CHINA OBSERVATORY 2011-2012
paper
China’s Foreign
Policy and
its Non-interference
Principle:
Farewell or Renewal?
La politique étrangère chinoise et le principe de non-ingérence : crépuscule ou
renouveau ?
Paris, June 8, 2012
International conference on contemporary China
Since the mid-1990s, China has expanded the number
and depth of its diplomatic relationships and joined various
trade and security agreements. China has also deepened
its participation in key multilateral organizations, and helped
address global security issues. China pledged to work
within the international community in order to “maintain
world peace and promote co-development”.
Nevertheless, China’s ability to take up its new international
responsibilities is sometimes restricted by its historical
commitment to the “Non-interference principle” (also
labelled as “Non-Involvement”). Indeed, China’s diplomacy
is driven by an historical commitment to the Five Principles
of Peaceful Co-Existence among which the “Noninterference Principle” is one of the most important pillars.
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Nowadays, China’s expanding global interests are
complicating the sustainability of a policy of noninterference. China is entangled in a network of political
and business relations in overseas markets, sometimes in
unstable regions, and has no choice but to take a more
proactive stance toward global security and diplomatic
issues.
In June 2012, Asia Centre held an international conference
on China’s Foreign Policy sponsored by the Directorate for
Strategic Affairs. This high-level academic event took place
on June 8th, 2012, in Paris. The goal of the conference
was to enhance mutual understanding of key issues in
China’s Foreign Policy by bringing together Chinese and
European scholars. This 2012 edition was entitled “China’s
Foreign Policy and its Non-interference Principle: Farewell
or Renewal?”
This conference aimed to address the issue of the
continuing value of non-interference in China’s foreign
policy: is the principle still sustainable? To what extend?
What are the alternatives developed in China? What are
the contemporary paradoxes of China’s non-interference?
What could be beyond non-interference? The one-day
meeting was divided into two sessions (roundtables); each
session had a chairman, two presenters and a discussant.
Please note that all the papers reproduced here are drafts
and work in progress. Please do not quote without
asking permission to the authors.
1. Chinese Exceptionalism and
Changing Foreign Policy Narrative
Beijing’s
William Callahan,
The University of Manchester
Many people in China and abroad are talking about the
21st century as ‘The Chinese Century’. Reflecting on
their country’s recent economic success, China’s policymakers and opinion-makers are now asking ‘what comes
next?’ How can the PRC convert its growing economic
power into enduring political and cultural influence in Asia
and around the globe?
The mainstream view states that China will continue to build
its soft power as a responsible power within the current
international system (which Chinese see as a western- or
US-dominated system). But new voices are emerging with
the transition to the 5th generation leadership in China.
Noted scholars are looking to the past to plan China’s
future and the world’s future, combing ancient texts
for ideas to guide the Chinese century: Under-Heaven
(tianxia), Great Harmony (datong), and the Kingly Way
(wangdao). China’s current rise to global power, they tell
us, is not without precedent; it is actually the ‘rejuvenation
of the Chinese nation’ to its ‘natural place’ at the center
of the world.1 These public intellectuals often promote
an exceptionalist view of China as a uniquely peaceful
and harmonious civilization. In a world order guided by
these values, Beijing would be the seat of a benevolent
superpower – as opposed to what is described as the
violence of Pax Europa and Pax Americana. While 1990s
nationalist pot-boilers like China Can Say No declared that
‘China does not want to lead any country, and only wants
to lead itself’,2 now many Chinese elites are saying ‘yes’ to
calls for Beijing to lead the globe.
Intervention is an important diplomatic issue: it addresses
the key issues of high politics: war, peace, and justice. But
examining Chinese attitudes toward intervention is also
an excellent way to chart China’s changing foreign policy
narrative. Simply put, it can help us see if and how China
is shifting from a modest foreign policy of ‘bide and hide’
to a more active – and even aggressive – foreign policy of
intervention.
To understand Chinese debates about intervention, we
need to take a short detour into international relations theory
to ask ‘what is intervention?’ In international relations,
intervention refers to foreign intervention, more specifically
a foreign military crossing international borders to enter a
country. This understanding of intervention relies on a key
distinction in IR theory: foreign/domestic, where the border
between inside and outside is sacrosanct, essential and
highly moralized.3 Crossing this theoretical and territorial
border thus is a serious matter. Generally, it is up to the
UN Security Council to determine whether intervention –
usually glossed as humanitarian intervention – is warranted
and legal. Critics of intervention (UN sanctioned or not) see
it as imperialism.
But if we take a wider view of politics, we can complicate
this political-military formulation of intervention. International
territorial borders are not the only borders that order human
experience. There are also economic, social and cultural
borders. Often as part of state-led projects of cultural
governance, these borders are mobilized to essentialize
the nation through national(ized) culture, economy and
society.4 State-sanctioned or not, there are many cultural,
social and economic interventions into domestic politics.
Domestic politics here refers both to national politics (as
opposed to international politics), and to the domestic
politics of daily life such as the welfare state and/or
authoritarian governance.
Non/intervention here takes on a new meaning. China’s
official policy of non-intervention refers to international
politics; this principle is informed by China’s experience of
imperialist intervention (from Japan and the west) during the
Century of National Humiliation.5 But the Chinese state is
highly interventionist into the domestic politics of everyday
life, through 5 Year Economic Plans, the One-Child policy,
propaganda programmes and state censorship. The US
is, by-and-large, the opposite: American exceptionalism
entails both a libertarian suspicion of the welfare state at
home, and a trust in the benevolence of spreading American
ideals abroad – even through military intervention.6 Europe
seems to pursue a resolutely interventionist policy that
guides humanitarian intervention abroad and the domestic
intervention of the social welfare state at home. (Of course,
these broad ideological positions mask the messy politics
of history. After inaugurating his ‘reform and opening’
policy, Deng Xiaoping’s first act was to invade Vietnam to
‘teach it a lesson’. Europe’s austerity-based response to
the global financial crisis is much less interventionist that
the US’s stimulus plan.)
China is fruitfully described as a land of walls: from the walls
around a courtyard house that protect the family to the
Great Wall that protected the empire – and now the Great
Firewall that protects the party-state. Before Deng’s the
reform and opening policy, China (like much of the Third
World) followed an Import Substitution Industrialization
policy to build up economic barriers. But since 1978, the
country has opened up to foreign investment, expertise,
and ideas.
See R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside, Cambridge University
Press, 1993; William Connolly, Identity\Difference: Democratic
Negotiations of Political Paradox, Cornell University Press, 1991;
David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy
and the Politics of Identity, rev. ed., University of Minnesota Press,
1998.
4
See Michael J. Shapiro, Methods and Nations: Cultural
Governance and the Indigenous Subject, Routledge, 2004.
5
See William A. Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation,
Oxford University Press, 2010.
6
See Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double
Edged Sword, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
3
See William A. Callahan and Elena Barabantseva, eds., China
Orders the World: Normative Soft Power and Foreign Policy,
Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2012.
2
He Beilin, ‘Qianyan’ [Foreword], in Song Qiang, Zhang
Zangzang and Qiao Bian, Zhonggou keyi shuo bu [China can
say no] (Beijing: Zhonghua gongshang lianhe chubanshe, 1996),
3. For a discussion of the geopolitics of Chinese nationalism see
Christopher R. Hughes, ‘Reclassifying Chinese Nationalism: The
Geopolitick Turn’, Journal of Contemporary China 20:71 (2011):
601-20.
1
2
To get a sense of the debate over ‘intervention’ in China,
I will look at how three groups of people are thinking about
the future. 1) the official view, voiced by Deng Xiaoping,
Hu Jintao and Dai Bingguo, supports the policies of
international non-intervention and domestic intervention;
2) the quasi- and un-official views of public intellectuals
who employ Chinese exceptionalism to express a mix
of non/intervention: some create civilizational borders
to guard China against foreign cultural invasion from the
west; others are more optimistic and seek to intervene
globally to convert foreigners into China’s magnanimous
civilization. There public intellectuals are important not
because they are dissidents who criticize the party-state,
but because they seek to influence state policy and the
new 5th generation leadership. Lastly, 3) I will go beyond
the academy to listen to the new voices of the post-1980
generation that demand more international intervention
and less domestic intervention.
Official view: international non-intervention and
domestic intervention
As a reaction to imperialist incursions in the 19th and 20th
century, the PRC stressed non-intervention in its first major
foreign policy narrative document: the ‘Five Principles of
Peaceful Co-Existence’ at the Bandung conference 1955.
There are many exceptions to this principle: the PRC had
border skirmishes with most of its neighbors - including
occupying Northeast Burma in the 1950s, and invading
India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979 – and supported
communist insurgencies in numerous countries until the
1980s. But in its self-image, Beijing was always a moral
force for good defending either its own territory or people’s
justice on a global scale.
The present policy of non-interference stems from
Deng Xiaoping’s 24 character formula, which includes the
following guidance for foreign policy: ‘not seeking to lead’
and ‘bide time, conceal capabilities, but do some things’.
(Like many of Deng’s mantras, he never actually said it.)7
Hu Jintao’s foreign policy narratives basically have
elaborated on this ‘lie low’ theme: peaceful rise (and then
peaceful development) place China as a willing participant
in the current international system. Harmonious world,
according to the ‘China’s Peaceful Development Road’
White Paper will be built through ‘mutual dialogues,
exchanges and cooperation’ that lead to ‘mutual
benefit and common development.’ It explains that
‘upholding tolerance and opening to achieve dialogue
among civilizations’ is necessary because the ‘diversity
of civilizations is a basic feature of human society, and
an important driving force for the progress of mankind.’8
‘Diversity’ here is a code word for support of state
sovereignty and non-intervention.
There now is debate in China over whether this policy is
still appropriate. It was formed in the aftermath of the June
4th massacre when China was isolated and weak. But
now that China is strong (and the west-US is in decline),
some the ‘hawks’ (military officers and ultranationalists)
have been saying that China should be more assertive.
See Chen Dingding and Wang Jianwei, ‘Lying Low No More?
China’s New Thinking on the Tao Guang Yang Hui Strategy’,
China: An International Journal 9:2 (2011): 195-216.
8
State Council, ‘China’s Peaceful Development Road,’ Beijing:
Xinhua, December 22, 2005.
7
For many observers in China and abroad, the PRC has
been pursuing a more aggressive foreign policy since
2009, especially in its relations with the US and its Asian
neighbors around the South China Sea, the East China
Sea and the Yellow Sea. In 2010, Chinese foreign minister
Yang Jiechi declared to his Southeast Asian neighbors,
‘China is a big country and other countries are small
countries, and that’s just a fact.’ A Global Times editorial
fleshed this out when it warned ‘small countries’—South
Korea and the Philippines—to stop challenging China in
the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea: ‘If these countries
don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need
to prepare for the sounds of cannons.’9 This interventionist
policy is justified as defending China’s core interests and
national security.
However, neither Hu Jintao nor Dai Bingguo have officially
stated a new foreign policy narrative that changes Beijing’s
views on intervention. Dai has actually been traveling
around China and the world as a ‘firefighter’ to reassure
various publics that China is sticking to its modest foreign
policy narrative of peaceful development and harmonious
world. As he told the British in September 2011:
‘Cooperation is the only choice’.10 But there have been
some adjustments to the ‘bide and hide’ foreign policy. At
China’s 11th Ambassadorial Conference in Summer 2009,
Hu Jintao added two words to the formula: China should
‘uphold (jianchi) keeping a low profile and actively (jiji)
achieve something.’11 Dai later told Asians that they should
defer to China’s ‘comfort level’ in regional politics.12
That people could get so excited over the addition of two
adverbs and Dai’s vague statement shows that Beijing’s
official foreign policy has been quite stable. It supports state
sovereignty against foreign intervention, which it generally
sees as the tactic of ‘western imperialists’, even when it is
presented as humanitarian intervention. This is a defensive
foreign policy that aims to protect Chinese difference in a
multi-civilizational and multi-polar world.
