China’s Two Foreign Policy Identities: A Constructivist Analysis

• In Event: Chinese Foreign Policy

Abstract

Using an International Relations Constructivist approach centered on normative power and relationality, this paper proposes an understanding of China’s foreign policy under President Xi based on the coexistence of two different Chinese identities. China the 19th century-style territorial empire aggressively projects its hard power on a regional scale, with targets that include the South China Sea and Taiwan. At the same time, China the 21st-century deterritorialized and cooperative postmodern global power is a peaceful provider of affordable goods, hardworking entrepreneurial migrants, and benevolent ‘win-win’ projects. I have briefly analyzed this paradoxical situation in my book China’s International Socialization of Political Elites in the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge, 2021) and, more recently, in the manuscript of a book titled The Geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative (currently under review at Routledge). This paper proposes a more in-depth analysis, which starts from Alexander Wendt’s note that identity ‘can take multiple forms simultaneously within the same actor; (...) most identities are activated selectively depending on the situations in which [the actors find themselves]’ (Wendt 1999/2003: 230). Many states behave differently in different contexts. The Chinese case is rather extreme due to the very different conditions at the origin of its two identities. The territorial empire was forged under Mao Zedong during the Cold War. The postmodern global power emerged under Deng Xiaoping and developed in a cooperative context strongly marked by the highly beneficial Chinese participation in the Western-centered globalization ‘from above.’ The new international identity represents a new layer added to the previous one without totally replacing it. Importantly, the two identities are different but not incompatible. In fact, a ‘division of labor’ exists between the postmodern global power and the territorial empire: both participate in the construction of a new Chinese-led international order intended to replace the American-led one.
Indeed, President Xi launched a complex and sophisticated grand strategy that has a regional component, which aims to construct a Chinese-centered ‘community of shared destiny’ in Asia; and a global one, which tries to create a Chinese-led international order. To achieve this highly ambitious goal, China the postmodern global power is using a network of new multilateral institutions and especially the Belt and Road Initiative, which projects its relationality-based normative power in the Global South. More specifically, processes of normative suasion and cognitive role playing – that are respectively based on micro-processes of persuasion and role playing/mimicking – have been employed to socialize the political elites of Global South countries. Their remarkable success is due to material incentives represented by a large number of prestige infrastructure projects that benefit the political elites individually and as a group as they are calculated to increase their political legitimacy and electoral support. In most cases, China the postmodern global power has achieved Jeffrey Checkel’s role playing, Type I socialization of these elites (Checkel 2005: 804). The latter accordingly change their geopolitical preferences, align their states’ foreign policy with Beijing’s interests, and join the emerging Chinese-led international order. This process is greatly enhanced by the reliance of the Belt and Road Initiative on relationality (guanxi), which gives priority to relationships over short-term material gains. Exploitative patterns of interaction clearly exist, which structure the BRI and the new order as a center-periphery system. But China’s relationality does lead to a degree of cooperation and benevolence largely superior to those of previous counterhegemonic powers such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
For its part, China the territorial empire also relies on the Belt and Road Initiative to construct security partnerships, create ‘corridors’ that represent partly or fully continental alternatives to China’s current ‘sea lifelines’ such as that through the Malacca Strait, build civil-military dual use ports that the People’s Liberation Army Navy may use in the future, and increase its intelligence capabilities. At present, these tasks are of marginal importance. However, this will fundamentally change if the US counteroffensive results in a new cold war. If this unfortunate but likely scenario does materialize and the international system becomes bipolar once more (Mearsheimer 2019: 44), a new balance will be reached between the geopolitical efforts of China the postmodern global power and the geostrategic actorness of China the territorial empire. Both will contribute to maintaining, further expanding, and protecting the new Chinese-led international order.

Author

• Theodor Tudoroiu, University of the West Indies