Last week, an important book was published by the British academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan, authored by university professors Ivica Bakota, Zvonimir Stopić, and Mato Njavro, titled:
The Development of Modern Chinese Foreign Policy Thought: The Great Return.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of Chinese foreign policy from the early twentieth century to the contemporary era. It meticulously traces the complex interactions between the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, and the global stage, offering an accurate understanding of China’s dynamic engagement with the world.
Through detailed analysis spanning eight chapters, the book delves into the contextual factors that influenced the early foreign policy ideas of the Chinese Communist Party prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. It systematically reveals the gradual development of these ideas during the Cold War era, uncovering the fundamental and adaptive pathways that have shaped the landscape of Chinese foreign policy over the past three decades.
By relying on primary sources and academic texts, the book integrates both Chinese and global perspectives, shedding new light on the evolution of Chinese foreign policy thought, making it a valuable contribution to the study of China’s global interactions.
The development of contemporary Chinese foreign policy thought is a historical narrative of the complex and interconnected political, social, and economic processes that have influenced the establishment, formation, formulation, and implementation of fundamental principles of action, the development of foreign relations, political consensus, and the worldview regarding external interests, as well as the vision of international relations held by the People’s Republic of China.
The importance of the book’s subject lies in the clear characteristics of China’s relationships, not only with the international community but also with the “world” as a whole. These relationships have influenced the formation of principles and management of Chinese foreign policy and continue to do so. Few countries can claim to be a global superpower with a global economy and a culture rooted in thousands of years of independent civilization. Only a handful of nations are significantly affected by these factors in their contemporary foreign policy and diplomacy.
In this sense, the discussion of the evolution of Chinese foreign policy thought serves as a methodological starting point for the academic and professional study of “diplomatic history,” “history of foreign relations,” and “the evolution of foreign policy” of the People’s Republic of China.
The diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China provides a comprehensive and concise view of the interaction processes and resolution of bilateral and multilateral issues, reflecting “official” China’s relations with other countries and international organizations. However, the foreign relations of any country, especially within the current international framework, go beyond the relationships between governments and state agencies. In China’s case, the limitations of this approach are further expressed in the duality (between the state and the party) of Chinese foreign policy and the specific influence of domestic “Chinese” issues on foreign policy.
The foreign relations of the People’s Republic of China encapsulate not only diplomatic relations with the Chinese government as the main political block but also relations between parties with the Chinese Communist Party as the key actor in Chinese politics, military diplomacy with the People’s Liberation Army as the main and independent defense institution, and many “front” organizations responsible for political cooperation, institutions that promote economic and cultural cooperation, “friendship” organizations, and other entities that significantly impact Chinese foreign relations. While Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau are still considered “inalienable parts of China,” the relationship of these “parts of China” with the international community has become more extensive, richer, and complex under the influence of “reform and economic openness,” and the rapid development of society.
However, this also means that defining their relationships from the perspective of China’s foreign relations has become more challenging. Specifying and clarifying the relationship between Taiwan and the international community is a highly sensitive and complex issue that belongs to the diplomatic level, and its complexity is exacerbated by the fact that the “Taiwan question” and cross-strait relations define the foundations of Chinese foreign policy and often “extend” to many other bilateral relationships of the People’s Republic of China.
The prominence of this issue is clearly reflected in the analysis of Chinese foreign policy, as China strives to free itself from the logic of American pressure through the development of its relationships with the external world and stop prioritizing subjects that reflect the viewpoints of educated Chinese experts in the United States, specific schools of international relations, or simply media biases.
The book addresses issues related to Chinese authority, particularly sensitive chapters of Chinese history that are subject to intense ideological conflict, between homogeneous doctrine and critical speculation on one hand, and historical revisionism and official censorship on the other.
The history of foreign relations of the People’s Republic of China attempts a more comprehensive approach to addressing China’s development with the external world from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 to the present. The number of reliable narratives about the history of China’s foreign relations in the past two decades parallels the growth of China’s international influence.
While topics such as Sino-American relations, the reform and opening-up period, or the Taiwan issue belong even to the shortest narratives of Chinese foreign relations, this general consensus swiftly dissipates when one delves into the continuity of relations with India or the European Union, or the impact of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) on today’s diplomacy, or issues such as inherited regional conflicts and “China’s diaspora diplomacy,” among others. This difficulty largely stems from a high degree of volatility in defining key concepts within Chinese foreign policy.
As China’s global and comprehensive influence grows, its structural value regarding foreign relations as a whole also changes. Simultaneously, the regional impact of Chinese foreign policy expands in parallel with its international influence, while the regional influence on Chinese foreign relations diminishes as asymmetry grows in relations with its neighbors. Furthermore, there is a general tendency to “redraw the economic map” of the rest of the world according to its own terms, gradually changing—for example, by building concrete and meaningful relationships with some distant countries for the first time.
Given this, it is difficult to articulate why one bilateral relationship or issue should take precedence over another, especially if it affects a specific era of foreign relations in differing ways. In this sense, China serves as a model example for a dynamically expanding self-understanding of foreign relations, more comparable to other rising powers under similar historical conditions than any country today.
