Diplomatic Strategy Paves the Way for China’s Rise
Chow Chung-yan 18 December 2008
When British historian Paul Kennedy gave his assessment of the international political scene 20 years ago, his remarks on China were harsh.
“The PRC is simultaneously the poorest of the major powers and probably the least well placed strategically,” he wrote in his renowned 1988 work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
But Professor Kennedy predicted that within a decade or two, this ill-positioned developing nation “must be judged as a candidate superpower in its own right”.
“Yet if the PRC suffers from certain chronic hardships, its present leadership seems to be evolving a grand strategy altogether more coherent and forward-looking than that which prevails in Moscow, Washington or Tokyo, not to mention western Europe,” he said.
Today, Professor Kennedy’s prediction may sound like stating the obvious. But 20 or 30 years ago things were far from certain. Before China launched its grand reform and opening policy 30 years ago, the country first had to extricate itself from an extremely hostile external environment.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, China was on a worse footing diplomatically and strategically than any other country in the world.
The memories of its war with the US and other western nations in Korea were still fresh and the once cast-iron Moscow-Beijing axis was shattered, leading to a series of armed border clashes in 1969.
It had territorial disputes with almost all its neighbours, fought battles with India and Vietnam and had unfinished business with Kuomintang members who retreated to Taiwan after a bitter civil war.
Amid all these crises, the Sino-American rapprochement in 1971 was truly revolutionary.
Mao Zedong’s strategic alliance with the US was initially to counterbalance the threat of the Soviet Union - which Beijing saw as its chief foreign danger. A Soviet invasion was a real possibility and China’s top priority was to nullify this threat.
The Sino-US rapprochement stabilised the situation and made war much less likely. When Deng Xiaoping came back to power from political exile after Mao’s death in 1976, Beijing was ready to reassess the global situation and redraw its grand strategy.
By 1978, Chinese leaders no longer believed that another world war was inevitable or imminent.
Deng knew China had to marshal all of its resources to lift the nation out of poverty and this dictated that the nation must keep peace with all its neighbours.
“China at last came to realise that the world war was not going to happen. Deng believed China would enjoy a long period of peace and it must take this opportunity to turn things around and modernise the country,” said Ni Lexiong , a military expert from the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai.
China and the US resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1978 and a year later Deng became the first mainland leader to visit the US. Ties with Japan also improved significantly. Tokyo was to become China’s key investor, a leading trade partner and a model to emulate in the next three decades. The 10 years from 1979 were a honeymoon period for China and the west.
“The west needed China and was full of curiosity and hopes for Deng’s reform. Both the Japanese and American public had a good perception of China,” University of Hong Kong international relations professor Richard Hu said.
It was around this time that Deng set out his famous tao guang yan hui, or lay-low approach, which would become the guiding principle for China’s foreign policy to this day.
The main idea was to avoid engaging in controversial issues, develop good-neighbourly relationships and focus on nurturing strength through trade and foreign investment.
China made steady gains on the diplomatic front in the 1980s. In 1984, it scored a diplomatic coup when it signed a joint declaration with Britain over Hong Kong, with London agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the territory back to Beijing in 1997.
But China’s honeymoon with the west was soon to end. Five years later, Beijing’s brutal crackdown on prodemocracy students shocked the world, leading to international condemnation and a global embargo.
A year later, the communist bloc in the USSR and Eastern Europe collapsed, leaving the US as the world’s sole superpower.
China was isolated, feared and encircled diplomatically and strategically. Its relationship with the west had “almost reversed to the Cultural Revolution period”, Professor Hu said. The new party secretary, Jiang Zemin , handed the difficult task of breaking the diplomatic deadlock to his foreign minister, Qian Qichen .
Beijing actively courted Southeast Asian countries, assuring them that China would be a benign power. Meanwhile, Russia and China found themselves once again close allies.
But the greatest surprise in the post-cold-war era came in 1992, when South Korea switched diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing. Ties with Tokyo also gradually improved and Japan became the first developed country to end the embargo on China.
Gradually, China emerged from the shadow of the June 4 crackdown. In 1997, Mr. Jiang’s visit to the US marked the full restoration of ties with western powers. Taiwan, Tibet and trade, however, remain thorny issues for bilateral relations.
The economic reforms also brought staggering changes to China’s international standing. From 1978 to 2005, China’s average economic growth was 9.5 per cent - making it by far the world’s best performer.
Western analysts debated how China’s rise would have an impact on the global balance of power. The worry gave rise to the “China threat theory”.
To counter this, Hu Jintao , Mr. Jiang’s successor in 2003, came up with the “peaceful rise theory”, which later became the “peaceful development theory”, for fear that the word “rise” would sound too aggressive.
The theory recognises that China’s influence in international economic and security affairs is rapidly increasing, but it maintains that China can avoid the historical problems associated with rising powers through active participation in international organisations and institutions, by adhering to the principle of mutual benefit and by promoting world peace through its development.
Since 1999, China has played a role in various international organisations and global affairs. It joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, concluded a landmark co-operation agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations the following year and played a key role in stabilising the Asian economies during the financial crisis in the mid-90s.
After 30 years of reform and opening up, China has moved from an isolated country to a “regional power with a global ambition and a global reach”.
In the coming decades, China’s interaction with the world would only grow, Professor Hu said. “Since Jiang’s era, the Chinese leadership has realised the importance of globalisation. Now the word ‘globalisation’ is always on their lips,” he said.
