The limits to China's non-interference foreign policy: pro-state interventionism and the rescaling of economic governance

Abstract

China's foreign policy has been long committed to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. While one could easily point out past and present-day inconsistencies in its implementation, this article argues that defenders and critics of the principle both rely on a limited interpretation of ‘interference’ or ‘intervention’ based on an ideology of Westphalian sovereignty. Particularly problematic is the conceptual distinction between the ‘political’ or ‘diplomatic’, on the one hand, and the ‘economic’, on the other. As Polanyi's concept of embeddedness reminds us, markets, society and politics occur simultaneously, and can only act as discrete realms in epistemological abstractions. It is thus argued that non-interference is a semi-formal institution that governs China's diplomatic engagements and affects its economic activities. While the totality of China's interactions with the world has diverse and sometimes contradictory impacts on global governance, non-interference itself has apparent consequences for the rescaling of regional economic governance. Specifically, this article contends that Chinese non-interference results in the empowerment of political elites at national levels, and thus in the (re-)emergence of the nation state as a gatekeeper and facilitator of the advancement of capitalist enterprises. As a result, through non-intervention, China's foreign policy undermines supranational regulatory approaches and fosters state-based regional architectures.

Keywords:

• bilateralism
• embeddedness
• foreign policy
• non-interference
• People's Republic of China

Notes

1. However, China's support was not necessarily unconditional, and Beijing had its own expectations of the policies that national liberation movements should adopt (Van Ness 1971).

2. One exception that comes to mind is Ian Taylor's (2008) article on China's no-strings-attached engagement in Africa. In his study, Taylor takes these arguments further to conclude that the non-interference approach, by empowering autocrats, subverts developmental expectations of economic growth.

3. It should be noted here that the empowerment of central state elites does not imply the empowerment of a country or people as a whole, whose interests might be better served through decisions made at sub- or supranational levels.

4. While China has pushed for a more preponderant role for emerging economies within these institutions, and even suggested ‘democratic consultation’ in the selection of the International Monetary Fund's managing director, it seems less concerned about how multilateral economic governance may trample independent policy making in poor countries with little international leverage to negotiate their position vis-à-vis hegemonic rules. Many Chinese companies have, in fact, successfully ridden the ‘neo-liberal wave’ and taken advantage of the liberal investment regimes that pervade the developing world after three decades of neo-liberal hegemony (Gonzalez-Vicente 2012).

5. Chinese enterprises are the primary actors in these special economic zones, despite acting under the auspices and with the assistance of the Chinese government, and while partnering, at times, with national governments to generate local development opportunities (Bräutigam and Tang 2011, 33). Unsurprisingly, in trying to facilitate Chinese accumulation overseas, Chinese businesses follow elite-driven agendas— ‘globalocentrism’ agendas, as Escobar (2001) would put it—which in other contexts have been proved to be conducive to political, economic and social exclusion (Raco 1998). 

6. However, the negotiations of Chinese loans to Ecuador have not always been smooth. In 2009, President Correa declared that the repayment conditions proposed by China's Eximbank were ‘really a threat against our sovereignty’ and concluded that, ‘all of a sudden, negotiating with China is worse than the IMF [International Monetary Fund]’ (El Universo, 2010). The conditions were subsequently revised, the negotiations resumed and the loan was approved.

7. While the leverage that China gives to national governments is important, we should not simplify the complex struggles around natural resources. In Ecuador, for example, Canadian companies lobbied hard to influence the drafting of the 2009 New Mining Law. The success of the pro-mining camp versus environmentalists is also due to the government's own preferences.