By Dingding Chen
Scholars in both the United States and China need new paradigms in understanding one another.
In a recently concluded academic conference on China’s diplomacy, co-organized by China’s new foreign affairs think tank, the Intellisia (Haiguotuzhi) Institute, and Jinan University in Guangzhou, several important questions on China’s current foreign policy were considered. Although there was no consensus on this complex subject, the outside world should pay serious attention to the following questions when trying to understand a rising China.
First, there was a consensus among conference participants that China’s diplomacy is undergoing some significant changes. Nobody disagreed with this. Rather, the debate was about what these changes should be called. Is it a ‘transformation,’ which implies a rather different approach? Or is it just a policy ‘adjustment’? Either way, scholars agreed that we should view China’s diplomacy through a new theoretical perspective.
Second, what factors can explain such changes in China’s diplomacy? Obviously both international and domestic factors contribute to China’s new foreign policy behavior, such as its new assertiveness in the South China Sea. Is it because of China’s increasing power status? Or is Beijing just responding to the United States’ so-called Asia pivot? And how much influence does the top Chinese leadership exercise on China’s diplomacy? Almost everyone would seem to agree that Chinese President Xi Jinping has had a tremendous impact on China’s foreign policy, but we should inquire as to the extent to which this is true. How do we separate systemic and institutional influences from an individual’s influence?
Read the full story at The Diplomat