was often perceived and described as “assertive”, “aggressive” and “overreacting”, with the purpose of kicking U.S. out of the region.51 The mutual interaction is also related to China’s domestic development which often influences the configuration of its periphery. While China needs a stable and prosperous periphery, the periphery also needs a stable and prosperous China. Historically, a stable and prosperous China often led to a stable and prosperous periphery thus constituting a community of common destiny.52
How to Deal with Change: Reactively or Proactively?
Then how to deal with an ever-changing periphery? In terms of priority, theoretically Chinese foreign policy has long followed the formula articulated by Hu Jintao: “Big powers are the key, neighbors are paramount, developing countries are the foundation, and multilateralism is an important stage.”53 Although periphery is defined as “paramount”, in reality periphery did not necessarily enjoy the priority position in China’s overall diplomacy. Starting from the Jiang Zemin period, the priority of China’s diplomacy was often put on major power relations, particularly the relations with the United States, which was considered the most important among priorities (zhong zhong zhi zhong). The thinking behind this is that as long as China can handle Sino-American relations well, other relationships would fall into place.
This emphasis began to change during Xi Jinping era. He has attached unprecedented importance to peripheral diplomacy. As an expert in a government think tank put it: “Since the 18th Party Congress, the strategic significance of periphery to China has been further demonstrated and the party central committee has increasingly paid more attention to the periphery.”54 In October 2013, for the first time ever, a high-level symposium exclusively dedicated to China’s periphery diplomacy was held in Beijing. The meeting was attended by all the standing committee members of the CCP’s politburo and almost the entire foreign policy establishment in the Chinese government. Xi Jinping personally chaired the meeting and delivered a keynote speech. This is indeed unprecedented in China’s foreign policy history. Normally, the Chinese government only holds working conferences to discuss foreign policy in general, not specific area or specific region of foreign policy. This highlights the critical importance and urgency that the Chinese leadership attaches to peripheral diplomacy. As Xi put it, periphery has an extremely important strategic significance for China in terms of its geographical position, natural environment and mutual relations.55
In practice, top Chinese leaders visited China’s periphery with unprecedented intensity covering the entire “grand periphery”.56 For example, both Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang’s maiden foreign visits after they became top leaders at the 18th Party Congress were to China’s neighboring countries. The first country Xi Jinping visited is Russia while Li Keqiang made his first trip to India. This tendency continued after the 19th Party Congress in 2017. Immediately after the party congress, Chinese leaders including Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang swarmed out to visit China’s neighboring countries and attend regional multilateral economic forums. Most of China’s major diplomatic initiatives such as AIIB and BRI were all aimed at peripheral countries at least initially. For instance, BRI initially included Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia.57
In the Chinese discourse of foreign policy, peripheral diplomacy began to be considered to be at least as important as, if not more than, the major power diplomacy. In the Chinese government documents, more often than before, peripheral diplomacy was listed as the top priority when discussing Chinese foreign policy. Scholars and analysts also tend to emphasize the importance of peripheral diplomacy more compared to the major power diplomacy in recent years. They argue that periphery has the most direct impact upon China’s political, economic and security interests and is an important support for China’s foreign relations. Periphery has significant impact upon China’s overall security, especially when the international situation has been undergoing dramatic changes.58 As some scholars pointed out, from the historical experience, a peaceful and prosperous peripheral diplomacy is the best for China’s reform and openness, or a necessary condition. Peripheral instability on the other hand, definitely will drag on or disrupt China’s course of development as China was forced to get involved in several wars during the Cold War period making it hard for China to concentrate on economic development.59 Therefore, China should put peripheral security at a prominent position in China’s overall security because at the current stage, the main external security pressures are concentrated on China’s periphery. China now also has the strategic capability to maintain its peripheral stability and is fully prepared to deal with all kinds of complexities in its periphery.60
This leads us to China’s approach to managing an evolving periphery. For those who fully recognize the dynamic changes in China’s periphery environment, a new periphery strategy is advisable. What happened in the last 7–8 years in the periphery convinced them that the traditional approach toward China’s neighbors is no longer sufficient to maintain peripheral stability of China. A new strategy is urgently needed. This line of thinking among scholars and analysts finally reached to the top leadership. Xi Jinping tried to articulate a new strategy of China’s peripheral diplomacy at a high-level meeting in 2013.61 While he recognizes his predecessors’ contribution to China’s success in peripheral diplomacy, he did point out that the new situation demands China’s diplomatic strategy and work to keep pace with the times implying that China needs new thinking and practices to update its peripheral diplomacy.
Then what kind of new peripheral strategy should China pursue under the new circumstances? Xi’s speech at the peripheral diplomacy conference sketched out a broad outline. China’s overall strategic goal, according to him, remains the same, that is to maintain a stable and peaceful periphery to help realize great rejuvenation of China and make full use of the important strategic opportunity period for China’s development. However, this is not the only foreign policy goal in his mind. China should also maintain its national sovereignty, security and development interests. In other words, maintaining a stable and peaceful periphery should not be achieved at the expense of China’s security interests.
In terms of achieving these policy objectives, Xi Jinping tried to come up with something new. He suggested that China should carry out its periphery diplomacy in “a solid, polyphyletic and cross-time and space viewing angle.” He did not elaborate on what these terms really mean. It is safe to say that his point is that China’s peripheral diplomacy cannot be carried out in a one-dimensional and parochial fashion. Rather, it should be multi-dimensional, comprehensive and pursued in connection with other components of China’s diplomacy. In a way, this is a subtle criticism of China’s periphery diplomacy in the past which pretty much took “economic diplomacy” as its main thrust with the expectation that economic benefits could spillover to political and security domains in China’s relations with its neighbors. It turned out not to be the case.
Another problem with the traditional Chinese peripheral diplomacy is that it mainly deals with the government and those who are in power often neglecting the opposition and societal forces. China’s setback during Obama years in Myanmar is just one example to the point. The implications of advocating a peripheral diplomacy that’s across-space and time could point to Xi and Li’s diplomacy in recent years which pays more equal and balanced attention to China’s entire periphery instead of just focusing on one sub-region such as Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. The top Chinese leadership’s diplomatic offensive in the following years seems to be the typical implementation of the Xi doctrine on periphery diplomacy, or for that matter, even for the entire Chinese foreign policy.
One interesting change in Xi’s periphery approach is that it pays more attention to enhancing China’s soft power in the region. Besides the existing slogans of yu lin wei shan, yu lin wei ban (pursuing friendship and partnership with neighbors) and mu lin, an lin, and fu lin (keeping good neighboring relationship and helping stabilizing and enriching neighbors), he puts forward another set of four Chinese words to illustrate China’s good intention, will and manner in dealing with its
