SPEAKING FREELY Foreign, domestic policy blur for Beijing
By Nadine Godehardt
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
The annual National People's Congress sessions that always start around the the beginning of March usually checks and approves the government’s work. This year’s NPC session is being watched with great interest all over the world because it will nominate China’s new leadership, confirming Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as new Chinese president.
It will also nominate Li Keqiang, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Political Bureau, as new premier minister
and determine who will be Xi’s key managers of foreign policy - in other words who will succeed State Council Dai Bingguo and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.
The selection of these successors is a first indicator of what direction Chinese foreign policy might take. But what are the crucial challenges and difficulties for these new key managers?
In her recent piece on China’s foreign policy dilemma, Linda Jacobsen from the Lowy Institute for International Policy wrote that foreign policy will not be a top priority of China’s new leader, due to the pressures of maintaining China’s economic growth and social stability.
Though this is in all its generality might be true, China cannot simply withdraw itself from foreign policy issues. China cannot longer secretly hide its capabilities and bide its time. This is the case because, firstly, the country’s foreign policy is more and more paid attention to and, secondly, the boundaries between domestic, regional, and global issues are growing increasingly porous.
Consequently, questions like the situation in post-2014 Afghanistan are not only a mere international issue, but will also have an impact on the Greater Central Asian region, on China’s relations with the Central Asian republics, on the country’s effort in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization framework and last but not least on the political situation in Xinjiang.
Another recent example is the North Korean nuclear test. Many Western commentators have particularly pointed to China’s "responsibility" regarding North Korea. The overall tenure has been that now only China can influence the regime.
Be that as it may, the North Korean case also underscores how China is entangled with complex regional and international issues that the country needs to deal with and, maybe more importantly, is expected to deal with.
There is also the case of ongoing territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea. These disputes further underpin the national sentiments that still drive the different parties (including China) in their quarrel about the distribution of national integrity in East Asia.
These examples reveal two big challenges for China’s foreign policy in the near future:
Firstly, the new leadership and the successors of Dai Bingguo and Yang Jiechi need to manage China’s specific "political intertwinedness" in Asia.
Secondly, China needs to even better engage with its immediate neighborhood. If China’s neighboring states are growing increasingly afraid of the "Chinese dream", it at some point could become true that China has no friends at all which was recently discussed in the Chinese version of Global Times. [1]
As a further consequence, this could also align China’s neighbors closer to the United States and nourish Obama’s new foreign policy direction, the "pivot" to Asia.
So what can China do? As Liu Jia recently discussed in the case of China’s foreign policy towards North Korea, [2] the Chinese leadership should clearly articulate the goals and, more importantly, the limits of China’s foreign policy.
Clear answers to questions like what are China’s core interests and what is absolutely not negotiable for the Chinese leadership would actually raise China’s image in the region and in regard to the United States.
China’s decision to stay indifferent or neutral regarding many foreign policy questions is actually one reason for misunderstandings that emerge between China and the US or China and Europe.
Being indifferent or neutral is not a safe house. On the contrary, it is at its core a political decision which raises as many questions as any benevolent or bellicose political statement.
In the case of China, it only leads to even more anxiety about whether the country really wants to be a responsible power and what "responsibility" would exactly mean for China’s foreign policy in the near future.
Notes:
1. See here, the author argues how the hypothesis that China has no friends is wrong and in fact leads to misperceptions. Huangqiu shibao, February 21, 2013.
2. Liu Jia, Lianhe zaobao, February 13, 2013. Online.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say.Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
Dr Nadine Godehardt is an associate at German Institute for International and Security Affairs
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