China's Wise Washingtonian Foreign Policy

“The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” – George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.

An excerpt from, “China’s Foreign Policy Objectives” from the book, “China’s International Behavior: Activism, Opportunism, and Diversification,” By Evan S. Medeiros, 2009, RAND Corporation:

Chinese policymakers describe their increasingly active and robust diplomacy using the expression “all-around diplomacy.” On face value, this principle sounds rather broad and explains little, but in a Chinese context, it possesses specific and new (or newly emphasized) dimensions of statecraft. All-around diplomacy is meant to contrast China’s current approach with past CCP guiding principles—such as “leaning to one side”—which had a more ideological nature. This phrase reinforces (to foreign as well as Chinese audiences) the notion that Chinese foreign policy will continue to focus on protecting China’s national interests (i.e., sovereignty, development, and respect) and not on ideological goals, as was often the case in past years. All-around diplomacy is also meant to emphasize the comprehensive nature of Chinese foreign policy: It will include all nations, developed and developing, and will include multiple regions, such as Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe as well as Asia. Chinese foreign policy will embrace all modes of international interactions (bilateral, multilateral, and regional), and such interactions will encompass economics, politics, military, science and technology, culture, education, and tourism. In the words of reports from the high-level 2006 Central Conference on Foreign Affairs Work, “China has created a pattern of opening to the outside world in all directions, at all levels, and in broad areas. . . . [emphasis added]” Thus, all-around diplomacy is meant to signal the degree to which the Chinese leaders support a highly internationalist and nonideological foreign policy.

An excerpt from, “Asia as the New Center of Geopolitics” By Evan Medeiros, Internationale Politik Quarterly, October 25, 2024:

It has become commonplace—almost trite—to argue that Asia is emerging as a new power center in the world. Policymakers and analysts point to China’s and India’s economic rise, Asia’s centrality to global supply chains, and, of course, US-China strategic competition and the risk of conflict. All of that is true, but it is also inaccurate. It misses the fundamental changes occurring in both the region and in the very nature of geopolitics today.  

In truth, Asia’s rise is the story of a region becoming the center of geopolitics for the 21st century. Asian security, economic, technological, and ecological dynamics will define global affairs. Just as Europe was the center of geopolitics for the second half of the 20th century (both before and after the Cold War), Asia is rapidly assuming that role today. What happens in Asia will come to define geopolitics and what happens in the world will directly impact Asia. The nature of this interaction (i.e., between regional and global politics) is perhaps the most important variable in international affairs today.

Consider the facts. Asia is now home to half of the world’s 20 fastest growing economies, generates two thirds of global growth, and accounts for 40 percent of global GDP. Many Asian economies are at the center of global supply chains for the consumer and industrial technologies driving innovation and prosperity today. The core global trends of digitalization and green technologies are facilitated by innovations from Asian economies and are being adopted there more quickly than in the West. Moreover, 60 percent of the world’s population lives in the continent, and the size of Asia’s middle class (including China and India) is expected to reach nearly 2.3 billion people, or 65 percent of the world’s total by 2030. Indeed, Asians will constitute the largest share, some 88 percent, of the next billion people in the middle class.

Asia also accounts for seven of the 10 largest standing militaries in the world and seven of the nine nuclear weapons states (declared and undeclared), which includes the United States, China, Russia, France, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. The US has five formal treaty allies in Asia (including two with active territorial disputes with China) and currently deploys, including at Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, over 350,000 US troops in the region from across all armed services. The stakes for the United States are massive and growing.