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My Take | What China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s focus on better ties with US this year says about Beijing’s foreign policy priorities in challenging times
- Wang’s annual policy address offers important clues about how Beijing wants to react to concerns about its economy and frayed relations with the wider world
- Although Beijing remains committed to its partnership with Russia, the fact that Washington is the main focus highlights the limits of that relationship
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The Chinese foreign minister’s annual policy address earlier this month offered some hints about how Beijing plans to adjust its diplomatic priorities in the face of the new reality.
In his speech to a think tank affiliated to the foreign ministry, Wang Yi indicated that Beijing would change its focus and prioritise stable ties with the United States over its relations with other major powers, including Russia.
It marks a subtle but important shift in the face of potentially serious economic and political headwinds, including an authoritarian, inward-looking turn at home and an external environment that has raised increasing concerns about how the country’s global ascendance may be affected.
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Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University, has previously argued that China needs to sort out its diplomatic priorities to deal with these changing realities, warning that this is a “vital strategic issue”.
Last year he told the Hong Kong-based China Review News Agency there is a growing risk of a strategic overdraft in the face of growing economic difficulties and external challenges.
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He argued that the number of Beijing’s strategic priorities looks “set to shrink” and believes that Taiwan and the great power competition with the US should “take precedence over other strategic matters”, including Russia, the South China Sea and Belt and Road Initiative.
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