Xi spent a lot of time talking about how China should do more benevolent work to make peripheral countries feel more warm, kinder, and intimate toward China, thus recognizing and supporting China more. China should increase its affinity and influence in the region that way. This is the “soft becoming softer” side of China’s new strategy. For the purpose of increasing China’s soft power in the periphery, China should strengthen public diplomacy and people-to-people diplomacy to win the heart and soul of the population in the neighboring countries making the awareness of “community of common destiny”, a concept Xi invented in March 2013,62 take root in the periphery countries.
Being softer, however, does not necessarily mean China should be passive and reactive as often has been the case in the past. The new Chinese leadership obviously learnt a lesson from the sudden deterioration of China’s position in the region in the previous years. In many ways, China was caught off guard by a chain of reactions and sentiments not in favor of China in the region, putting China in a disadvantageous position. As a result, China was busy reacting to the initiatives made by others. Xi is determined to change that pattern of interactions with the periphery countries. He emphasized that China should be more proactive in its peripheral diplomacy. This is consistent with his style and tone of foreign policy as a whole. For that purpose, China should do better in grasping general trends, devising strategy and drawing up plans in order to improve China’s capabilities of controlling the overall situation. In other words, China should learn to lead than to be led, to control the development instead of being controlled. In this sense, China does not want to stay on the receiving side of the power game in the region. Instead, China intends to take the lost initiative back. The announcement of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over East China Sea in 2013 could be understood in this context. It is said that Xi mentioned this initiative at the very periphery diplomacy conference showcasing China’s soft power diplomacy and charming offensive to its neighboring countries.63 By the same token, the accelerated land reclamation and island building in South China Sea since Xi Jinping came to power also showed Beijing’s urgency to secure a better strategic position in the region.
To stabilize China’s peripheral security situation, China definitely needs new thinking and new methods. Under the guidance of Xi’s new strategy, Chinese scholars and officials came up with various policy recommendations to improve China’s peripheral diplomacy. Many agree that China has become more proactive rather than reactive in its peripheral diplomacy in recent years. For example, China increasingly offers new proposals and programs for regional cooperation.64 That is certainly a positive development. However, some scholars argue that it is not enough to just rely upon China’s great contribution to the regional economy and the BRI. For example, China should also strengthen its cooperation with Southeast Asian countries on non-traditional security issues. It should also pay much closer attention to the changes in domestic politics in neighboring countries, make objective and cool-minded analysis and come up with measures to deal with these changes in China. Finally, in dealing with maritime disputes such as the South China Sea issue, China should demonstrate its strategic determination and manage the disputes through the construction of cooperative institutions and regimes.65
Others also argue that the understanding of China’s periphery should be updated. Instead of just talking about those countries that have a border with China, the intension and extension of China’s peripheral diplomacy should be expanded to include countries not necessarily bordering China. This is the so-called “grand or macro periphery”. China should cultivate relations with countries in all its peripheral areas, not just one: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and South Asia making all of them into its stable strategic “backyards”; thus, providing a favorable external environment for China’s rise.66 As alluded to earlier, the implementation of some of Xi’s big ideas on foreign policy initiatives should also start from China’s periphery. For example, Xi’s initiative to build a community with a shared future is meant to be oriented to China’s neighbors and other developing countries as a priority. China should start from its neighborhood and other developing countries in building a community of shared future for mankind. China and its neighbors share the natural conditions to build such a community.67
While Chinese foreign policy elites conclude that China should pay more attention to its neighboring countries rather than just major powers, the United States is still looming large in the mind of some Chinese analysts. They believe that the key for China to maintain a stable peripheral environment is still the United States. To carry out peripheral diplomacy effectively, the roadblock China cannot walk around is the United States. How the two countries could reach a consensus on the regional order in the Western Pacific region is vitally important.68 In this regard, some argue that Trump’s policy toward Asia-Pacific may create opportunity for China’s peripheral diplomacy. They characterized Trump’s foreign policy style as “transactional diplomacy” which is very often unpredictable and short-term. Such a policy would reduce U.S. strategic credibility in the region. China could take advantage of this transactional diplomacy to make breakthrough in its relations with Southeast Asian countries. Once China’s neighbors are convinced that China is a more principled and reliable partner, Trump’s transactional hardline policy toward China is unlikely to get support from these countries.69
Conclusion
The above brief discussion of China’s perspective of its periphery environment seems to suggest that most Chinese foreign elites have recognized the significant changes in the periphery surrounding China in recent years. However, they have different opinions about the extent, nature and implications of these changes. Some emphasize the severity of the challenges imposed by the United States and its regional allies while others pay more attention to China’s strengthened capability to handle the challenges. Interestingly, while the United States and some of its allies in Asia are still largely blamed for the more troublesome periphery environment of China, some Chinese analysts began to attribute the changes more to China’s economic and military rise in the region. However, they stop short of exploring how the enhanced material basis for China’s peripheral diplomacy could also lead to the changes in China’s international behavior, which may also contribute to more negative reactions from its neighbors. Chinese perception of its periphery has also evolved in recent years, from being more pessimistic during the Obama administration to being more optimistic more recently. No matter what, one thing is clear, the importance of peripheral diplomacy in China’s overall foreign policy has significantly increased during the Xi Jinping era. Regarding how to more effectively manage China’s periphery, there is an emerging consensus that the exiting foreign policy strategy and instrument are insufficient to deal with new challenges. New ideas and approaches are badly needed. Even Xi Jinping could come up with some new concepts and discourses, yet how to implement them could still be a problem. While the Chinese rhetoric, as manifested by Xi’s speech on China’s peripheral diplomacy, is full of nice and sensible phrases, its deeds sometime are perceived otherwise by China’s neighboring countries as illustrated by the examples of ADIZ in East China Sea and island-building activities in South China Sea. In this respect, China is still struggling to find a right balance of exercising its soft and hard power in its complex and dynamic periphery.
1Wang Baofu, Focusing peripheral security and stability in responding to the changes in the world situation, Study Times, March 2, 2017, see http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0302/c40531-29119169.html (accessed on March 18, 2018).
2Zhang Yunlin, New changes in China’s peripheral environment and the counter measures, Ideological Front, no. 1 (2012), see http://www.zhongdaonet.com/NewsInfo.aspx?id=4162 (accessed on March 18, 2018).
3How to look at China’s current and future security environment, Hong Kong Review, November 2000.
4Amitav Acharya, Asia-Pacific: China’s charm offensive in Southeast Asia, New York Times, November 8, 2003.
5How