Beijing is also increasingly dealing with two audiences: the
international audience of diplomats and the global media,
and the domestic audience of an increasingly vocal public
opinion. Here the main threat is not ‘US hegemony’, but
activist netizens who see Beijing’s foreign policy as too
weak.
In domestic space, however, China has been very
interventionist. Since the global financial crisis, the
liberalization of the Chinese economy has stalled. Rather
than ‘the retreat of the state, advance of the private sector’
(guotui minjin), we have seen an ‘advance of the state,
retreat of the private sector’ (guojin mintui) in economics.
Since the Arab Uprising (February 2011) started, there
has been a major crackdown against political and social
‘Don’t Take Peaceful Approach for Granted’, Global Times,
October 25, 2011.
10
Dai Bingguo, ‘Cooperation is the only choice’, Chatham House,
September 26, 2011.
11
See Bonnie S. Glaser and Benjamin Dooley, ‘China’s 11th
Ambassadorial Conference Signals Continuity and Change in
Foreign Policy’, China Brief 9:22 (November 4, 2009); M. Tayor
Fravel, ‘Revising Deng’s Foreign Policy’, ForeignPolicy.com,
January 17, 2012.
12
戴秉国:
在亚太做什么、怎么做
要照顾大家的舒适
度，Xinhua net, November 22, 2011, http://news.china.com/
domestic/945/20111122/16880700.html.
9
3
activists as well.
Public Intellectuals:
Exceptionalism
Defensive
and
Offensive
After Hu Jintao introduced the harmonious world narrative
in 2005, thousands of commentators and academics
have used it to describe not just Beijing’s rather modest
foreign policy, but a new world order. Rather than focusing
on how China would use the U.N. and international law
to build a harmonious world, these public intellectuals are
more interested in how Chinese ideals can help shape the
post-American world order.
Harmonious world expresses the ideals of the official
version of Chinese exceptionalism, which sees China as
an inherently peaceful civilization—as opposed to what is
seen as western civilization’s inherent violence. (Actually,
according China’s Academy of Military Science, in its
long imperial history (770 BC-1912 AD) China engaged in
3,756 wars,13 for an average of 1.4 wars per year.) These
public intellectuals, however, go beyond invocations of
peaceful civilization to see traditional Chinese ideas as
the key to peaceful world order. They thus are reviving
and reinterpreting ancient ideals of All-under-Heaven
(tianxia) and Great Harmony (datong) for the 21st century.
This public discussion of China’s future is inspired by the
transition to the 5th generation leadership in 2012-13;
China’s intellectuals are promoting new ideas in public
space with the hope that they can influence Xi Jinping’s
new signature foreign policy narratives.
I have commented at length elsewhere on philosopher
Zhao Tingyang’s The Tianxia System.14 Here I would like to
point out that his borderless holistic world means that there
are both 1) no foreign interventions – because the world is
unified – and 2) massive interventions in domestic space
because the Tianxia system depends upon everyone in
the world converting to Chinese values. Zhao’s goal in
this highly moralized and normative order is to ‘transform
enemies into friends, and the bad into the good’. In his
later book, Investigations of the Bad World (2009), Zhao
feels that the goal of Chinese philosophy is to improve all
the nations and peoples of the world; against the liberal
ethic of ‘live-and-let-live,’ Zhao promotes what he calls the
Confucian ethic of ‘improve-if-let-improve.’15 I see this as a
strong interventionist policy that squeezes out any space
for different ways of life.
Great Harmony is also a popular topic in Chinese-style
futurology that looks to the past for ideals to shape a
utopian future. In recent years, many public intellectuals
have been publishing books and articles describing
China’s future as the world’s future: Pan Wei’s The China
Fu Zhongxia, et al., eds. Zhongguo lidai zhanzheng nianbiao
[Historical chronology of warfare in China]. Beijing: Jiefangjun
chubanshe, 2002, cited in Yuan-kang Wang, ‘The Chinese World
Order and War in Asian History’, Presented at the American Political
Science Association annual conference, Toronto (September 2009).
14
William A. Callahan, ‘Chinese Visions of World Order: Posthegemonic or a New Hegemony?’, International Studies Review
10 (2008), pp. 749-61; Zhao Tingyang, Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu
zhexue daolun [The under-heaven system: The philosophy for the
world institution], Beijing: Zhongguo renmin chubanshe, 2011.
15
Zhao Tingyang, Huai shijie yanjiu [Investigations of the Bad
World], Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2009,
119-20.
13
Model (Zhongguo moshi, 2009), Liu Mingfu’s The China
Dream (Zhongguo meng, 2010), Hu Angang’s 2030 China
(2030 Zhongguo, 2011), and Zhang Wei-wei’s China
Shock (Zhongguo zhenhan, 2011).16
Curiously, the endgame for most of China’s chief
economic, social and political forecasters is the World of
Great Harmony (世界大同 shijie datong, 天下大同 tianxia
datong). World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin has
a calligraphic scroll of the Great Harmony passage from
the Book of Rites (Liji) on his wall in Washington D.C. He
recently explained that its ideals guide his plans for the
global economy: ‘it advocates a world in which everyone
trusts each other, cares for others and not only for himself.
… This was my vision for the World Bank. … We try to
work on poverty reduction and promote sustainable
growth’.17 In 2030 China Hu Angang, the PRC’s top
political-economist who is closely involved in drafting
Beijing’s Five Year Plans, concludes that by 2030 China
will create a sinocentric world order to establish the World
of Great Harmony, which is not only ‘China’s dream’, but is
also the ‘world’s dream’.18
What does Great Harmony mean here? Descriptions are
generally vague; but Pan Wei’s detailed outline in The
China Model can give us some clues.
Pan argues that the patriarchal values of village life, which is
presented as a conflict-free organic society, are the source
of the PRC’s economic success. He sees the PRC as
village society writ large, where the party loves the people
like a caring father, and the masses are loyal, grateful and
respectful, like good children. There is no room in this
national village for open debate in ‘civil society’, which
Pan condemns as a battleground of special interests that
can only divide the organic whole. For him, diversity is
‘division’, and thus a problem that needs to be solved by
state intervention. Unity here is the guiding value because
Pan sees social order as a process of integrating divisions
into the organic whole, ultimately into the World of Great
Harmony.19 As part of the emerging trend of Chinese exceptionalism,
Pan and Zhang Wei-wei see international politics as a battle
of civilizations: the China model vs. the ‘Western’ model.
China’s model is unique, we are told, due to its unique
Pan Wei, ed., Zhongguo moshi jiedu renmin gongheguo de
60 nian [The China model: Reading 60 years of the People’s
Republic], Beijing: Zhongyang bianshi chubanshe, 2009); Liu
Mingfu, Zhongguo meng: Hou Meiguo shidai de daguo siwei
zhanlüe dingwei [The China dream: The great power thinking and
strategic positioning of China in the post-American era], Beijing:
Zhongguo youyi chuban gongsi, 2010; Hu Angang, Yan Yilong
and Wei Xing, 2030 Zhongguo: Mianxiang gongtong fuyu [2030
China: Towards Common Prosperity], Beijing: Zhongguo renmin
daxue chubanshe, 2011; Zhang Wei-wei, Zhongguo zhenhan:
Yige ‘wenming xing guojia’ de jueqi [China Shock: The rise of a
‘civilization-state’] Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 2011.
17
Cited in Annie Maccoby Berglof, ‘Economic Confucian’,
Financial Times, November 18, 2011.
18
Hu, Yan and Wei, 2030 Zhongguo, 188.
19
Pan Wei, ‘Dangdai Zhonghua tizhi: Zhongguo moshi de jingji,
zhengzhi, shehui jiexi’ [Modern Chinese System: Analysis of the
China Model of economics, politics and society] in Zhongguo
moshi jiedu renmin gongheguo de 60 nian [The China Model:
Reading 60 years of the People’s Republic] ed. Pan Wei (Beijing:
Zhongyang bianshi chubanshe, 2009), 18, 29 (3-85).
16
4
history and culture. Since China is figured as completely
different from Europe and America, Pan and Zhang argue
that it can only be judged by its own ‘Oriental civilization’
values. While Pan deconstructs the ‘western universals’ of
liberal democracy, he simultaneously asserts an essential,
singular and unified version of Chinese civilization. The
China model thus is more than an economic plan than
can be shared with other countries: it is the sign of China’s
unique ‘cultural renaissance.’
The upshot is a strong sense of international nonintervention into a country’s economic, cultural and political
affairs: Chinese exceptionalism builds up a discursive wall
to protect Chinese politics from ‘critics’ who are all labeled
as ‘foreign’. Thus Chinese people who advocate deeper
political reform, according to Pan, really want ‘to demolish
the Forbidden City in order to build the White House’ in
Beijing, so ‘foreign forces can control China’s military,
politics, economy and society.’20
On the other hand, he is a strong supporter of state
intervention into Chinese daily life; his model village
actually collapses the distinction between state and
society. Pan’s China model, therefore, looks to Chinese
civilization to support Beijing’s current mix of policies: a
non-interventionist foreign policy and a very interventionist
domestic policy.
Chinese exceptionalism here is primarily defensive:
‘uniqueness’ is used to protect China from criticism, which
is coded as ‘foreign’ and thus illegitimate. But Chinese
exceptionalism could easily switch to go on the offensive,
where the goal is remake the world in China’s image.
Hu Angang’s World of Great Harmony does not offer a world
of equality; it advocates a ‘great reversal’ of North/South
relations so the South can dominate the world in a way
that reproduces the logic of power as hierarchical coercion.
Great Harmony’s search for unity thus is epistemological
as well as ontological: ‘one world’ demands ‘one dream’,
as the 2008 Beijing Olympics slogan instructed us. Yet in
this sinocentric world order of the future, interventionism is
a persistent theme where peace is refigured as ‘pacifying’,
and harmony as ‘harmonizing’ as China seeks to convert
the world.
Officials and public intellectuals often say that the PRC
will be a moral power, as opposed to a ‘hegemonic’ one
like the US. Yet when they insist that the PRC will never
be ‘hegemonic’, they are not saying that China will not
dominate; they are merely saying that the PRC will never
see itself as immoral—which, as experience shows, few
countries do. To be fair, the US (and the EU) often make
similar arguments—but this suggests that China will not be
a different kind of world leader if and when it gains global
power.
Dai Bingguo. Although the foreign policy narrative of the 5th
generation leadership is still unclear, we should note that
most of those who promote the China model, the China
dream, the China road, All-under-Heaven, and Great
Harmony are from the 5th generation – many of whom
were red guards and then sent-down youth during the
Cultural Revolution.
This last section will consider attitudes toward non/
intervention by a different generation: the ‘post-1980
generation’, which was the first generation of one-child
policy children who were born in the 1980s, and grew up in
the reform era’s environment of increasing prosperity and
freedom. In particular, I am interested in the ideas of social
critic Han Han’s blog and Xu Jinglei’s popular feature film
‘Du Lala shengzhi ji’ [Du Lala’s Promotion Diary].
Han Han’s blogs and the feature film ‘Du Lala’s Promotion
Diary’ are not the usual sources for Chinese foreign policy
studies. Instead of engaging in the high politics of war,
peace and diplomacy, they examine the everyday life of
ordinary people in China. Han and Lala thus are interesting
and important because they engage in international politics
at the sharp end. While it is normal for academics and
officials to discuss the China Model (and the Washington
Consensus) in terms of macroeconomics and geopolitics,
these two characters present detailed cases of how non/
intervention issues impact ordinary people in the PRC.
They show how young women and men are thinking about
China’s future and the world’s future in terms of gendered
and classed perspectives that promise new forms of non/
intervention.
