Creative Involvement: A New Direction in China's Diplomacy by Yizhou Wang

Author:Yizhou Wang [Wang, Yizhou]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Diplomacy, Social Science, Political Science, American Government, General
ISBN: 9781351740999
Google: NkYlDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35195685
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

4 Theory of carefully using force

Chinese diplomacy, in a soft, low-key, and meticulous manner, seldom engaging in collusion through force, has always been different from the old Western powers, characterized by toughness and rigidity, advocating strength and preferring quick fixes through force. As we all know, recent history books of contemporary international relations are full of stories about the Europeans and Americans dominating the world by law of the jungle and bloody violence. In contrast, the traditional Chinese culture, despite the presence of hundreds of schools of thought and their exponents, has shown a strong mainstream tendency to persuade through reasoning and moral supremacy and to conduct foreign exchanges with enough patience and caution of using force. Even talking about the art of war, most of the ancient Chinese military strategists also preferred psychological warfare rather than brute force. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote: “when wise man resorts to force, the halberds are only used when they are forced to”; “the best of all is to subdue the enemy without fighting”; “the best art of war is to destroy the enemy’s strategy, the second best is to disrupt the enemy’s foreign exchanges, and the least choice is to siege”. By now, this spirit has gradually penetrated and accumulated in the blood of the Chinese nation, becoming the common knowledge from up to politicians and down to the civilians.2 Except in the very special periods of the civil war, revolution, and the ultra-Left, China’s foreign policy, especially since the reform and opening-up, has followed the new international strategies established by Deng Xiaoping, and always adhered to the spirit of peace, cooperation, consultation, and dialogue in commercial, military, diplomatic, and public exchanges, reproducing the historical tradition of “non-attack”, “being cautious on war”, “seeking the potential energy (shi)”, and “moderation”. Take the Chinese army as an example, during the two decades since the end of the Cold War, its external actions were all carried out as “loans” in assistance, supporting, logistical service, and non-battlefield crossfire, rarely used directly for violence, fighting, repression, or armed conflicts like frontline battle; it has also attached great importance to the justification of actions, trying to comply with international norms. A Chinese naval expedition off the coast of Somalia and East Africa was to perform anti-piracy duties and escort merchant ships; among the United Nations peacekeeping forces, Chinese peacekeeping troops and police have been well known for their discipline and remarkable effectiveness in the implementation of the logistics mission; recently, due to the Libya unrest, the Chinese air force and navy had dispatched fighter planes and warships into the Mediterranean only to escort the liners and merchant ships for Chinese labor evacuation, rather than wanton bombing of Libya or showing of force as France, Britain, the United States, and other countries were doing; in regularly released white papers on national defense, the Chinese government repeatedly pointed out that China’s national defense and military modernization is in conformity with and contributes to the theme of world peace

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