China’s Foreign Strategy After the 18th Party Congress: Business as Usual?

Abstract

Chinese foreign policy is still an undertheorized domain of international relations studies. One puzzle that preoccupies international observers is the impact of leadership changes on Chinese foreign behavior. Based on an in-depth reading of official statements made by China’s new political leaders and their first actions in office this paper analyses continuity and change in China’s foreign strategy. Following a combined multidimensional analytical approach the evaluation focuses on the interrelation between indigenous (leadership changes, subsystemic challenges) and exogenous factors (global crises, critical junctures) on the modeling of China’s international strategy. My main conclusion is that shifts and role changes in Chinese foreign policy should not be misread as the outcome of the latest leadership transition. Most “changes” that are now associated with the fifth generation have originally been introduced by their political ancestors. As a context-sensitive, historical-reflectivist analysis shows, China’s “new” approach to world affairs stands for a continuing, incremental adaptation of the PRC to socio-economic evolutions on the domestic and the global level.