Han Han is a fascinating figure whose life embodies the
tensions faced by many Chinese people today: he grew
up in the country but now lives in the city; he dropped out
of high school, but as a best-selling novelist he is part of
the cultural elite; although a serious writer, China’s literati
see him as a mediocre dilettante; rather than limit himself
to intellectual pursuits, Han decided to follow his dream to
become a professional race car driver—where he has been
quite successful (see Fig. 1).21 Han thus is seen by many as
the voice of ‘post-1980 generation’. This multimedia star
is perhaps best known for his ‘TwoCold’ blog, which has
received half a billion hits since it began in 2006; it thus
is the most popular blog in China—and the most popular
blog in the world. Non/Intervention and the Post-1980 Generation
To get new and interesting ideas about world order,
sometimes it is necessary to leave the halls of power of both
government ministries and national universities to hear what
another set of voices is saying. Chinese commentators
like to think of politics in terms of generations: China’s
moderate foreign policy thus was made by the 2nd, 3rd
and 4th generations: Deng, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and
20
Pan, ‘Dangdai Zhonghua tizhi’, 3, 83.
Fig. 1: Han Han
Source: www.chinatibetnews.cn
As a writer, Han is particularly concerned with Beijing’s
state intervention into the cultural life. In particular, he often
For a profile of Han see Evan Osnos, ‘The Han Dynasty’, The
New Yorker, July 4, 2011, 50-59.
21
5
writes about the shifting rules of censorship in China. Many
of his recent blogs have criticized how official censorship
produces absurd results: during the Diaoyu islands
controversy with Japan in September 2010, for example,
his post was rejected because it used the phrase ‘Diaoyu
islands’ which was censored as a ‘sensitive word’ (minggan
ci). Han solved this problem by using the Japanese name,
Senkaku, which was strangely acceptable to the web
filters even though it is anathema to Chinese nationalists.22
Although many of Han’s blogs are overtly political,23 his
most effective commentaries are less activist. Rather
than play on emotions in a call for grand revolution, many
of his posts are rational calculations of the costs of the
China Model. Like a literary accountant, in blog after blog
Han talks about life in China by listing the costs of living in
Shanghai: the cost of renting and then buying a home, the
cost of food, drink and gasoline, as well as other bread and
butter issues.24 The success of the China Model, it turns
out, is not China’s unique civilization or organic society—it
is a fiscal policy that squeezes ordinary Chinese to raise
money for cheap loans to export-oriented State-Owned
Enterprises.25
When read together, Han’s multiple blogs thus point
to the social, economic and political costs of the partystate’s interventionist policies. Han thus criticizes his
Chinese compatriots who protest against Japan because
‘demonstrations against foreigners by people who are not
allowed to protest at home are utterly worthless. They are
nothing but a group dance’.26
Han Han doesn’t often comment on international politics,
and he has very little experience living abroad. (He went
to Taiwan for the first time in 2012.) But at the start of the
Libyan uprising (2011) Han declared that dictators cannot
hide behind the legalities of international sovereignty. This
thinly veiled threat to the Chinese leadership deserves to
be quoted in full:
More than a few people around me are paying
close attention to the turmoil in Libya, and even one
fan of Libyan football I know still thinks it’s Belgium
that has gone awry. China voted once to impose
sanctions, and abstained in the vote to establish
a no-fly zone, how wonderful. Now, today, people
won’t stop fighting over Gaddafi, and of course
they have split into two camps: one says Gaddafi
is completely evil, a corrupt tyrant who slaughters
civilians and blows up airliners and ought to be
obliteration by the Coalition. Then there’s the
other camp which says these are Libya’s internal
affairs and other countries should not interfere, that
Western countries either just want to get some oil
out of Libya or take the focus off their own internal
conflicts, that they have ulterior motives.
Han, ‘Baozhu feifa zifu’ [Protect illegal content], TwoCold blog,
September 13, 2010.
23
See Han, ‘Liuxing de yiyi’ [The meaning of demonstrations],
TwoCold blog, September 13, 2010. This blog was ‘harmonized’,
and is available at Han Han digest: http://www.hanhandigest.
com/?p=206.
24
Han, ‘Mashang huidie, diepo yiqian’ [Prices will drop below
1000 any moment now], TwoCold Blog, February 22, 2011.
25
See David Barboza, ‘As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s
People Are Left Behind’, New York Times, October 9, 2011.
26
Han, ‘Liuxing de yiyi.’
22
So when friends ask for my view, I say, my view is
very simple: dictators have no internal affairs, and
slaughterers ought to be invaded and eliminated.
Yesterday just happened to be the brightest moon
in 19 years. It doesn’t matter who, it doesn’t matter
why; in the name of the moon, annihilate him.27
Han thus is critical of the costs of Beijing’s domestic
intervention into the daily life of his Chinese compatriots.
However, he supports foreign intervention against brutal
dictators.
Du Lala’s Chimerican Dream
While it is common to see US-China relations in terms of
a battle of stereotypes—Chinese families vs. American
individuals—the blockbuster film ‘Du Lala’s Promotion
Diary’, which is based on a novel by the same name,
tells quite a different tale.28 Although China’s futurologists
characteristically see international politics as a grand
struggle between China and the US, this feature film shows
how American and Chinese people can work together for
mutual benefit. Du Lala is interesting because she crosses
various borders, and complicates any calculus of non/
intervention.
The film tells the story of a young woman, Du Lala,
pursuing her ‘dream job’ in DB, an American Fortune
500 corporation that is trying to penetrate the Chinese
market. Hence the two national dreams dissolve into
the Chimerican dream: the western ‘China dream’ of the
PRC as the ‘last great untapped market on Earth’,29 and
a Chinese woman’s ‘American dream’ of upward mobility
in the PRC. (Here I follow Cullen’s sympathetically critical
analysis of American dream discourse that points to six
interrelated themes: religious freedom, political freedom,
upward mobility, equality, home ownership, and fame and
fortune.30)
The point is to see how this particular Chimerican dream
of overlapping interests and shared values exemplifies the
complexities of non/intervention. What can Du Lala’s rise
in the cosmopolitan corporate world tell us patterns for
foreign and domestic non/intervention?
The first half of the film charts Lala’s advancement in DB
as a metaphor for the shift in China’s economic policy from
the domestic intervention of national economic plans to the
foreign intervention of the global market economy. Here the
corporate world is a new world of endless possibilities and
dangers. Even the task of finding a job is relatively novel in
China: until the end of the 1990s the party-state assigned
jobs to most college graduates. So the details of applying
for a job, interviewing and job training that appear ordinary
to Western viewers are still extraordinary to the Chinese
audience.
Han, ‘Ducaizhe meiyou neizheng’ [Dictators don’t have internal
affairs], TwoCold blog, March 21, 2011. This translation is from
the ‘Shanghaiist’, http://shanghaiist.com/2011/03/22/han_han_on_
muammar_gaddafi.php.
28
Xu Jinglei, Dir., ‘Du Lala shengzhi ji’ [Du Lala’s Promotion
Diary; or Go Lala Go!] (2010); Li Ke, Du Lala shengzhi ji [Du
Lala’s promotion diary] (Shaanxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007).
29
Joe Studwell, The China Dream: The Quest for the Last Great
Untapped Market on Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 2003).
30
Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea
That Shaped a Nation, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
27
6
While exotic ideas like ‘face’ and ‘guanxi-connections’
dominate Western management books about business
in China (and a few Chinese-style IR theory articles31),
Lala is presented to us as an ordinary woman. She has
no family connections, a B.A. in English from an average
university, and is pretty in a ‘girl next door’ kind of way.
Lala thus represents the Chinese ‘everywoman’ from the
post-1980 generation: she has to compete for the entry
level receptionist job at DB through the normal application
process. Lala thus is a ‘self-made woman’ who climbs the
corporate ladder by working hard and taking advantage of
opportunities. Like a Chinese Ben Franklin, she declares
‘I believe hard work can bring success. Laziness never
accomplishes anything.’
While Helen is describing each level, the film cuts to shots
of people in DB who exemplify each category. So when
she concludes ‘What does it mean to be rich? That’s
what it means to be rich’, the screen shows Howard the
American CEO lounging in the garden outside his huge
house in Beijing’s suburbs.
Rather than fighting this ‘American imperialist’ to promote
the China Model as Pan Wei and Hu Angang would
demand, Lala takes Howard as her role model for a
successful career.
The secret of Lala’s success is not radical: find out the rules
and exploit them. Her career strategy, which she discusses
in an online diary, repeats the ‘efficiency and innovation’
mantra of the orientation meeting: ‘How to keep your boss
appreciating you. Work effectively. You also must show
potential. If you don’t work hard and don’t show your talent
then you won’t get anywhere.’
Lala’s career plan seems to employ a naïve mish-mash of
self-help slogans. Yet it’s hard to be too critical because
she is so wildly successful. Each year Lala advances, and
the film charts her rise with an on-screen personnel file-like
accounting that lists her age, new title, and new salary for
each new promotion.
Fig. 2 Du Lala at DB
Source: Screenshot of ‘Du Lala shengji zi’, 2010.
We follow Lala as she is introduced to the exotic bordercrossing experience of working in a foreign multinational
corporation in Beijing. The film thus takes us to Lala’s
orientation meeting where the Human Resources
Department (HR) explains that ‘DB is a global Fortune
500 company. Everything we do is S.O.P. [Standard
Operating Procedure]. … DB is an American company
that values efficiency and innovation.’ While HR gives Lala
a handbook full of rules and regulations, while they are
shopping after work Lala’s new office pal Helen explains the
two most important rules: (1) don’t embezzle the company’s
money, and (2) no office romance. Helen then gives Lala
the lay of the land at DB, in a class analysis reminiscent of
Mao Zedong’s ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in
Hunan’ (1927):
• Everyone below management is ‘small potatoes’:
they make less than 4000 RMB per month
• Managers are the ‘middle class’: they have their
own cars and an annual salary over 200,000 RMB
• Directors are the ‘upper class’: they make over
500,000 RMB a year
• The Beijing-based CEO makes more than 1 million
RMB a year
Lala’s meteoric rise is also reflected in her wardrobe. Helen
not only teaches Lala the unspoken rules of the game,
but also gives her advice on how to shop and what to
wear. As Lala climbs the corporate ladder she not only
gains self-confidence, but also gets more fashionable
clothes. To highlight the shared values of global business
and the world of fashion, the film’s producers recruited the
costume designer from ‘Sex in the City’ to be the fashion
advisor for ‘Du Lala.’
‘Du Lala’ thus is an instruction manual both for how to
succeed in corporate China and for how to be a consumer.
China’s 12th Five Year Plan promises that the country’s
economy will soon be fuelled by domestic consumption
(rather than foreign exports that lead to trade imbalances
with the US and the EU).32 ‘Du Lala’s Promotion Diary’
gives an idealized view of how this would work. The
movie’s establishing shots show Beijing as a capitalist
utopia: the film cuts between billboards, shiny skylines,
moving traffic, clear blue skies, and shopping malls. At one
point, Lala explains that there are two ways for women
to ‘decompress’ from hard work: eat chocolate and go
shopping. To recover from breaking up with her boyfriend,
Lala pushes retail therapy to the limit, spending all of her
savings on a sports car, which she buys with a credit card.
Although this may not be remarkable to Western viewers,
buying your first car and using a credit card are still exotic
and exciting experiences for China’s new middle class.
The film and the novel thus both tell people how to be
‘modern’: how to work, live—and succeed—in the ruthless
global market economy that knits together Chinese and
American individuals, rules, aspirations and values.
Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo guomin jingji he shehui fazhan
di shier ge wunian guihua gangyao [Outline 12th Five-Year
Programme for National Economic Social Development of the
People’s Republic of China], Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, March
2011.
