China’s Foreign Strategy Is No Longer Passive

In yesterday’s Financial Times of Britain,* former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell posted in the blog, “The A List”: “Enter Xi Jinping, the new president and general secretary of China’s Communist Party,” and cited how “the intensity of his anti-corruption campaign … the ambition of his efforts at economic reform and the much more robust rhetoric all suggest that we are entering a new phase.” This article’s take on how China’s foreign strategy is no longer passive points out that China has recently been not merely responding to events, but acting instead from fundamental initiatives of its own devising.

The article stated that in the West, the long-standing view has been that China has had its focus on correcting internal issues. This included, among other things, political corruption, pollution and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises. So for the last few decades, the general consensus has been that China has considered internal affairs a key imperative to the development of a favorable international environment. The article also noted that in the past, many had considered issues involving China to be primarily isolated in nature, rather than [being indicative of the] individual steps of some grandmaster scheme. As such, the concern with these isolated incidents has been to just focus on avoiding unwarranted accidents or misunderstandings, rather than developing a counterstrategy to meet them.

Campbell indicated that since Xi Jinping took office, the game board has been redefined. This new Chinese president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China has launched a strong fight on corruption, striven to overhaul economic reforms and talks tough when it comes to policy. These are all indicators that we have entered a new stage in Chinese political history. The article states that this new shift is bringing certain changes that will be worth paying attention to, the first of which is that Xi Jinping’s role in the decision-making process is unquestionable. Moreover, the Chinese authorities are also doing their utmost to obscure the inner workings of the political system from the prying eyes of the outside world. In fact, right now no one can be certain who is working with Xi Jinping on his policies. According to various sources, Xi Jinping is playing primary roles in both orchestrating and executing the strategies being devised within the Communist Party of China.

In the past, many Chinese experts viewed Beijing’s responses to issues as empty tough talk, with China simply adopting tactics to deliberately stir up neighboring countries or provoke hostilities from them. Moreover, Beijing would often push hotly contested issues onto the backburner to be dealt with at a later time, and instead be content with just leaving these situations to be shrouded in a haze of uncertainty. Recently, however, China has not just simply been responding to issues, it has been marching to the beat of its own drummer and “walking its talk.” This day was bound to come, and now it is finally here. Xi Jinping’s new strategies have shown those Chinese experts just how outdated their conceptions of the new China model are. Recent activity from China and Xi Jinping’s centralized control model have put the world on notice — [it] had better get an accurate grasp on China’s intents — and let it be known that we mean what we say.

In closing, the article said that along with China’s preservation strategies, there is a distinct purpose. Ongoing high-level foreign relations with China will be extremely important from this point forward. Perhaps there will be nothing else more important in the modern world.

*Editor’s note: The blog by Campbell was published in the July 22 online issue of the Financial Times.