China's New Diplomacy

Evan S. Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003

Summary:  The recent crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons has had at least one unexpected aspect: the crucial -- and highly effective -- intervention of Beijing. China's steady diplomacy is a sign of how much things have changed in the country, which has long avoided most international affairs. Recently, China has begun to embrace regional and global institutions it once shunned and take on the responsibilities that come with great-power status. Just what the results of Beijing's new sophistication will be remains to be seen; but Asia, and the world, will never be the same.

Evan S. Medeiros is an Associate Political Scientist at the Rand Corporation. M. Taylor Fravel is a Fellow at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.

Meanwhile, China has increased its engagement with the un Security Council. Until the mid-1990s, China regularly abstained from council resolutions that invoked Chapter VII of the un Charter, which authorizes the use of force, in order to signal its opposition to the erosion of sovereignty such resolutions implied. In recent years, however, Beijing has begun to back these measures. In November 2002, for example, it voted for Resolution 1441 on weapons inspections in Iraq: one of the few times that China has supported a Chapter VII measure since joining the un in 1971. Beijing has also increased its participation in peacekeeping operations, supporting contingents in East Timor, Congo, and elsewhere.

China's attention to and involvement in global arms control and nonproliferation affairs has undergone an equally important transformation. For much of the 1980s, Beijing viewed arms control and nonproliferation as the responsibility of the United States and the Soviet Union, and as attempts to limit China's influence. Since then, however, it has ratified several major arms control and nonproliferation accords, including the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Chemical Weapons Convention. China has also agreed to adhere to the basic tenets of the Missile Technology Control Regime. And it signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, even though Beijing still had substantial, ongoing testing requirements directly related to its efforts to modernize its nuclear warheads.

Finally, although Chinese firms continue to provide some worrisome dual-use assistance to a few countries (such as Pakistan and Iran), the scope, content, and frequency of its export of sensitive weapons-related items has declined and diminished. In the latter half of the 1990s, the Chinese government began to institutionalize its nonproliferation commitments by issuing export controls, a trend that has continued in recent years. Moreover, an expanding community of Chinese officials, scientists, military officers, and academics involved in arms control and nonproliferation research and policymaking has helped sensitize senior leaders to the importance of these issues to the country's overall foreign policy and national security.

MOMENTARY MODERATION?

Even Beijing's recent approach to Taiwan -- long China's greatest security challenge and most sensitive foreign policy issue -- reveals a growing sophistication and confidence. From the mid-1990s to early 2001, China's policies on cross-strait relations were insecure and reactive. Beijing was so nervous about creeping Taiwanese independence that it viewed many unrelated diplomatic issues (such as many of its relationships with third countries) through this single prism. And toward Taiwan itself, China focused more on coercion to prevent independence than it did on encouraging reunification or reducing tension. Chinese officials bitterly objected to every improvement in U.S.-Taiwan military ties, and the island was a major sore spot in U.S.-China relations.

This approach proved resoundingly counterproductive, however. For example, when China conducted aggressive missile tests in 1995 and 1996 in the hope of cowing Taiwanese and American leaders, it achieved the opposite result: the United States dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait, and support for then President Lee Teng-hui grew in the polls. China's military exercises and bellicose diplomacy also damaged its image in the region, particularly among Southeast Asian nations.

Beijing made a similar mistake four years later. In 2000, China published a white paper on Taiwan, noting that the island's indefinite delay in restarting cross-strait negotiations might result in China's use of "drastic measures," including force. One of Beijing's goals, presumably, was to set a time frame (albeit unspecified) for reunification. But the result was that a few months later Taiwan elected its first-ever president from a pro-independence opposition party.

Over the past two years, China finally seems to have started to learn its lesson, trading belligerence and coercive tactics for patience and moderation. Beijing thus has abandoned its attempt to create a rough schedule for reunification and has toned down its threats of military force. Instead, it now seems much more interested in seducing Taiwan with economic opportunities (while still sharpening its coercive tools). Moreover, Chinese leaders no longer protest every uptick in U.S.-Taiwan military relations. In fact, senior Chinese officials have stopped mentioning the issue every time they meet with their U.S. counterparts.

This does not mean Beijing has dropped its ultimate intention to reunify with the island. China's heavy-handed approach to the SARS crisis in Taiwan, as well as its dogged efforts to deny Taiwanese membership in the World Health Organization, recently called into question the depth of the transformation. But for the most part, China's tactics have changed -- at least for now. What with the explosion in cross-strait economic links and Taiwan's current financial problems, China's leaders have grown confident that time is on their side and that their leverage over Taiwan is growing. This confidence remains fragile for now. But Washington has helped matters, by adopting policies to reassure and deter both Beijing and Taipei.