Harmonizing the periphery: China’s neighborhood strategy under Xi Jinping

Abstract

This paper investigates how Chinese elites understand the proper role of their nation vis-à-vis its ‘periphery’ and how this self-understanding shapes Chinese strategic policy toward neighboring states. It makes two specific arguments. First, after 2012 China began to understand itself as responsible for actively managing and shaping its periphery. Xi Jinping has overseen an evolution in China’s neighborhood strategy that has changed from mere engagement to proactive efforts to shape regional order. Efforts to achieve this goal have come primarily through: institution-building and regional integration via the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, strategic partnerships, normative binding, and developmental statecraft. Second, managing newly emerged power asymmetries between China and its neighbors is now a crucial task of Beijing’s peripheral policy. The emerging China-led regional order relies on norms that are hierarchical, transactional, and reflect status distinctions. Xi Jinping’s neighborhood strategy rests on an asymmetric bargain: respect China’s core interests in exchange for benevolence.

Keywords:

• China foreign policy
• peripheral diplomacy
• Xi Jinping diplomacy
• power asymmetry
• regional order
• hierarchy

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Jeremy Paltiel, John Ravenhill, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Land: North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam. Maritime: South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brunei.

2 Interview, Beijing, May 2019.

3 Interview, Beijing, May 2019.

4 The following data comes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/

5 This does not include Russia.

6 For example, on December 29, 2017 he instructed his diplomats to ‘cherish the motherland and tianxia’. See: (People’s Daily, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen N. Smith

Stephen N. Smith is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. He can be reached at: [email protected].