32
Qin Yaqing, ‘Guanxi benwei yu guocheng jian’gou: jiang
Zhongguo linian zhiru guoji guanxi lilun’ [Relationality and
Processual Construction: Bringing Chinese Ideas into International
Relations Theory] Zhongguo shehui kexue no. 4 (2009): 5–20.
31
7
The Du Lala Industry
‘Du Lala’s Promotion Diary’ is very influential in China,
especially among recent college graduates and whitecollar workers. It has become much more than a novel
or a film: it is now an industry. The original novel was a
bestseller, and its author Li Ke published two sequels
that were very popular. Du Lala was made into a movie
by actor-director Xu Jinglei, a stage play, and a television
series—all of which have been successful. The novels
sold millions of legitimate copies, and even more pirated
copies: one of my friends got Du Lala at a grey market in
Beijing where you literally buy pirated books by the kilo.
In China, knock-offs—different books that play on the
successful title—are another mark of success. My favorite
is The Story of Mao Mao’s Promotion: a novel about a
female cat’s ‘white collar’ life.33
Du Lala’s Promotion Diary is part of a new genre of
‘workplace novels’ that has taken China by storm. The
New Yorker correspondent Leslie T. Chang describes their
appeal in simple terms: ‘What do Chinese, some of the
hardest-working people on the planet, read in their spare
time? Novels about work.’34 Some people read workplace
novels for fun as chick lit or fast food fiction. But most
see Du Lala’s Promotion Diary as a reference book of
strategies for getting ahead in the corporate world. Li Ke,
the pseudonym for someone who worked at IBM China,
thus shares the riches of her experience in an American
multinational with China’s up-and-coming middle class.
While many Chinese-style IR theories describe vague
utopia—All-under-Heaven, Great Harmony, the Kingly
Way, organic village society—with little sense of how
they could be put into practice, Li Ke’s novel provides a
detailed roadmap of instructions for the path to success:
find a good industry, a good company in that industry, the
strongest sector in that company, a strong and supportive
boss, and so on.35 The book’s preface thus declares that
Lala’s story of working in a foreign company is even more
‘valuable than Bill Gates’.36
Rather than being a story of life-or-death struggles in the
corporate world, ‘Du Lala’s Promotion Diary’ is more like
Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People
(the Chinese translation of which is very popular in the
PRC). Lala’s career strategy employs what Taiwanese
scholar-activist Lung Ying-tai calls the ‘power of civility’
for success in China’s corporate world.37 It shows how an
ordinary woman—‘a good girl’—can succeed in business
through hard work and talent rather than through scheming
and backstabbing.
Mao Mao, Mao Mao de bailing shenghuo III [Mao Mao’s white
collar life III], Shaanxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2008.
34
Leslie T. Chang, ‘Working Titles’, The New Yorker, February 6,
2012, 30 (30-4).
35
Li Ke, ‘Zixu’ [Preface], in Du Lala shengzhi ji [Du Lala’s
promotion diary] by Li Ke (Shaanxi shifan daxue chubanshe,
2007), v. (v-vi)
36
Hao Jian, ‘Guanyu ‘Du Lala shengzhiji’’ [About ‘Du Lala’s
promotion diary’] in Du Lala shengzhi ji [Du Lala’s promotion
diary] by Li Ke (Shaanxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007), i. (i-iv)
37
Lung Ying-tai, ‘Wenming de liliang: Cong ‘Xiangchou’ dao
‘Meilidao’’ [The power of civility: From ‘Homesickness’ to
‘Formosa’], speech given at Peking University, August 1, 2010.
33
Du Lala’s uncritical view of the China model is wildly
popular, especially among young women. The Du Lala
industry has generated fan-books: We All Could Be Lala
highlights how the Du Lala character itself has become
a role model.38 As one ‘office lady’ explains: ‘I don’t feel
alone anymore. There are thousands of Du Lalas who try
to make it on their own and live better lives, like me. It’s a
very practical book for active young women.’39
Even those with relatively stable jobs at a university, like
my friend Wang Baixue, feel that Du Lala’s experience of a
successful career that does not rely on family connections
‘rings true, it’s our own story.’ Lala ‘represents the post1980 generation’s way of thinking’, Wang explained.
‘She’s a good girl, who respects her parents, but doesn’t
necessarily do what they say. She listens to them, and
then does what she wants.’40 Du Lala thus shows young
women how they can live life on their own terms—without
intervention from either their family or the state.
Mixed Feelings
If the first half of the movie is a guidebook about how to be a
modern manager—and how to be a modern consumer—
then the second half shows the costs of following the rules.
Lala is known in her office for her single-minded pursuit of
corporate success.
Lala’s promotion diary is a story of women, by women, and
for women. She is surrounded by the problems of modern
life where women constantly have to choose between
career and family in a system dominated by men. She
left her previous job because her old boss was sexually
harassing her. At DB the secretaries are all women, whose
career objective is to join the middle class by marrying a
‘manager.’ DB’s rule against office romance is weighted
against women: when Helen’s affair with a manager is
discovered, she’s forced to quit since she’s a secretary.
Lala feels these social pressures too. After a one night
stand with Wang Wei (a.k.a. David), DB’s high-flying sales
director, she ponders the risks and rewards of dating him.
Lala’s younger brother Man Yi thinks David is ‘a good catch.’
But Lala hesitates: ‘I think I should focus on my career.
I think I have a future there. According to the company
rules, I would lose my job’ if the affair were discovered.
Man Yi replies: ‘At your age you should concentrate on
finding Mr. Right and settling down.’
Here Lala faces the double risk of losing her job if she dates
David or ending up an old unmarried career woman—a
‘leftover woman’ (shengnü) according to Chinese slang—if
she doesn’t. Lala squares this circle in a typically ambitious
way: she decides to secretly date David.
But by trying to have it all, Lala’s Chimerican dream of
corporate success and true love starts to unravel. She
wonders whether pursuing her ‘dream job’ ultimately will
lead her to the good life. Rose, Lala’s boss and sometime
rival, expresses the mixed feelings she had when finally
promoted to the ‘upper class’ of DB’s directors: ‘I used
Cai Mingfei, ed., Women de Du Lala [We all could be Lala],
Xian: Shaanxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2009.
39
Francois Bougon, ‘Du Lala’s World’, AFP, January 12, 2010.
40
Pseudonym for an anonymous interview in Beijing, April 28,
2011.
38
8
to care so much about promotions. I thought only a
promotion could prove my value. Different title now, but so
what? I’m not happy at all. Whatever.’
The novel explores this uneasy relationship between work
and values in its penultimate chapter, ‘The Free and Easy
Life’ (Ziyou zizai dihuo), which as the preface tells us is the
essence of Du Lala’s story. Discussing life goals with a
stranger on a plane, Lala decides that getting her ‘dream
job’ is not as important as pursuing the ‘free and easy
dream’, which is better understood as the dream of being
free to live life on your own terms. As Lala explains:
Considering the characteristics of the middle
class, it is the most tired class. Having no special
family background, they struggle for success as
individuals, completing their tasks and obeying
the law to honestly pass the days. But what does
enduring all of this have to do with ‘being free to live
life on your own terms’?41
The goal, Lala decides, is not to work hard at building
something important like the nation, the company or the
brand. The best life objective is to earn enough money to
retire early and be your own boss. Financial freedom thus
is necessary to pursue the good life.
In the film, David does just that. He quits DB, and opens
up a guesthouse in Pattaya, Thailand. The film ends
when Lala returns to Pattaya to reminisce about their first
romantic encounter. She meets him by chance, and thus
is able to fulfill her dream of being with him again—if only
for a short time.
Chimerican Values
Du Lala’s Chimerican dream offers an interesting cocktail
of values that cross borders and lead to different versions
of the good life. Like the American dream, ‘Du Lala’s
Promotion Diary’ is a story of ‘upward mobility’. When
provided with ‘equal opportunity’ Lala succeeds as an
individual, a ‘self-made woman’, based on her own hard
work and talent. As the novel’s preface explains, you must
identify opportunities, create opportunities, and seize
opportunities. We also see the flipside of this dream:
anxieties over the high probability of failure. As he’s about
to be fired, David admits that ‘Anyone can be replaced.’
Workplace novels also pursue the American dreams of
home ownership, and fame and fortune. As we saw in the
film’s class analysis, the ultimate goal is a house in the leafy
suburbs. ‘Du Lala’ also teaches young Chinese how to
consume luxury goods.
Here Lala’s Chimerican dream goes against some of the
Chinese-style IR theorists examined in this essay. While
socialism still needs to be taken seriously in assessments
of Beijing’s geostrategy and China’s economic plans,
building socialism is, to say the least, not a priority in
‘Du Lala’s Promotion Diary.’ Yet ‘Du Lala’ can inform
the China Model in a different way if we think of DB as
a microcosm of the PRC. Here China is neither a villagestate, a nation-state nor a civilization-state; rather it is
an ‘enterprise-state’, as the Naisbitts put it in China’s
Megatrends. In the enterprise-state, as in corporations,
41
Li, Du Lala, 255.
people don’t have rights, they have tasks; the company
is not a commonwealth organized for the good of its
members—its purpose is profit. As the Naisbitts explain,
‘Survival of the company has to take priority over
individuals’ interests and benefits. Those who would prefer
to fight against the company’s culture and goals would
have to choose: leave or adjust.’42 Since this enterprisestate is a country, I suppose resigning means you leave
China, while being fired means you end up in jail.
In this sense, Lala’s ambitious goals inspire unease for
many Chinese citizen intellectuals: she is the epitome
of an individual consumer who lacks Chinese values
(for Zhao Tingyang), socialist values (for Pan Wei), the
martial spirit (for Liu Mingfu), and democratic values (for
Lung Ying-tai and Xu Jilin).43 For different reasons, they all
would think that Lala’s ‘money-worship’ lifestyle in China’s
enterprise-state offers a ruinous scenario for the PRC’s
future.
While resolutely individualist, ‘Du Lala’ is also quite
cosmopolitan. The novel and the film mix in English words
and phrases: S.O.P., ‘sexual harassment’, EQ, ‘fight back’,
frustrate, ‘You deserve it’, SMART, Nike, ‘I totally agree
with you’, and ‘Whatever!’ The name of Lala’s company,
‘DB’, is always written in English; we never find out what
it stands for, or even what it sells. Using English is useful
for explaining management-speak to readers who treat the
novel as a guidebook for success in foreign corporations.
Rather than branding people as ‘slaves to foreigners’,
English here is of a sign of worldliness and prestige.
Lala’s last dream of the good life—being free to live life on
her own terms—is a commentary on corporate and state
intervention. Even in Chinese, the phrase ziyou zizai entails
a freedom from constraint: ziyou means liberty and zizai
means unrestrained. Du Lala wants the freedom to escape
the system to follow her dreams.
The strangest thing about the film is that this freedom
is elsewhere: David and Lala find happiness abroad in
Thailand. Chinese people thus have to leave the PRC to
realize the Chimerican dream of ‘being free to live life on
their own terms.’ (Perhaps this explains the recent trend of
China’s super-rich settling abroad.)
Du Lala thus is very comfortable with foreign intervention
of multinational corporations in China. In her daily life,
however, she challenges any intervention by her family,
corporation or state into her personal activities. While
Zhao Tingyang, Hu Angang and Pan Wei insist that we
judge China on its own terms, Lala shows us how to
question the Chimerican system to live life on our own
terms.
John and Doris Naisbitt, China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a
New Society, New York: Harper Business, 2010, 30.
43
Liu Mingfu, Zhongguo meng: Hou Meiguo shidai de daguo siwei
zhanlüe dingwei [The China dream: The great power thinking and
strategic positioning of China in the post-American era] (Beijing:
Zhongguo youyi chuban gongsi, 2010); Xu Jilin, ‘Pushi wenming,
haishi Zhongguo jiazhi? Jin shinian zhongguo lishi zhuyi sichao
zhi pipan’ [Universal civilization, or Chinese values? A critique of
the Chinese historicism trend over the past decade], Kaifang shidai
no. 5 (2010),
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_702fad0c0100rcd2.html.
