The Making of Foreign Policy in China: Structure and Process by A. Doak Barnett

Author:A. Doak Barnett [Barnett, A. Doak]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, General
ISBN: 9780813302324
Google: FcmOAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 4042576
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1985-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

7.

Economic, Military, and Cultural Institutions

Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade

IN CHINESE EYES, clearly the second most important ministry directly involved in the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy is the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade (MOFERT). As China's foreign economic relations have broadened, economic issues have become increasingly salient. Because of this, a special effort has been made, as indicated earlier, to coordinate foreign economic policy with diplomatic-political policy, both through Ji Pengfei's coordinating group and through the regular bilateral meetings of Foreign Ministry and mofert ministers and vice-ministers. However, because mofert is such a huge institution with such broad responsibilities (and perhaps also because the Foreign Ministry lacks anything like a bureau of economic affairs), the coordination is far from perfect; in many respects, the Foreign Ministry seems to play a secondary role in shaping China's foreign economic policy.

mofert was established in 1982 through a merger of four ministry-level bodies—the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations (responsible for China's foreign aid), the State Import and Export Commission, and the State Foreign Investment Control Commission. Its present responsibilities are therefore enormous. It concentrates in one body functions that in the United States are widely dispersed in the Commerce Department, the Agency for International Development, the State Department's Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, and a great many other federal departments and agencies.

According to Jia Shi, a senior vice-minister of mofert, the ministry is "responsible for the study and implementation of foreign economic and trade policies, for the administration of foreign trade matters, for laws and regulations on foreign economic relations, and for coordination of activities relating to foreign economic relations."51 He maintains that mofert not only coordinates its work closely with the State Planning Commission and other top economic planning bodies but that it also has "very close relations" and "very good coordination" with the Foreign Ministry. In fact, he stresses the importance of meshing foreign economic policy with overall foreign policy. MOFERT's economic policies, he says, "support overall foreign policy needs," and are "closely coordinated with foreign policy needs." It does "not make decisions solely on the basis of the economic benefit or the needs of specific enterprises," he says, " but on the basis of overall foreign policy needs." (To support this, he cites examples of decisions that, he says, were shaped by political instead of strictly economic considerations.) "These kinds of decisions," according to Jia, "are made by both the Foreign Ministry and this ministry"; however, he stresses that mofert rather than the Foreign Ministry is primarily responsible for China's foreign economic relations, and it appears that, in reality, while foreign economic policy clearly conforms to broad guidelines laid down by the Foreign Ministry and higher authorities, a great many decisions are made by MOFERT with only minor participation from the Foreign Ministry. It is not very clear, moreover, exactly how MOFERT's policies are coordinated on a day-to-day basis with the many other economic ministries and agencies involved in China's foreign

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