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The Hidden Currents and Shifting Agenda of Chinese Foreign Policy
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11288 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1986 |
3,276 Words |
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Masaaki Kasahara
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It has been 36 years since the Chinese Communist party took the helm of state in Beijing. During this time a number of events both inside and outside of China have caused great changes in the world situation. Chinese foreign policy has also changed and developed over the years, making it difficult to understand its essentials if one analyzes the policies that emerged from any one particular period only. To understand Chinese foreign policy, it is best to examine its principles or characteristics without overemphasizing individual phenomena.
One might begin by examining those motivating forces that underlie all Chinese diplomacy, of which there are roughly two schools that have emerged over the past 36 years. One is diplomacy based on the Five Principles for peace, and the other is diplomacy supporting revolution. The former, as the slogan indicates, revolves around a policy of peaceful and friendly relationships between foreign countries. Among the aims of this policy are exchange and development of the economy as well as in other fields, and the stabilization and improvement of China's international standing. Therefore, national interest is the motivating force behind this diplomatic policy.
In contrast, the latter policy advocates the spread of socialist revolutions through the support of leftist causes in foreign countries, especially in developing ones, and the propagation of armed struggle to set up socialist regimes in the name of racial liberation. This interference unavoidably causes intergovernmental relations to deteriorate, but Chinese influence at the party level is expanded. Ideological concerns motivate this type of diplomacy.
It should come as no surprise that both policies, the government's Five Principles for peace and ideologically oriented support of revolution fostered by the Communist party, serve solely to increase Chinese influence in the world. They are merely different approaches to solve the same problem, depending upon what the Communist party leadership sees are the needs of the political moment. When the consensus in the party decides that economic stagnation in a capitalist country or disturbances in developing countries has ripened to a crisis point, it will advocate revolution. It was this political environment that prevailed in the 1950s, during the period of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The result was that Beijing "exported revolution" to other Asian countries.
Conversely, when the possibilities for world revolution become remote, the leadership tends to resort to self-examination of existing conditions. To improve the standing of China, whose economic power and military strength are inferior to that of the two superpowers, they know absolutely that they must promote modernization and establish a stable economy. When domestic stabilization is given top priority, a steady standing in the international community is naturally required to realize this: thus, the Five Principles for peace become the order of the day. Examples of such circumstances include: The years of the First Five-Year Plan, the period of economic adjustment after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, and the present day.
The ultimate aim
The final aim of the Chinese Communist party is, needless to say, to communize the entire world; but, its objective at the moment seems to
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