CHINA'S FOREIGN POLICY: Who Makes It, and How Is It Made?

Год издания: 2012

Издательство: The Asan Institute for Policy Studies

ISBN: 978-89-97046-41-6

Edited by Gilbert Rozman

In 2010 Chinese foreign policy seized the initiative in East Asian relations. As the United States made plans for withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and proceeded with a build-up to be followed soon by a drawdown in Afghanistan, the two wars that had come to define the global arena in the 2000s lost their allure in the international spotlight. President Barack Obama made it clear that the U.S. priority would be East Asia, broadly construed. In 2011 at the Honolulu APEC summit and the Bali East Asian Summit he reaffirmed this "pivot." His initia¬tives were met with suspicion in China. After all, in 2010 its less conciliatory policies had aroused anxiety throughout the region. Other countries, including the United States, were reacting to its aggressive moves and its refusal to condemn those of North Korea. With China's leadership poised for renewal in 2012-13, observers were paying close attention to what this might mean for the stability of the region. It was becoming increasingly urgent to understand who makes Chinese foreign policy and how it is made, looking back and also looking forward.

The lessons drawn about 2010-11 gained added poignancy in December 2011 with the death of Kim Jong-il, which aroused uncertainty about North Korea's political stability and about China's responses. In their acceptance of Kim Jong-un as the successor to what China iden¬tified as a "socialist" regime, Chinese leaders were reinforcing the closer ties they had recently been cultivating with the North's leadership. The transformation of Sino-North Korean relations is one step in China's vigorous foreign policy, which observers have been monitoring closely in the aftermath of 2010 developments.

The May 19-20,2011 Asan conference provided a venue to reassess foreign policy decision-making in China. Bringing together leading voices in this reassessment, the meeting elicited lively exchanges centered not on refuting rival interpretations but on jointly exploring leads that clarify the processes of China's foreign policy formulation that have yet to be adequately explained. The discussion, as the chapters in this book, proceeded from the general to the more specific level. It prioritized the joint search for answers to questions, not differences based on the nationality of the respondent, although there were occasions when some of the Chinese participants were presumed to have knowledge of aspects of recent developments that others at the conference were seeking to understand better. Updating the conference papers to cover the end of 2011, this book reflects the state of analysis on the eve of the important 2012-13 transition to China's fifih-generation leaders.