China's Foreign Policy Debates

Chaillot Paper - n°121, September 2010

ZHU Liqun

Against the background of China’s ascent as a major economic power, this Chaillot Paper offers a unique overview of the debates on foreign policy that have taken place in China over the past decade. It analyses the main trends in the domestic strategic debate and the extent to which they are likely to shape China’s role in the international arena. Various issues are highlighted, including the implications of the ‘peaceful rise’ strategy for China’s foreign policy, the question of China’s international identity and China’s responsibility as a stakeholder in the international system. Chinese attitudes to the concepts of sovereignty, hegemony and multipolarity, and how they differ from prevailing Western assumptions, are also explored. The analysis also focuses on the tensions between the ‘peaceful risers’ and the proponents of a more militant nationalism in China.

China’s future evolution as a world power is an issue of paramount importance to the European Union. For the EU, the key challenge is to engage China in a multilateral approach to global governance. In this context, it is hoped that this Chaillot Paper will provide valuable insights into the different schools of thought underpinning the formulation of Chinese foreign policy.

Cited in Le Monde:
Il est en tout cas l'objet de vifs débats parmi les experts en relations internationales chinois, révèle, dans un numéro des Cahiers de Chaillot de 2010 consacré à la politique étrangère chinoise, la chercheuse Zhu Lijun ...

Chaillot Paper - n°121, September 2010
ZHU Liqun

China's Foreign Policy Debates (80 pages, Pdf)

"The concluding chapter attempts to categorise foreign policy debates in

China based on the current dominant schools of thought in Chinese

international relations. In fact, China’s intellectual worldviews range

along a spectrum from ‘offensive realist’ at the one end to globalist

views at the other end. It is therefore becoming difficult to find

consensus among Chinese IR scholars on the various key aspects

of Chinese foreign policy. Realism is quite often perceived as a

dominant ideology which has had deep roots in Chinese culture

for several centuries, but this paper finds that this is not the case

today. The preponderant voice heard in the Chinese IR community

nowadays is that which champions the liberalist worldview: this

view is represented in at least one third of the international relations

publications studied in this volume, while roughly another one third

comes under the category of the constructivist view. Both these schools

of thought argue for more cooperation with and deeper integration

into the international community. The dynamics behind this new

development stem from both internal factors (great social change)

and external factors (international pressure). As a result of constantly

reforming and changing itself in its process of modernisation and

transformation, China now makes a major impact on the outside

world. Meanwhile China itself cannot escape being influenced and

being changed by others in the world. As China embeds itself more

deeply into the international community, foreign policy making in

China is becoming a more complex business, with more issues to

be dealt with, more challenges to be faced on a variety of fronts,

and a larger constellation of actors becoming involved. Among the

latter ranks the IR community, which is going to become more

conspicuous and in the future will play a more significant role in

the process. Current debates on China’s foreign policy will have a

major impact on China’s interaction with international society in

the years to come" (p.13)