42
9
By crossing the boundaries of non/intervention, ‘Du Lala’
provides us with an alternative scenario for a China that
works with the west and Asian neighbors not just for
common goals but for shared values.
men and women, and thus are an interesting measure of
popular hopes and anxieties.
The real question, then, is how will the state respond to
public intellectuals and post-1980 generation?
Conclusion: Non/intervention
This essay has examined the role of non/intervention in
China’s shifting foreign policy narrative. It started with an
examination of the ‘usual suspects’ to chart how Beijing’s
official narrative of non-interference is slowly shifting
to meet the needs of China’s expanding global role.
Many observors thought that China’s vote for, and then
abstention from, UNSC resolutions supporting limited
intervention in Libya was a turning point. But as we see
with the current Syrian case, Beijing doesn’t want another
Libya and is likely to veto UNSC resolutions.
The essay sought to complicate this simple tale by
introducing two new factors: the politics of domestic state
intervention, and new unofficial sources. It pointed out that
although Beijing is generally against foreign intervention,
it is very supportive of state intervention in the domestic
sphere of everyday life.
It argued that public intellectuals are moving from a
defensive foreign policy to a more offensive one. Curiously,
they are appealing to Chinese exceptionalism to make
these arguments. While defensive exceptionalists generally
support Beijing’s mix of foreign non-intervention and
domestic intervention, others are universalizing Chinese
ideals as a way to reorder the world. Although they do
not appeal to the diplomatic language of interventionism,
it is clear that these holistic visions of world order entail
considerable intervention in all spheres. This intervention is
different from humanitarian intervention and R2P because
it promotes Chinese values at the expense of liberal values,
which are seen as ‘western’. The public intellectuals thus
move from official Chinese exceptionalism’s idea that a
peaceful China is not a threat to the world, to an unofficial
exceptionalism that feels that China deserves to rule the
world
Lastly, the essay looked to blogger Han Han and the
feature film ‘Du Lala’s Promotion Diary’ to consider the
views of the post-1980 generation. Netizens are generally
seen as an ultranationalist force that pushes for a more
active and aggressive foreign policy. But Han Han, the
world’s most popular blogger, provided a different view
that supported foreign intervention against tyrants and
criticized the domestic intervention of the China model.
Du Lala did not comment directly on intervention. But her
lifestyle exemplifies the border crossing of non/intervention
that mixes the inside and the outside, foreign and domestic.
She also is critical of anyone – family, corporation, state –
telling her how to live her life. Hence, like Han, Du reverses
Beijing’s official non/intervention policies.
Why should we care about unofficial sources? It is
generally accepted that the boundaries of the foreign
policy community in China have been expanding recently
to include public intellectuals and public opinion. The
explosion of futurology writings in the past few years is part
of a campaign by public intellectuals to influence the policy
narratives of the 5th generation leadership that takes office
in 2012-13. Han and Du are hugely popular with young
10
2. The Role of the Military in China’s Leadership
Transition
Christopher R. Hughes,
London School of Economics and Political Science
The crucial role of the military in Chinese leadership politics
boils down to the simple fact that it is the only nationwide
organisation other than the CCP itself. At times of instability
it thus becomes the force on which the political elite have
to rely in order to consolidate their power. Mao Zedong
himself was only able to rise to power because he secured
control over elements of the Red Army. During the Cultural
Revolution, Mao eventually called on the PLA to restore
order after the attempted coup by Lin Biao. It was PLA
generals who smashed the Gang of Four and made Hua
Guofeng general secretary. Deng Xiaoping was also only
able to make his return to power in 1978 due to support
from the generals. In 1989 the PLA was called on to crush
the democracy movement and allow Party elders to install
Jiang Zemin as General Secretary of the CCP.
There has in fact only been one leadership transition in
which the military has not played a significant role since the
establishment of the PRC in 1949. That was the change of
leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002, during a
time of rapid economic growth and relative social stability.
The Jiang-Hu transition is thus said by many to have
established the first model for a Leninist party to have a
peaceful transition. Yet even at that time there was some
uncertainty over who controlled the PLA, because Jiang
Zemin did not relinquish his chairmanship of the Party’s
Central Military Commission in September 2004 and the
state CMC in March 2005. As the 2012 leadership change
approaches in the context of growing economic problems,
social instability and divisions at the top of the CCP, it is
thus important to ask whether the Jiang-Hu transition was
a one-off exception and whether the the military will again
play an important role in leadership politics.
The Relationship between the Military and the CCP
To understand the role of the military in leadership politics,
it is necessary to first make some observations on how
its function in the Chinese political system has evolved.
The strong bond between the Party and the military was
established during the civil war with the KMT and the War
Against Japan and remains a central theme in the ideology
of Mao Zedong Thought. Yet Mao only partly explained the
relationship when he proclaimed in the base area of Yanan
his famous dictum that “political power grows out of the
barrel of a gun”. This is because, while the CCP relies on
the army to maintain its control of the population, and the
mission of the PLA is to protect the Party, the CCP is also
very similar to a military organisation itself.
This is because the Leninist structure of the Party was
copied from the Soviet Union, where it was designed to
defeat opponents in the civil war. Seated at the top is the
Standing Committee of the Politburo, which functions
as a kind of war cabinet. The system for controlling the
military comes below this, and is centred on the CMC. The
chairman of the CMC is the general secretary of the CCP.
The CMC of the CCP is mirrored by the state CMC, which
is made up of the same personnel and exists to give the
impression that the military is a separate organisation. In
reality, it is governed by the CCP through the CMC.
Controlling the Chinese military is not only important for
national defense and fighting domestic enemies, it is also
a part of the CCP apparatus for maintaining administrative
and ideological hegemony. This is because the Chinese
military also penetrates into the whole of society. The PLA is
used not only as a fighting force, but also as an organisation
involved in production and civil operations such as disaster
relief. Beyond this are the paramilitary organisations of the
people’s militia and the People’s Armed Police (PAP). The
former goes back to the days when the CCP mobilised
local societies for military and logistical support in the wars
against the KMT and Japan. The PAP was established in
the early years of Reform and Opening, when the PLA was
slimmed down and large numbers of its personnel were
reallocated to help maintain domestic security.
Reducing the Military’s Role in Elite Politics
It is thus something of an oversimplification to say that
the Party controls the gun. Instead, the military plays
a structural role in Chinese politics that is an immense
resource for the CCP elite, especially when in the contest
for the leadership. This in turn, however, also gives the
military a significant degree of bargaining power.
Bargaining with the military was not such a big problem for
Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, who were strong leaders
with rich military experience and extensive networks in the
PLA. They could also gain charismatic legitimacy among
the soldiers because of their role in the revolution. Since
Deng’s demise, however, the situation has become more
complex. This is because the CCP has moved away from a
paramount leader system towards one increasingly based
on consensus bargaining amongst members of the elite
who have a more equal status with each other. The military
is thus one of the places that they have to look for support.
Deng Xiaoping foresaw this situation and initiated a number
of measures to reduce the influence of the military in this
elite power play. The most significant was his support for
Jiang Zemin to remove military personal from the Standing
Committee of the Politburo altogether, which took place at
the 15th Party Congress in 1997. Without Deng’s support,
and some considerable effort to improve his own links with
the military, it is doubtful whether Jiang could have pulled
this off. Hu’s bargaining position with the military has been
even weaker, partly because his factional base is in the
Communist Youth League and he came to power with no
experience of military affairs. Moreover, he presides over
a CMC in which his deputies were appointed by Jiang
Zemin.
Another measure that should have reduced the political
role of the military is the modernisation process. This has
involved several rounds of downsizing, again begun by
Deng in the 1980s and continued by Jiang Zemin and
Hu Jintao. Deng was able to cushion this process by
allowing the PLA to generate its own income through
starting up its own enterprises. For his successors the
process has been more difficult because generating
income through enterprises led to rampant corruption
in the PLA. Jiang Zemin thus had to begin a process of
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separating the military from economic activities, filling the
resulting gap in PLA finances by steady increases in the
defense budget. This was fine so long as the economy
was undergoing the rapid growth it has experienced since
WTO entry in 2001. Moreover, soaring defense spending
also serves to increase suspicions among neighbouring
states that China’s rise will not be as “harmonious” as
Hu Jintao claims.
Divisions between the Military and the CCP
More important for the nature of leadership politics is that
the longer term results of professionalization are uncertain.
Precisely because the military is removed from the centre
of power, some of its elements increasingly see themselves
as a professional fighting force that has its own interests
separate from the Party. There is even an increasing number
of voices calling for the link with the Party to be broken and
for the establishment of a national army. Such tendencies
are combatted by the CCP leadership through bans on
discussions of nationalisation of the military, propaganda
campaigns and the use of the education system to spread
and reinforce the principle that the constitutional role of the
military is to support the Party and the socialist system.
In addition to this, military corruption has grown again along
with the corruption that is sweeping China’s society and
government as a whole. The scale of this is revealed by
periodic arrests of high ranking officers. In April 2007 naval
section head Wang Shouye was convicted of corruption in
his post as deputy director of the logistics department in
charge of housing. In February 2012 general Gu Junshan,
also in charge of building work in the logistics department
of the PLA, was arrested for massive abuse of his position.
This would have gained more attention if it had not been
overshadowed by the events that took place after Wang
Lijun took refuge in the US consulate in Chengdu a few
days later.
Another important tendency to watch in the military is the
rising volume of voices of discontent in the middle ranks
who publicly proclaiming their dissatisfaction with the
corruption that is endemic in China. Moreover, such figures
are not afraid to openly declare that the CCP should stand
down and all talk of China’s rise will be meaningless unless
something is done to control corruption. A well-known
example of this is the book China Dream by Colonel
Liu Mingfu, published in 2009 at the height of China’s
post financial crisis triumphalism. While this gained much
attention overseas for discussing how China should lead
the world, fewer critics noticed that the final section of the
book argues that China will in fact collapse if it cannot sort
out the problems of corruption and inequality. In this way,
the PLA is being presented as the conscience of the nation
with a duty to intervene in politics if the CCP is unable to
govern properly.
by Hu Jintao’s successor. An important part of this task is
to cultivate the support of the generation of officers known
as the “military princelings” who now populate the middle
and upper ranks of the PLA.
The Military Princelings
Like the civilian “princelings”, the “military princelings”
are so called because they come from the generation
of personnel who are the children of the revolutionary
generation. Born after the establishment of the PRC in
1949 they no experience of combat, apart from some
claims to have taken part in the border conflict with Vietnam
between 1978 and 1985. They have experienced a
different kind of violence, however, because their formative
years were during the Cultural Revolution. This makes
them different from even the generation of Hu Jintao,
whose members had completed their education before
the Cultural Revolution broke out and were able to avoid its
worst ravages by being sent to the countryside. The new
military princelings experienced the Cultural Revolution just
as they were turning from children into teenagers.
This timing means that many of the military princelings
ended up in the PLA because it became a safe haven
for children of senior cadres. After this, their family links
give them organisational leverage and protection to
carve out careers, mainly in non-combat roles as political
commissars and engaged in propaganda work. This
means that a fairly large cohort of military princelings now
populates the middle ranks of the PLA where they exercise
a disproportionate amount of political influence in the CCP
due to their family links.
Hu Jintao thus realised that the military princelings were
an important constituency that he had to win over. He did
this by continuing to promote them quickly through the
ranks. A high point was in July 2009, when three out of the
three generals he appointed were the military princelings
Liu Yuan (son of Liu Shaoqi), Zhang Haiyang (son of
Zhang Zhen) and Ma Xiaotian (son of Ma Zaiyao).
