policy viewpoint is not new; similar tenets were laid out in the 1996 book China Can Say No. The book was a collection of impassioned essays decrying Western disdain for China, and the importance of China being able to defend its interests against Western attempts at containment. In an interview with National History, one of the authors, Song Qiang, later admitted that the tone of the book might have gone overboard — “we basically wanted to ‘shock people or die trying,’” he said — but he stood by the basic premise. China must “say no… to the culture of foreigner worship, no the mentality of inferiority,” Song said.
Many of the ideas in China Can Say No remain highly influential in Chinese foreign policy thinking today, both at the grassroots and the official level. First, Western countries (and particularly the U.S.) are believed to be conspiring against China, with the goal of preventing China from reclaiming the power and influence it enjoyed prior to the Opium Wars and the “century of national humiliation.” If anything, this idea has grown more pervasive in the last 20 years, as China and the U.S. are increasingly acknowledged to be in a strategic competition for influence in the Asia-Pacific (and even as far away as the African continent).
Read the full story at The Diplomat