While the revolutionary redefinition of international relations has long ceased to be a priority in understanding China, it seems impossible to deny that China has maintained its inherently revolutionary nature in redefining the dynamics and nature of its relations with the external world.
Many narratives about the history of Chinese foreign relations, regardless of their high level of expertise, usefulness, and overall quality, are often burdened with explicit bias—be it ideological, nationalistic, or of any other nature. The literature produced by American authors often reflects the binary perspective of Sino-American relations, thereby obscuring the comprehensive view of Chinese foreign relations.
While the focal point of these approaches to contemporary Chinese history lies in the interpretation of the so-called “Tiananmen Incident” in 1989, we encounter a similar debate concerning the official interpretation of the history of Chinese foreign relations regarding many politically sensitive issues in foreign policy.
Indeed, the evolution of Chinese foreign policy appears to revolve around a set of central issues. Chinese foreign policy is often abbreviated into convenient concepts such as the “Century-Long Strategy,” long-term development plans, and carefully planned strategies that should not receive excessive attention in the implementation of foreign policy and tangible interaction with the outside world.
The existence of a long-term and comprehensive plan for interacting with the world is distinct from effecting an automatic change in the nature of relations with the external world. The former is often emphasized as an important strategy arising from the principles of Chinese foreign policy, while the latter is systematically treated as a side effect of rapid adaptation.
By reassessing the aforementioned inherently revolutionary nature of the Chinese factor in the structure of international relations, it becomes possible to view the evolution of Chinese foreign policy as surpassing the narrative of essential confrontation with the United States or the relationship with the international system or the established structure of international behavior rules.
In this sense, when discussing China’s international influence, there is an increasing need to evaluate the spontaneous contributions to international conditions that extend beyond the prescriptions imposed by foreign policy ventures and programs. Ultimately, the outcome of Chinese foreign policy is characterized by economic coexistence with Hong Kong, the insistence on integrative factors in the face of confrontation in cross-strait relations, the constructive direction of nationalism as it has emerged in the 21st century, and the maintenance of its economic hegemony alongside firmer responses to security threats, etc. All these regressive streams in the discussion of Chinese foreign policy deserve to be repositioned in their proper context or at least reconsidered in relation to the prevailing teleological view of Chinese foreign policy.
Furthermore, the main difficulties that arise when describing the evolution of Chinese foreign policy are conceptual in nature and relate to interpretations of the “subject” and “continuity” of Chinese foreign policy, which diverge from the usual narrative standards in historiography.
Researchers in Chinese foreign relations and diplomacy often face the methodological problem of identifying the subject of Chinese politics, that is, identifying the initiator and executor of certain actions, policies, or foreign policy lines. If we take a comparative path, it is relatively easy in Western countries to distinguish between the various cases, institutions, and individuals involved in implementing unified foreign policy. For instance, the subject of American foreign policy is typically identified through the dynamics between the White House, the State Department, Congress, and other institutions, which are presumed to be self-evident in formulating, implementing, or opposing specific internal policies or positions.
Similar to American institutions, distinctions can be made between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the central state, party leadership, and the National People’s Congress, establishing a clear “division of labor” and hierarchy in authority and implementation of foreign policy. However, the “drama” of their interaction is largely suppressed or muted at the official level, and the homogeneous subject of Chinese foreign policy resembles the Thucydides’ Spartans who, after debate, align perfectly with “democratic centralism,” losing their individuality beyond the execution of a collective decision.
The lack of transparency in the Chinese process of discussing and approving foreign policy decisions poses a challenge for both Chinese and foreign researchers alike. Contemporary subjects are filled with “internal” information that is uncertain and unusable in the strict scientific sense, while research interest in some historical subjects is limited due to inaccessible archival materials and sporadic official narratives. In this sense, typical methodological problems include identifying and distinguishing the actors within Chinese foreign policy, demonstrating the degree of each one’s influence on the decision-making process, and highlighting the decision-making process within the Chinese leadership, that is, determining the individual figures behind many ideas, plans, and policies that have been habitually attributed to Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping, or any other top leader.
Additionally, the epic perspective problem when researching the evolution of Chinese foreign policy complicates the discussion of its internal dynamics, while the issue of “continuity” in Chinese foreign policy often manifests in the biases of external researchers in Chinese foreign policy, who are mostly non-Chinese scholars perceiving the end of the Cold War as the end of an era of international relations that occurred simultaneously around the world, including China.
The remarkable survival and relentless rise of China on the global stage over the past three decades prevent the simplification of the continuity of the Chinese system and foreign relations to mere theses of market adaptation, the fragile legitimacy of the ruling elite, or the teleological “mission” of the Chinese party and state. This is the central question regarding the continuity of China’s return to scientific leadership, and its answer must be sought beyond the narrow understanding of foreign policy evolution, intertwined with the complex social, political, and economic processes discussed in this book.
The authors of this book have uniquely contributed to bridging the gap between different stages of the evolution of Chinese foreign policy over a time frame extending to a hundred years, providing an interpretive perspective on its growth. Their comprehensive analysis of the Chinese foreign policy toolkit adds a distinctive dimension to the existing knowledge about this country, which is poised to take on a global role in international politics during a phase marked by turbulence and transformation.