The future roles of these three generals will be one of the
most important decisions for the formation of the two
key centres of power in the Party-military system. First is
the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Although there
has been no military figure on this organ since 1997, it is
possible that the new leadership may decide to win over
the PLA by promoting a figure like Liu Yuan to the body.
Much more likely than this is the possibility that these
princelings will be made deputy chairmen of the CMC,
given that the current holders of those posts are all due to
retire due to age restrictions. If this happens, it may allow
Hu Jintao to maintain some influence over the military,
even if he stands down as chairman of the CMC.
What do the Princelings Want?
It is in this context of growing tensions between the CCP and
the military that calls to “nationalise” the military have had
to be combatted by increasingly frequent counterattacks,
with the propaganda organs insisting that the job of the
military must always be to serve the Party. Because the
process of professionalization still has a long way to go,
it is unlikely that the CCP’s control of the military will be
challenged in the short term. In the long term, however, this
is a growing source of tension that will have to be dealt with
Establishing what the military princelings will want from the
new leadership is very complex. Like all interest groups they
are likely to want material rewards of one kind or another.
Yet there is also a significant ideological element to the new
generation of military leaders. Liu Yuan, for example, is a
fairly prolific writer who is known for his praise of militaristic
virtues. Mao Xiaotian has drawn attention outside China for
his hard line views on Taiwan policy. Zhang Haiyang seems
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to be relatively moderate and gained much prestige for
the rescue efforts he undertook during the 2008 Sichuan
earthquake, when he was head of the Chengdu Military
Region. Since then, however, he has been moved to
head the Second Artillery Corps, which controls China’s
strategic arsenal.
Further insights into the thinking of this generation can be
gained from some of the more articulate middle ranking
military princelings. Liu Yazhou (classified as a “princeling”
due to his marriage to the daughter of Marshall Li Xiannian),
for example, is another prolific writer who is well known
for his advocacy of doctrinal innovations such as the
formation of special strike forces and his call for militaristic
values. Major General Luo Yuan, who can be considered
a minor military princeling by dint of his being the son
of a former secretary general of China’s State Council,
who was also the general manager of former Premier
Zhou Enlai’s cabinet, is even better known for his promotion
of a combination of nationalistic and geopolitical ideas.
As a whole, it is possible to understand such figures as
deploying two kinds of arguments as part of their strategies
to raise their own status in elite politics. The first of these is
directed at domestic politics and laments the decadence
and feminisation of society under Reform and Opening
and the spread of corruption. The cure is said to lie largely
in the revival of a lost militaristic spirit and a return to a
pre-Cultural Revolution when the CCP led a united society
during the period of “New Democracy”.
Linked to this is the call for a hardening of foreign and
defense policy. A recent example of this is an article
published by Luo Yuan in the Chinese edition of the Global
Times on 24 April, at the height of the recent friction with
the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal, in which he calls
on the navy to take decisive steps in establishing China’s
sovereignty so as to make it clear that putting economic
development first and the doctrine of peaceful rise does
not mean the renunciation of the use of force.
It is important to note that such messages also resonate
with the rising tide of fenqing nationalism that has grown
out of the patriotic nationalism of the 1990s and was given
a boost by the triumphalism that followed the events of
2008. They also appeal to the disaffected intellectuals who
are loosely grouped under the New Left.
Xi Jinping and the Military
As this clamour from the military princelings gets louder,
it is thus essential for any member of the CCP elite who
wants to contest the leadership to cultivate it as a source
of political capital. Most important in this respect is
Xi Jinping, placed in position as the successor to Hu Jintao
by Zeng Qinghong, the arch manipulator of leadership
politics under Jiang Zemin and Hu.
Xi Jinping has one important advantage over Hu Jintao in
this respect, namely that he himself is a “princeling”, being
born in 1953 as the son of CCP veteran Xi Zhongxun. This
already gives Xi important links with the military that he
has to exploit in order to consolidate a power base. His
marriage to the famous PLA folk singer singer Peng Liyuan
in 1987 has strengthened this family relationship with the
military.
To further this cause, Xi has undertaken a number of other
initiatives. Whereas Hu Jintao did not have any experience
of the uniformed military before assuming his position
as CMC vice chair, Xi Jinping served as a secretary to
Geng Biao, his father’s former subordinate and vice premier
and general secretary of the CMC from 1979 to 1982.
Furthermore, as a civilian party leader at various levels from
county to province, he served for more than two decades
as first secretary to a number of party committees for PLA
local force headquarters. (Blasko 2012: 31; PLA Daily
“Xin Jinping: Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Military
Commission”
19 October 20120,
http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/militarydatabase/2010-10/19/
content_4319485.htm
One curious observation about Xi’s career that should
get more attention for giving some insight into his view of
military politics, is that took on the position of vice director
of the National Defense Mobilisation Committees (NDMC)
of the Nanjing Military Region and director of the the
Fujian province NDMC, an organisation that is charged
with instilling militaristic values in the population. He also
took the office of director of the Zhejiang Military District
NDMC when he was party chairman of that province.
This is particularly interesting because the of chairman
of the local NDMC is normally the principal leader of the
local government rather than the party secretary. Such
enthusiasm for this militaristic project earned Xi the epithet
“military hugging party secretary” when he was posted to
Zhejiang.
Since Xi was fingered as the likely successor to
Hu Jintao, his links with the military have become much
more institutionalised. The most important step in this
process was his appointment to the position of vice
chairman of the CMC in October 2010. He took to this role
with some enthusiasm, marking his ascent by giving the
speech to military veterans to mark the 60th anniversary
of the Korean War, just three days before his appointment
was made public. Ten years earlier, the 50th anniversary
speech had been given not by the deputy chairman but
by the chairman, at that time Jiang Zemin. This time
Hu Jintao left the occasion to Xi after making a few
preliminary remarks. Xi used the occasion to play to the
military audience by describing the upheaval as a defensive
war against an imperialist invasion, an interpretation
of history that was gradually being eroded by Chinese
historians and which showed that Xi was prepared to put
cultivation of hard liners in the military before the sentiments
of important states such as South Korea.
Such actions on the part of Xi show how he needs to
cultivate the support of the military in order to consolidate
his position in the CCP leadership. From Xi’s perspective,
the presence of the military princelings gives him a
constituency that he can rely on to mobilise the military
in case there is any serious and widespread social unrest,
given that they have a shared interest in maintaining the
status quo. From the perspective of the military, however,
this provides more leverage for bargaining with the
government over resources and also for shaping foreign
and security policy.
This dilemma has been thrown into acute relief by the
Bo Xilai crisis. The lack of transparency in elite CCP politics
13
has of course led to heated speculation about just how
much support Bo Xilai had from the military princelings.
Before his downfall, many of them had openly supported
the Sing Red, Smash Black campaign launched by
Bo as party secretary of Chongqing. The most visible
manifestation of this was the tour of the “Choir of the
Successor Generation to the Generals” that toured China
between 19 September 2008 and 19 May 2009, starting
in Beijing and finishing in Chongqing (while avoiding any
performance in Shenzhen or Guangxi), where they opened
the performance with a rendition of “The East is Red”.
More recently speculation has turned against the most
senior of the military princelings, including Zhang Haiyang
and Liu Yuan, with rumours spreading that they were even
prepared to launch a military coup. This is made worse
by the fact that such figures do have close personal
relationships with Bo. Liu Yuan, for example, shared
many of Bo’s formative experiences, given that both were
children of senior CCP leaders living and being schooled in
the CCP compound of Zhonghanhai. While such rumours
cannot be discounted altogether, they are unlikely to be
true given the debt such figures owe to Hu Jintao. They
are also belied by different rumours, such as the story that
Liu Yuan’s arrest of Gu Junshan was because Gu is related
to Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai.
Liu Yuan would deliver a mixed message. On the one
hand, it would signal a reversal of the process of removing
the military from politics. On the other, it may actually be a
wise move to have the military in a position where it has
to take responsibility rather than sniping at the leadership
and forming coalitions with other interest groups from the
outside.
Even if Hu Jintao stays on for a period as head of the CMC
and there is no soldier on the PBSC, though, it seems
fairly certain that the military will have more traction over
policy making as the princelings rise up through the ranks.
Moreover, the on-going professionalization of the armed
forces is already creating a more autonomous PLA that
is going to be in a better position to argue for resources,
a more active foreign and defense policy and to take
initiatives that continue to give the impression that there
is a lack of policy coordination with the central authorities.
Aside from these issues, it should be born in mind that
the Chinese military does not only consist of the PLA. The
large paramilitary forces of the militia and the PAP also
have to be managed by the new leadership. This further
increases the complexity of dealing with the corruption
that runs through the military, and of coordinating a rational
foreign and security policy.
Such rumours are endemic to the opaque system of
Chinese politics, however, and take on a life of their own.
The resulting heated atmosphere indicates the difficulty
that Xi Jinping will have in consolidating his support among
the military princelings, assuming that he takes over from
Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary and general secretary
of the CMC, that is.
Looking Ahead
Already before the Bo Xilai crisis, the evolution of the
process of CCP leadership succession had raised a
number of questions concerning how the new leader will
cultivate the support of the military and what the military
may want in exchange. A number of developments need
to be watched as this process unfolds.
First of all is the process by which Hu Jintao’s successor
will take command of the CMC.
One of the most interesting aspects of the succession
from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao was the way in which Jiang
held on to control of the military for two years after Hu
became CCP General Secretary. If Xi Jinping is appointed
CCP General Secretary, he will already have much more
experience of dealing with the military than Hu had when
he rose to the leadership, Despite this, however, the
political considerations analysed above may be of sufficient
concern to Hu to encourage him to follow the precedent
set by Jiang Zemin of holding on to the chairmanship of
the CMC for a transition period during, so that he can
ensure that the broader direction of Chinese politics is not
turning against his own interest group in the Communist
Youth League.
Another key question is how the military will be represented
at the top of the CCP. As mentioned above, there has
been no military figure on the Standing Committee of
the Politburo since 1997. The appearance of a figure like
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each country in the region;
3. Changes in the Middle East and China’s Middle
East Policy
Prof. Li Weijian,
Shanghai Institutes of International Studies
Translated by Chan YANG, Asia Centre
An overview of China’s relations with Middle Eastern
countries and China’s Middle East Policy
Currently, China is the only major country in the world that
has always kept good relations with all Middle Eastern
countries. This has been due to China’s longstanding
principles in non-interference in others’ internal affairs,
respect for each other’s cultural traditions and national
development model. This has given China unique political
influence in the region.
For a very long time, the good relations between China and
the Middle East have mostly been at the political level, and
it is in the past decade that economic relations have been
rapidly warming up. With China’s economic rise and the
expansion of its interests in the Middle East, the political
willingness of China to participate in the region’s affairs has
also been enhanced. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern countries
have also developed a more comprehensive understanding
of China, they are willing to develop extensive cooperation
with China and expect China to play an active role in
regional affairs. Overall, the relations between China and
the Middle East have been increasingly pragmatic and
mature since the past years.
China’s Middle East policy is subject to China’s overall
diplomacy, of which the current main goals are:
1. The fundamental purpose of China’s foreign policy
is to maintain international and regional peace and
stability, in order to create and secure favourable
international and near-abroad environments for
China’s sustainable development;
2. China wish to integrate into the international
system with a positive and constructive attitude,
participate in international affairs, strive to make
international cooperation the dominant direction
of international politics and especially relations
among major powers, and finally establish new
pattern of international relations beyond ideological
differences.
