Opinion | How China seized the diplomatic initiative in 2023
By Tom Fowdy
The past few weeks have been good news for China, on the diplomatic front. In spite of aggressive American efforts to raise tensions across the board with Beijing, ranging from the "spy balloon incident", to Taiwan, to TikTok, and semiconductors, China has responded with prudence and restraint, and focused on consolidating its relationships with others. First, it brokered a landmark deal to normalize ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Then, Xi Jinping visited Russia and met with Vladimir Putin, proposing its own peace solution to the Ukraine conflict. Rather than isolating China from Europe, the visit has had the run-on effect of leading EU leaders to visit Beijing, including Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen. Then finally, China sealed a switch of recognition by Honduras from Taipei to Beijing.
It's all good news for China, and represents insurmountable setbacks in the US effort to isolate Beijing. In responding to US pressure, China isn't attempting to fight fire with fire, but is playing a long-term diplomatic game which aims to thwart and undercut the cold war environment which the United States and its proxies are attempting to create. This is far from the caricature of Chinese foreign policy repeatedly pushed by the mainstream media, and shows that there is underlying strength in "restraint" and in this case, utilizing peace, engagement and diplomacy as opposed to militarization, coercion and tensions, which is the US's primary method of choice.
Currently, American foreign policy is geared towards attempting to systematically isolate and contain the rise of China through building multiple "minilateral" coalitions to protect its interests. This has included the creation of blocks such as the Quad, AUKUS, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, partners for a blue Pacific, institutions such as NATO, the list goes on. The United States subsequently demands unity from its allies in confronting China, seeking to transfigure the international climate into a binary geopolitical struggle of democracy vs. authoritarianism, hence in April the US will soon hold its own "summit for democracy", the second of its kind. In doing so, it is the objective of the United States to deliberately escalate tensions so that it may project geopolitical power and gain greater leverage over its allied countries.
In contrast, China's foreign policy has long been aware of these realities, and as such it frequently speaks out against a "Cold War Mentality" and "bloc confrontation". Beijing recognizes that the United States seeks to try and blockade its development, promote decoupling and undermine ties between it and allied countries. Therefore, China recognizes that responding forcefully to the US's escalation tensions is a trap, even if it gives the impression Washington is hurling one-sided hostility at Beijing continually, yet getting little in response for it. However, this does not mean China does nothing. Rather, its primary tactic is to respond to the United States through diplomatic engagement, pursuing what it describes as "multilateralism".
Previously, China responded to American hostility by attempting to channel diplomatic efforts toward the United States itself. Its goal was to try and stabilize the relationship and alleviate tensions. This was most visible during the Trump administration, and the early part of Biden's Presidency. Beijing had seemingly miscalculated that when Biden came to office, the deterioration of relations could be corrected and things put on the "right track" again. It soon materialized that this was anything but the case, and things in fact got even worse. Recognizing this, China now effectively sees diplomatic engagement with the United States as a waste of time, a lost cause even, and has begun to invest instead in improving its relationships with other countries with the goal of isolating America's position.
In doing so, China also ignores the countries who are most attuned to following the United States at the given period, which currently includes Canada, the UK, and Japan, but notably no longer Australia. Instead, China is focusing again on western Europe, having used its strategic partnership with Russia as leverage to sway EU leaders into making reconciliatory overtures, which of course will come with the conditionality they do not follow the US. Likewise, China has comprehensively deepened its ties with the Gulf States of the Middle East, as well as Iran, using diplomacy to heal regional fractures so it can employ a "best of all worlds" diplomatic approach, in contrast to the US's doctrine of creating regional conflict. Likewise, its focus on the global south also continues. In doing all of this, China is utilizing skillful to weaken America's agenda without having to escalate tensions or make provocative moves. It ensures a more peaceful and stable world, and also shows that the US's belief it can comprehensively isolate China based on a rendering of the old cold war, is wrong, and will ultimately fail.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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