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Diplomatic Strategy Paves the Way for China’s Rise
Chow Chung-yan
18 December 2008
When British historian Paul Kennedy gave his assessment of the international political scene 20 years ago, his remarks on China were harsh.
“The PRC is simultaneously the poorest of the major powers and probably the least well placed strategically,” he wrote in his renowned 1988 work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
But Professor Kennedy predicted that within a decade or two, this ill-positioned developing nation “must be judged as a candidate superpower in its own right”.
“Yet if the PRC suffers from certain chronic hardships, its present leadership seems to be evolving a grand strategy altogether more coherent and forward-looking than that which prevails in Moscow, Washington or Tokyo, not to mention western Europe,” he said.
Today, Professor Kennedy’s prediction may sound like stating the obvious. But 20 or 30 years ago things were far from certain. Before China launched its grand reform and opening policy 30 years ago, the country first had to extricate itself from an extremely hostile external environment.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, China was on a worse footing diplomatically and strategically than any other country in the world.
The memories of its war with the US and other western nations in Korea were still fresh and the once cast-iron Moscow-Beijing axis was shattered, leading to a series of armed border clashes in 1969.
It had territorial disputes with almost all its neighbours, fought battles with India and Vietnam and had unfinished business with Kuomintang members who retreated to Taiwan after a bitter civil war.
Amid all these crises, the Sino-American rapprochement in 1971 was truly revolutionary.
Mao Zedong’s strategic alliance with the US was initially to counterbalance the threat of the Soviet Union - which Beijing saw as its chief foreign danger. A Soviet invasion was a real possibility and China’s top priority was to nullify this threat.
The Sino-US rapprochement stabilised the situation and made war much less likely. When Deng Xiaoping came back to power from political exile after Mao’s death in 1976, Beijing was ready to reassess the global situation and redraw its grand strategy.
By 1978, Chinese leaders no longer believed that another world war was inevitable or imminent.
Deng knew China had to marshal all of its resources to lift the nation out of poverty and this dictated that the nation must keep peace with all its neighbours.
“China at last came to realise that the world war was not going to happen. Deng believed China would enjoy a long period of peace and it must take this opportunity to turn things around and modernise the country,” said Ni Lexiong , a military expert from the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai.
China and the US resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1978 and a year later Deng became the first mainland leader to visit the US. Ties with Japan also improved significantly. Tokyo was to become China’s key investor, a leading trade partner and a model to emulate in the next three decades. The 10 years from 1979 were a honeymoon period for China and the west.
“The west needed China and was full of curiosity and hopes for Deng’s reform. Both the Japanese and American public had a good perception of China,” University of Hong Kong international relations professor Richard Hu said.
It was around this time that Deng set out his famous tao guang yan hui, or lay-low approach, which would become the guiding principle for China’s foreign policy to this day.
The main idea was to avoid engaging in controversial issues, develop good-neighbourly relationships and focus on nurturing strength through trade and foreign investment.
China made steady gains on the diplomatic front in the 1980s. In 1984, it scored a diplomatic coup when it signed a joint declaration with Britain over Hong Kong, with London agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the territory back to Beijing in 1997.
But China’s honeymoon with the west was soon to end. Five years later, Beijing’s brutal crackdown on prodemocracy students shocked the world, leading to international condemnation and a global embargo.
A year later, the communist bloc in the USSR and Eastern Europe collapsed, leaving the US as the world’s sole superpower.
China was isolated, feared and encircled diplomatically and strategically. Its relationship with the west had “almost reversed to the Cultural Revolution period”, Professor Hu said. The new party secretary, Jiang Zemin , handed the difficult task of breaking the diplomatic deadlock to his foreign minister, Qian Qichen .
Beijing actively courted Southeast Asian countries, assuring them that China would be a benign power. Meanwhile, Russia and China found themselves once again close allies.
But the greatest surprise in the post-cold-war era came in 1992, when South Korea switched diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing. Ties with Tokyo also gradually improved and Japan became the first developed country to end the embargo on China.
Gradually, China emerged from the shadow of the June 4 crackdown. In 1997, Mr. Jiang’s visit to the US marked the full restoration of ties with western powers. Taiwan, Tibet and trade, however, remain thorny issues for bilateral relations.
The economic reforms also brought staggering changes to China’s international standing. From 1978 to 2005, China’s average economic growth was 9.5 per cent - making it by far the world’s best performer.
Western analysts debated how China’s rise would have an impact on the global balance of power. The worry gave rise to the “China threat theory”.
To counter this, Hu Jintao , Mr. Jiang’s successor in 2003, came up with the “peaceful rise theory”, which later became the “peaceful development theory”, for fear that the word “rise” would sound too aggressive.
The theory recognises that China’s influence in international economic and security affairs is rapidly increasing, but it maintains that China can avoid the historical problems associated with rising powers through active participation in international organisations and institutions, by adhering to the principle of mutual benefit and by promoting world peace through its development.
Since 1999, China has played a role in various international organisations and global affairs. It joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, concluded a landmark co-operation agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations the following year and played a key role in stabilising the Asian economies during the financial crisis in the mid-90s.
After 30 years of reform and opening up, China has moved from an isolated country to a “regional power with a global ambition and a global reach”.
In the coming decades, China’s interaction with the world would only grow, Professor Hu said. “Since Jiang’s era, the Chinese leadership has realised the importance of globalisation. Now the word ‘globalisation’ is always on their lips,” he said.
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