The above diplomatic thinking is reflected in China’s Middle
East policy, in four ways:
1. China is now gradually shifting its traditional position
of not getting much too involved in Middle Eastern
affairs, and tends to adopt a more proactive foreign
policy approach in the region’s hot issues, so as to
achieve the maintenance of regional stability and
safeguard China’s national interests and overall
foreign policy objectives. China has come to realise
that participating in the solving of regional hot issues
and the shaping of regional environment is not only
the responsibility that the country should assume
as a responsible major power in the international
community, but also an important way to promote
sustainable development of bilateral relations with
2. The main content of China’s Middle East
diplomacy: (1) enhance bilateral relations with all
countries in the region through active development
of comprehensive cooperation, and (2) promote
and facilitate solution of thorny regional issues
by supporting the establishment of and active
participation in multilateral mechanisms that favour
balance of power between different parties within
the region. In the process of protecting its own
interests, China also takes into account the vital
interests of its interlocutor, and seeks for mutual
benefits and win-win situation. At the same time
China is also aware that in the field of economic
cooperation, China should increase investment
to the region as well as humanitarian assistance
to countries in crisis, all as an effort to improve
people’s livelihood and win support of local
population;
3. The basic principle of China’s attitude towards the
Middle East is to make its own judgments and take
appropriate policy stance according to the event,
fact itself. When handling specific issues, China will
choose to act or not to act within the limit of its
capacity. The main ideas of China’s solution is to
persuade peace and facilitate talks and discussions,
urge all parties to take into account history and
reality, take care of each other’s concerns, persist
in the peaceful settlement of disputes through
patient dialogues and negotiations;
4. China has never been and will never intend to
become leader in the Middle Eastern affairs. China
will strengthen coordination and cooperation
with other big nations based on the principles
and stance which it has always adhered to, and
will continue to play its unique role in maintaining
stability in the region.
The Arab Revolution and its implications for China and
China’s Middle East Policy
At the outbreak of the so-called Arab Revolution in Tunisia,
the public opinion in certain Western countries attempted
to link this “Middle East democratic revolution” with China,
and some within China also saw opportunities to incite
social unrest. There were even rumours saying Beijing and
Shanghai had been caught in the turbulence of “jasmine
revolution”. That was when China was running the “two
sessions” (NPC and CPPCC), therefore the government
had been highly concerned about the development of the
situation, and the announcement of its position had been
all the more cautious. Initially, China’s mainstream media
mostly used terms such as “turbulence” or “turmoil” to
describe the outbreak of popular protests in the Middle
East. But later with the deepening understanding of the
evolving situation, “changes (or transformation) in the
Middle East” has become the keyword of many reports
and comments on the movement.
In the past year following the Arab Spring, Chinese scholars
have held many discussions on its root cause, nature,
influence and especially impact on China. Officials from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs have often been involved in such
discussions. At the beginning, our opinions were quite
divergent and even entirely antagonistic. However, with
15
the deepening development of changes in the regional
situation, some questions became clearer and clearer.
Today the academia and diplomatic services have reached
a certain form of consensus in some major issues. The
following is the summary of essential points including my
own points of view:
1. The fundamental nature of the Arab uprising is
that it is part of the region’s political and social
development process, which reflects urgent
demand for transition and change within some
countries. The rapid changes in international
political environment in recent years are also one
important factor having induced and provoked
changes in the Middle East. Moreover, the
contraction strategy of the US in the region has
also provided possibility for the emergence of
reform movements in the Middle East;
2. The Arab Spring has given rise to some new
changes in the region’s geopolitical situation,
but a new pattern, setup has not formed yet.
For the time being, various international and
regional forces are unfolding fierce debates
and bargaining around issues such as Arab
Revolution, the Syrian crisis and Iranian nuclear
issue. The result of such bargaining will have
far-reaching influences on the evolution of the
Middle Eastern geopolitics;
3. The violent popular movements that have lasted
over a year in the Middle East may well come
to an end, or a halt after Syrian crisis. Countries
in the region will gradually enter a long process
of modernisation and transition. In the future,
the region’s political and social development will
not only find it difficult to get rid of the influences
of the regional history, religion, culture and
society, but also it will not be isolated from the
global development process. Its political and
social patterns will not undergo fundamental
transformation;
2. China’s future diplomacy will include new
concept and vision of interests. We have often
heard criticism from some countries which claim
that whoever present in the Middle East is there
seeking for oil. This judgement is of course not
objective. Beyond any doubt, China has played
an active role in maintaining regional stability
and participating in finding solutions to regional
thorny issues, but we should also recognise that
for a long time, even those within China, when
mentioning China’s interests in the Middle East,
many firstly refer to narrow material interests
such as energy security, commodity market,
construction project and labour market. Yet in
fact, the connotation of national interests has
been greatly enriched nowadays. Diplomatic
independence, state image, competition for
international voice (the right to say) as well as
enhancement of hard and soft power … all
of these are important elements of national
interests. China’s future diplomacy towards the
Middle East will take into account these factors;
3. China will continue to develop friendly relationship
with all nations in the world, but China will also
elaborate more specific bilateral policies tailored
to different country-set. Take the example of the
Arab League, in the past we took it as a whole
entity, but this traditional approach is now facing
more and more challenges. Today it is not only
difficult to use a single key to open 22 locks,
sometimes it also forms a certain constrain to
the shaping of our diplomacy towards the region.
4. In a certain sense, the Arab uprising serves as
a warning but also inspiration to China’s internal
political and social development, but its overall
impact remains limited. The Arab Spring has
brought both challenges and opportunities
to relations between China and the regional
countries. This will also impel China to reflect
upon and revaluate its Middle East policy, as
well as to make appropriate adjustments in
accordance with the new circumstances.
China’s Middle East policy is now or will be making the
following adjustments:
1. China will show more political willingness to
participate in Middle Eastern affairs, and make
more proactive, constructive and progressive
policies on specific issues. Over a very long
period of time in the past, China has always
followed a principle of “overall detachment” in the
regional affairs, but this approach is increasingly
unable to adapt to the rapidly changing situation,
let alone satisfy the development of relations
between China and the Middle East or the needs
to safeguard China’s interests in the region;
16
idealized version of international behaviour.
4. China, Humanitarian Intervention and the
Responsability to Protect (R2P)
Rosemary Foot,
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Structure: First what is meant by R2P and how has it
evolved; and then turn towards the role China has played
in R2P’s establishment and evolution.
What is meant by R2P?
Abstract
This paper outlines the origins and development of the
concept of R2P, especially since its formal adoption in
the World Summit Outcome document of September
2005. Beijing was a full participant in the 2005 debate
that generated references to R2P in paragraphs
138 and 139 of the Summit document. It also took part
in UN discussion of the concept’s implementation in July
2009. Several important findings in relation to China and
the development of R2P emerge from analysis of these
developments. While Beijing has not obstructed the
development of the concept, it has placed its main efforts
behind the state capacity-building functions of the R2P
mandate—what is referred to as Pillar II in the UN SecretaryGeneral’s concept paper—and behind Pillar I, putting
the emphasis on the state’s role in preventing abuse. It
has also worked to ensure R2P’s focused, and narrow,
application and a definition that constrains the operational
methods associated with humanitarian intervention. China,
alongside other governments, has been a norm-shaper in
this issue area. Specifically, Beijing has aimed to develop
the norm in a direction that gives primacy to the preventative
aspects of R2P, in the hope of diminishing the instances
where the norm of non-interference in the internal affairs
of states is breached. China’s position is not far removed
from the international consensus on the concept, although
its interpretation of R2P lies at the conservative end of the
spectrum when compared with the positions of a number
of its Asian neighbours.
R2P is a global norm, not a legal requirement, that may
be consolidating or may in fact be in retreat. There is
no agreement on the stage that it is at, although it does
represent an important development in our contemporary
understanding of sovereignty.
It was endorsed unanimously in September 2005, at the
largest gathering of heads of state and government to
date. In the World Summit Outcome (WSO) document,
leaders professed that “[e]ach individual state has the
responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
This was declared to be a responsibility that entails “the
prevention of such crimes, including their incitement,
through appropriate and necessary means.”
R2P also has three pillars associated with it: that is,
1. Every state has the responsibility to protect its
populations from the four mass atrocity crimes I
have just referred to (Pillar I);
2. The wider international community has the
responsibility to encourage and assist individual
states in meeting that responsibility (Pillar II); that
is to help states build capacity to protect their
populations from the four crimes and to assist
those which are under stress before crises and
conflicts break out;”44
3. (Pilar 3) If a state is manifestly failing to protect
its populations, and diplomatic, humanitarian
and other peaceful means are failing to provide
the necessary protections, then the international
community, through the UN Security Council and
under the provisions of Chapter VII of the UN
Charter, should be prepared to take collective
Syria
With Syria in the news and China’s veto (along with
Russia’s) of condemnatory UN Resolutions last year
and this, there might not be thought to be much to say
about China, HI, and R2P. We could simply conclude
that China still supports an absolutist interpretation of
sovereignty involving non interference in the internal affairs
of states whatever these govts may be doing to their own
populations.
But there is more to say, even though I shall conclude
that China is conservative in action, suspicious of western
motives, and prefers external intervention to be based on
host state consent, or at a minimum an action that has
attracted the strong endorsement of relevant regional
organizations.
I’ll come back to the Syrian case at the end. In the bulk of
this talk, I shall look at trends in China’s behaviour; argue
that China has made a modest shift in its position which I
shall need to show and explain; but also I need to explain
why that movement is constrained and restricted. I also
want to show that, in fact, China is not far removed from
the international consensus on the meaning and ways
of making operational the concept R2P. Message: that
sometimes China’s behaviour is measured against an
Paragraph 138 reads in full: “Each individual State has the
responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This
responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including
their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We
accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The
international community should, as appropriate, encourage and
help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United
Nations in establishing an early warning capability.” Paragraph 139
reads in part: “The international community, through the United
Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic,
humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with
chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect populations
from [the four crimes listed in 138]. In this context, we are prepared
to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through
the Security council, in accordance with the Charter, including
Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with
relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful
means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly
failing to protect their populations from [the four crimes]…..We
also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to
helping States build capacity to protect their populations….and to
assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts
break out.” UN General Assembly, A/RES/60/1, World Summit
Outcome, October 24, 2005.
44
17
action “on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation
with relevant regional organizations as appropriate,
should peaceful means be inadequate.”
R2P, in its focus on four egregious human rights crimes,
undoubtedly has reinforced the idea of universal human
rights and a common humanity. Reinforced idea of
responsible sovereignty. But as the concept has come to
be better understood, it has come to take on strong statebased rather than individual based elements.
R2P has come to endorse the view that, all things being
equal, populations face a reduced risk of harm within wellgoverned, capable, and responsible states.
1. Moreover, R2P to some degree endorses nonintervention rather than intervention, because it
suggests that only if a state is “manifestly failing”
in its duty to protect the core human rights of
its population will intervention by outsiders be
contemplated;
2. It sets up a high bar for intervention: it does not
refer to “large scale killing” or “serious violations of
international humanitarian law”. It refers to the four
crimes of genocide, war crimes etc because they
were related to existing international law;
far more varied than keeping warring parties apart. They
often include establishing the conditions for the holding of
elections, demobilization of fighting groups, the promotion
of human rights, and the building of institutions to promote
the rule of law. Non-interference in a strict form is proving
difficult to sustain when you start to have global interests
and are recognized as having the status of a great power.
Thus, despite its frequent references to state sovereignty
and non-interference in internal affairs, its attitude towards
intervention and the uses of force for humanitarian purposes
in global politics has adapted. At the same time, China’s
known and anticipated positions in these debates have led
to certain key discursive and constraining modifications to
official documents and UN resolutions, although it has not
been alone in promoting such changes. This is not solely
about China’s adaptation to a global norm. There is also
Chinese agency: Beijing has also shaped the discursive
and behavioural environment in such a way as to make
it more compatible with its preferences. China prefers
an incremental and cautious approach, and has tried to
deal with all matters that have come before the Security
Council on a case-by-case basis in an attempt to prevent
the establishment of a precedent in UN behaviour.
