Few Chinese leaders have been as visible on the world stage as Xi Jinping. Xi capped a whirlwind year of globetrotting this month with an address to 150 or so leaders at the United Nations climate summit in Paris. He attended almost all the most important global summits and paid high-profile state visits to 14 major nations, taking his overall total to 37 in 33 months. READ MORE: Q&A: President Xi Jinping’s US state visit was ‘enormous success – or as we’d say, a home run’ Through a combination of handshakes and deal-making, Xi has forged closer links with other nations near and far. It is all part of a push to boost China’s international image and status as the balance of power changes and Beijing seeks to protect its economic interests, analysts say. It’s a major departure from the long-standing diplomatic doctrine envisioned by late leader Deng Xiaoping, who said Chinese diplomats should “keep a low profile and hide their brightness”. Xi signalled the shift at a high-level national conference in November last year, revealing his plans for a “new diplomacy”. It’s driven by the belief that the global order is in the midst of a historic change that might end the US’ domination of global affairs of the last few decades, leading to one shared by the West and East. This change has created an opportunity or even necessity for China to take the lead, the belief goes, and helps explain why Xi is more active and assertive than his predecessors in foreign policy and diplomacy. [How] China pursues power [affects] the ... influence it will develop John Ciorciari, University of Michigan Xi’s “new diplomacy” comprises three concentric circles of influence. The first extends to neighbours, the second to the Asia-Pacific region and the third to rest of the world. The goal is to promote China’s regional leadership and to transform the Middle Kingdom into a world power, economically, militarily and diplomatically. Foreign Minister Wang Yi described it as the Chinese vision of building a new type of foreign relations and international order. Under its umbrella, China would actively take part in global economic and financial governance, build a “new type of major power relations”, pursue amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, and engage in friendly exchanges with countries in all major regions, and commit China to a greater role in global development and peace. Zhu Zhiqun, a political science professor and director at the China Institute at Bucknell University in the United States, said the “new diplomacy” was a departure from Deng’s vision but just how big China’s role would be was still up for debate. Zhu said the approach had several goals, including projecting China as a responsible great power that promoted development and peace, securing energy and resources for its continued growth, and expanding markets for trade and overseas investments. “However, the domestic debate over whether China should play a bigger international role is inconclusive. For example, China has been very cautious in joining the military actions against IS,” he said. Matt Ferchen, a resident scholar at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy, said it was clear that on foreign policy, just as on the domestic front, the Xi administration had sought to portray itself as leading bold and necessary economic and political reforms. To realise that change in the world order, Xi is changing China from a sometime-reluctant follower to an often creative diplomatic leader, whether the area of interest is climate change or international peacekeeping. In Asia, China has called for “comprehensive regional connectivity”, seeking to bind the region to Beijing’s embrace by creating a China-centric regional network of infrastructure and institutions. It has launched two China-led multinational financial institutions – the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – to help developing countries finance badly needed construction projects. Xi has also put forward the so-called new Silk Road initiative, also known as “One Belt, One Road”, which would accelerate China’s economic integration with the region and beyond. A crucial element of regional ties will be how Xi deals with the United States. At his September summit in Washington with US President Barack Obama, Xi said Beijing sought “a new type of major power relations” with the US, one that would balance cooperation and competition. China’s economic diplomacy is ... to find additional markets for Chinese firms Benjamin Herscovitch, analyst Part of that rebalancing act will be stronger ties with Europe, as reflected in the reddest of red-carpet welcomes he and his wife received in Britain in November. In London he and British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke of “a golden era” in Sino-British relations. That was followed by a tour of Europe and trips to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Other key moments in Xi’s diplomatic whirlwind were his address at the United Nations’ 70th General Assembly; attendance at the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summits in Ufa in Russia in July; and his assurances to G20 leaders in Antalya in Turkey and other leaders from 20 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations in November that China would continue to fuel global activity despite its slowing growth. There was also the historic summit with Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou in November, the first between the mainland and Taiwan in more than six decades, capping a robust but far from stable engagement between the historical antagonists. In addition, Xi sought to shore up support for its policies from China’s traditional friends and long-time alliances in the developing world, making a state visit to Pakistan, China’s so-called all-weather friend, early this year and attending the China-Africa forum this month. Despite this, the world’s second-largest economy and last major communist-ruled nation lacks political and strategic alliances. Analysts said domestic economic development was at the core of the new diplomatic push. “Xi’s more activist diplomacy will also insulate China from domestic economic strains,” Benjamin Herscovitch, a research manager at China Policy, a Beijing-based policy analysis and advisory firm, said. Herscovitch said the massive infrastructure spending unleashed by the AIIB, the new BRICS bank, and the “One Belt, One Road” initiative was aimed at easing overcapacity problems in key sectors of the Chinese economy and creating funding streams for many Chinese state-owned enterprises. “As such, China’s economic diplomacy is in large part a mechanism to find additional markets for Chinese companies. It is unsurprising that this diplomacy has become more activist as the imperative of mitigating domestic economic strains becomes more acute,” he said. Aside from Xi’s flurry of personal appearances, China raised its international profile during the year by sending warships for calls in distant ports, staging a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war, agreeing to contribute 8,000 UN peacekeeping troops and pledging US$1 billion to a peace fund. The biggest commitment, though, came in Paris, when China worked with the US for a breakthrough climate deal. As the world’s biggest emitter, China agreed that its carbon output would peak by 2030 at the latest and it would cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 60 per cent to 65 per cent from the 2005 levels by the same deadline. China also said it would put 20 billion yuan into a fund to help other developing countries adapt to climate change. Herscovitch said Xi’s increasing international activism was a result of three key factors. First, Xi wanted China to play an international role commensurate with its growing economic and military weight. There was also a widespread belief in the Chinese foreign policy world that safeguarding China’s expansive international interests required more proactive diplomacy. The third factor was China’s use of economic diplomacy as a means of easing domestic economic strains. Despite China’s efforts ... [its] international image leaves a lot to be desired Zhu Zhiqun, Bucknell University Herscovitch said great power status was not simply a product of economic size and the value of a country’s defence budget; it also depended on a state’s ability to shape the norms and institutions of global governance and exercise diplomatic influence around the world. “Xi’s bid to further increase China’s ‘comprehensive national power’ is aimed at achieving great power status in this broad sense,” he said. John Ciorciari, an assistant professor at the Ford School of Public Policy with the University of Michigan, said Xi was seeking to build influence through international institutions, pledging support for existing bodies and leading the establishment of new ones. Ciorciari said contributing peacekeepers in Africa or funding development loans in Asia were ways to build policy clout and wider acceptance as a great power. “Yet the means by which China pursues power has implications for the kinds of influence it will develop and the constraints it will face in exercising its future power. Better that China allocate finite diplomatic capital to compete for leadership in multilateral institutions than to pursue power through unilateral means,” Ciorciari said. READ MORE: Xi Jinping plays up football passion for political advantage at home and abroad Zhu said there was also a “soft power deficit” problem in China’s new diplomacy. “Despite China’s remarkable efforts to contribute to peace and development globally, China’s international image leaves a lot to be desired,” he said. “Increasingly, China’s economic partners question whether China has geopolitical ambitions beyond trade, and Western powers have always accused China of behaviour unsuitable for big powers such as condoning authoritarianism [such as supporting Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe] and bullying its small neighbours [such as in the South China Sea]. “No matter how China defends its policies, many simply think that China has been high-handed and aggressive in dealing with smaller countries in disputes.”