• In relation to Somalia, China argued that it agreed
to intervention because there was no responsible
governmental authority to give consent;
3. R2P gives the state in question a primary role in the
responsibility to protect;
• On Haiti, China stated that prior action on the part of
the Organization of American States as well as the
General Assembly provided the enabling context
that “warrant[ed] the extraordinary consideration of
the matter by the Security Council and the equally
extraordinary application of measures provided for
in Chapter VII;”45
4. It does not set out criteria for intervention. (e.g.
seriousness of the threat; last resort, proportional
means; balance of consequences). Notably,
China, Russia and the United States all opposed
adopting criteria for intervention by external
forces, preferring to consider each instance of
humanitarian catastrophe on a case by case basis.
In Sum: For all their potential, these developments with
respect to R2P have not helped states decide what
should be done where an anticipated or actual use of a
Permanent Member’s veto prevents the Security Council
from acting in cases of supreme humanitarian need (as in
the Syrian case).
The global consensus behind R2P is that the threshold
for intervention should be set at a high level, both in
deciding when there should be an international response
to atrocities, and when a state should be judged to have
failed in offering protection for its citizenry. Moreover,
attention should predominantly be directed towards the
prevention of abuse rather than forging an international
response once abuses start occurring.
China
Beijing participated directly in these deliberations that
led to the 2005 WSO document. And it has gone along
thereafter with the R2P language.
For example, after a period of negotiation it voted in support
of UN Security Council Resolution 1674 in 2006 that
referenced R2P in the context of the protection of civilians
in armed conflict; and it has sanctioned UN peacekeeping
and military interventions in other states, sometimes for
humanitarian reasons (Somalia, Haiti, East Timor). These
missions are often very intrusive in form and involve tasks
• East Timor was made easier for Beijing when the
Indonesian President gave his grudging consent
to the UN-mandated operation and by the fact
that China had never recognized the Indonesian
takeover of East Timor in the first place.46
Above all, China has tried to find ways to sustain a definition
of intervention that includes :
• host-state consent;
• support of relevant regional organizations for action
to be taken;
• a preference for non-military forms of intervention;
• a prominent role for the UN Security Council.
It has put this in an authoritative document on UN reform
of June 2005. It states: “When a massive humanitarian
crisis occurs, it is the legitimate concern of the international
community to ease and defuse the crisis. Any response to
such a crisis should strictly conform to the UN Charter and
the opinions of the country and the regional organization
concerned should be respected… Wherever it involves
enforcement actions, there should be more prudence in
the consideration of each case.”
45
46
Welsh, “The Security Council,” 541—42.
Author’s personal interview, Beijing, September 2008.
18
Libya
That document still represents a reasonable summary of
the official preferred Chinese position. In March 2011, in
Beijing’s explanation of its abstention rather than veto of
the vote on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 referring
to the setting up of the no-fly zone in Libya, China’s UN
Ambassador reiterated the need for the UN Charter to
be respected, for the crisis to be ended through peaceful
means, and his country’s sensitivity to the requests of the
Arab League and the African Union for action to be taken.47
In addition, it voted in favour of a SC resolution authorising
a referral of the Libyan situation to the International Criminal
Court.
in China’s position? China remains wary of R2P, and has
long adhered to a definition of human security that gives
greater emphasis to “freedom from want” than “freedom
from fear.” However, it has used the R2P formulation, and
does make reference to a need to respond to humanitarian
catastrophes beyond its borders. This requires explanation.
Five points:
1. First, it is clear that China’s position on R2P has not
diverged too far from the international consensus
in part because R2P is debated against the
backdrop of other powerful and related global
norms, including self-determination, sovereign
equality, and non-interference in the internal affairs
of states. These remain powerful building blocks
of international order as many states perceive it.
The Libyan resolution last year in establishing the
No Fly Zone, though it referred to the norm of
R2P, stated it was the “responsibility of the Libyan
authorities to protect the Libyan population”; it was
the Libyans that bore the primary responsibility for
the protection of civilians. Many of the interventions
of the 1990s in fact came with host state consent,
even if some what forced (e.g. Indonesia and East
Timor). Sometimes they came when there was no
state in place to give consent: Somalia;
Thus, Chinese officials and elites have moved beyond a
debate about how best to defend an absolutist principle of
non-interference and have come to assess the conditions
under which some form of involvement might be justified.
But they have also laid down some ground rules involving
the role of the UN Security Council, regional organizations
and host state, and have tried to slow the train of coercive
intervention whenever and wherever it showed signs of
picking up speed.
China and R2P
2. Perhaps Beijing has been comforted too by the
realization that liberal states have lost authority as
a result of the 2003 intervention in Iraq and the
revelations of western involvement in human rights
abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. The
Libyan intervention in March 2011 also began to
lose its legitimacy once NATO action appeared to
have expanded the mandate beyond enforcing a
no-fly zone;
Turning more specifically to R2P, undoubtedly these
developments in the broader field of peace operations
have shaped Chinese thinking and behaviour in relation
to this concept. With R2P, as with UN involvement in
peace operations, China has worked to define R2P’s
meaning and the way it may (or may not) be implemented.
In essence, it has worked to reinforce R2P’s more limited
application.
3. Third, China’s policies have been influenced by
the institutional setting in which they have been
negotiated. Chinese analysts and officials view
the United Nations as an authoritative body that to
some extent represents an international procedural
consensus; no other institution is available in
global politics to play this legitimating role, so
many Chinese commentators argue.49 Given this
particular interpretation of the UN, together with
Beijing’s concerns about international image and
desire to be recognized as a “responsible great
power,” it has rarely blocked outright various
expanded UN efforts in the post-Cold War era
to respond to threats to international peace and
security, even when humanitarian action might be
at their root (I’ll come back to Syria in a bit);
China began to circumscribe the application of intervention
before the finalization of the 2005 WSO document arguing
that that document should put the emphasis on action
designed to prevent the abuses from occurring in the
first place. At the UN General Assembly debate on R2P
in July 2009, Beijing’s representatives emphasized the
compatibility between R2P, state sovereignty and noninterference in that the “government of a given state bears
the primary responsibility for protecting its citizens.”
They also stressed that R2P would only apply to the
four international crimes I referred to earlier and that “all
peaceful means” had to have been “exhausted” before
coercive measures could be contemplated.
China’s voice was, then, a conservative one in this UN
debate, but Beijing did not suggest that it wanted to
revisit and unpick the 2005 consensus document. Overall,
it has shaped the idea of R2P in a more conservative
direction, although interestingly it apparently has made few
overt efforts to influence other delegations to support its
cautious position.48 Perhaps it doesn’t need to for reasons
I shall explain later on.
Explaining Modest Change in China’s Position
How might we best explain these modest adaptations
China’s explanatory statement of 17 March 2011 can be found at
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10200.doc.htm.
48
Personal Interview by Author, New York, October 2009.
47
4. In addition, the institutional design of the UN
Security Council provides reassurance to China
that it may stop a proposed course of action that
it finds intolerable. Either the actual veto or the
anticipatory veto provide China with the institutional
clout to revise Security Council Resolutions or, as
a last resort, to block them entirely. Other states
are aware of several of Beijing’s “red lines” and
As former Chinese Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, put it,
the UN is the “most universal, representative, and authoritative
international organization in the world,” Qian Qichen, “PRC’s Qian
Qichen writes on US security strategy, international relations,”
Foreign Broadcast Information Services, Daily Report, China,
January 20, 2004.
49
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shape their responses and resolutions with these
constraints in mind;
5. Finally, the position of the United States in the debate
has provided China with some cover. Although
the United States is strongly and sometimes
negatively associated with interventionist practices,
sometimes for humanitarian motivations, its failure
to act in Rwanda in 1994, circumspect attitude to
Sudan in the 2000s, and reluctance to become
too directly involved in support of opposition
groups associated with the ‘Arab Spring’ suggest
no automaticity on these matters. Rather, the
United States appears to have a desire to
maintain strategic autonomy over decisions that
might involve it in the use of force. The United
States, like China, was reluctant to accept the
attempted UN codification of the conditions under
which intervention should occur. Although the
underlying motivations are different, the US, like
China, has also at times placed emphasis on the
preventative aspects of R2P, and during an early
draft of the WSO document objected to language
that suggested the UN Security Council had a
legal obligation to intervene when atrocities were
occurring.50
But why only modest, incremental, cautious change: here
we need to turn to China’s:
• Domestic concerns, particularly abut social and
political stability and the fear that dissent could get
out of hand inside China. The fear of contagion.
This has affected its attitude towards the Arab
spring, towards social media, and towards events
in Libya and Syria. I don’t believe that China actually
fears a military intervention inside China, but does
fear international condemnation and sanctions,
and that it will lose control of dissent because of
emulation;
• Concern too that R2P is really about support for
regime change, US democracy promotion, and
that UN mandates once agreed will get extended;
• There is also a fairly consistent consequentialist
line promoted: that military intervention will make
things worse; will lead to more human rights abuse
not less, more instability for decades to come,
not less. The motives for making this argument
might be suspect, but it has a firm ground in some
branches of law and political theory. On Syria
for example, the Chinese support the line that
Annan’s negotiating mission needs more time if it
is designed to promote a peaceful political solution
to the crisis. It refuses to directly blame the Syrian
government, even in the case of the massacre in
the Syrian area of Houla in late May 2012.
exceptions such as Chile, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa,
Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippines,
whose governments are far more supportive of the
concept than China.
This, then, is the framework through which we should
view Syria, its justifications for non-action and its UN veto
of November 2011 last year, and February 4th this year.
That last resolution urged Bashar Al-Assad to step down.
China argued instead that the UN should give more time
for negotiations to bear fruit.
Is this simply, a cover for inaction?
Largely, yes, but is also derived from its fears about regime
change as the primary motive and about mandates
starting in limited form but quickly becoming extended.
Without the extension of the Libyan mandate, as it saw it,
perhaps no veto of the Syrian resolution.
But China knows that it can’t leave it there: as a member of
the UNSC, as a self-designated “responsible great power”
and one with a series of complex interests in the Middle
East and elsewhere to satisfy. So,
• It has set up some lines of communication with the
Syrian opposition and these representatives have
spent some time in Beijing;
• It has called for an end to violence in Syria and
abstained on the UN GA resolution calling on Syria
to implement the Arab League’s proposed solution
to the crisis. That resolution “strongly condemned”
the continued widespread and systematic
violations of human rights and fundamental
freedoms by the Syrian authorities;
• China has strongly backed the Annan negotiating
mission, and has engaged in a round of diplomatic
meetings in the ME.
What does this all mean for the future of R2P? That it is not
a consolidated norm and is unlikely to be so for a very long
time, if ever. Humanitarian war, as one of my colleagues at
Oxford termed it, remains as controversial as ever.
China’s positions are not too far away from its Asian
neighbours, from the other BRICs. Russia is tougher still.
Either Western liberal govts with robust attitudes towards
HI in Syria will have to circumvent the UNSC (not a good
idea), think about arming the opposition (and risk escalating
the violence), or continue toughening the sanctions on the
current regime, coupling this with continued support for
Kofi Annan’s mission. This latter position is not too far away
from what China would prefer as an approach. It doesn’t
represent non-intervention in a strict form because that
position is no longer (if ever it was) sustainable.
Undoubtedly, China’s preferred position on R2P is to
emphasize R2P’s prevention mandate and thus the state’s
responsibility for protecting its citizens. The international
community, in Beijing’s view, can provide assistance
in building state capacity, but in the end should clearly
remain in a position subordinate to the actions of the state
concerned. This position is not too far away from the UN
member-state consensus on R2P, with some notable
50
Wheeler and Egerton, “The Responsibility to Protect,” 122.
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