Dr. Hak Yin Li on China’s Foreign Policy

In your view, why is China approached as a “China threat” while Japan only as a “Japan problem” in American diplomatic discourse?

The first problem is probably caused by American value-based foreign policy. It means that the United States emphasizes different values. For example, some American foreign policies have traditionally emphasized human rights, humanitarianism, and democracy. However, the U.S. sees China as a rising power with different values and beliefs. For example, China emphasized the norms of non-interventions by putting sovereignty above Western values of democracy and human rights. Hence, the U.S. has attempted to shape a rule-based border by re-emphasizing the importance of those Western values. That is why China is a threat from the American perspective.

Second, Americans are concerned that China has the capability and intention to change the world order because China has become more economically and diplomatically powerful. China is willing to shape a new world order, which can undermine the current Western norms, values, and practices from the American perspective. So, it is no surprise that the U.S. regards China as a threat. This condition is exemplified by the expansion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the fulfillment of Third World countries’ non-intervention norms and ideas. China’s President Xi recently mentioned that the Chinese developmental experience could offer other countries an alternative way compared to the Western experience. The U.S. can secure its traditional allies in the North, but China has weakened its influence in the South. This is the second reason why the U.S. considers China a threat.

Japan, by contrast, differs along these two dimensions. Japan has been a traditional ally of the U.S. since the end of World War II, though the two have disputes occasionally. For example, Japan cannot buy the latest fighter aircraft from the United States. Japan also requests ‘normal country’ status with respect to its armed forces, and they have differing views regarding how to deploy the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system from the U.S. You can also refer to the dispute over the major bases in Okinawa. Nevertheless, the common enemy, China, has overwhelmed all those disputes. Particularly, Beijing is expanding its projection capabilities in the East and South China Seas, and China has become much more assertive in Taiwan Strait. Moreover, there has been an increasing number of Chinese and Russian joint exercises. Consequently, the “China threat” and “Japan problem” are fundamentally different from the American perspective.

What are your reflections on American diplomacy towards Taiwan after the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Many people talk about this, “today Ukraine, tomorrow Taiwan.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine woke up the United States. The U.S. government seeks the determination and ability to protect Taiwan in order to deter any future Chinese plans for invasion. They fear China will try to reunite with Taiwan by force. However, I think the U.S. needs to pay further attention to the associated cost and resources. 

The first factor is that the United States is working alongside NATO in helping Ukraine’s defense. An important question, however, is whether South Korea and Japan offer similar help to the United States during a war in Taiwan? It is a big question. Relatedly, the second factor is that Ukraine shares a border with some NATO and EU member states. It means that they are tied up together and are the neighbors of that war zone. So, these countries and regions are forced to act seriously because otherwise, they will have Russian troops at their doorstep. 

Taiwan, on the other hand, is an island with some distance between it and other countries. It is relatively isolated in the region. Consequently, it is more complicated to call for allies and friends in the surrounding area to help.

The third factor is that Russia’s relations with Western European countries and the US were unfriendly in the past. If you look back over the last two decades, Russia has had a historically poor relationship with these countries. However, the problem is that many Asian-Pacific countries, including South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and ASEAN countries, like Singapore, want friendly and stable relations with China because of trade and investment. Hence, there is an increasing cost for the U.S. to summon these countries for help in the defense of Taiwan, Many have already adopted a neutral stance and repeatedly signal that do not want to choose between China or the US during a confrontation.

Last but not least, the US maintains some ambiguities of the Taiwan issue. President Biden has repeatedly announced that he has no intention to modify or change the One China principle. However, he did say the United States would help Taiwan, including through military means, in the event of an invasion. The White House then had to clarify that the U.S. had not changed American policy regarding the One China principle. This is what I’d call operational deviance. That is, there is a gap between the principle and practices within the American government. Joe Biden has articulated two different approaches. One is the official policy of the One China principle. The other would be official operational deviance regarding Taiwan.

You may also find increasing operational deviance with the official American economic and diplomatic policies on Taiwan. This condition gives Beijing limited options because the Taiwan issue calls into question the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. Taiwan is closely related to Xi’s achievements when compared to his predecessors, including Deng Xiaoping or even Mao Zedong. He wants to be the one to unify China while in office. So, consider China’s determinations to defend the Taiwan issue. While China and the U.S. have adopted strategic restraint, they need more room to maneuver their policies regarding Taiwan. Therefore, it is an entirely different case when comparing Ukraine and Taiwan. Taiwan would be even more dangerous, which could cause much trouble between China and US.

What is the impact of the CCP’s imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong in 2020 on US-China relations?

With regards to the imposition of the National Security Law, it has presented two problems. The first problem is the loss of the middlemen. The second problem is the loss of hope regarding the China-US relationship.

 First, Hong Kong was traditionally a middleman between the West and China. There was substantial formal and informal exchange between the West and China through Hong Kong. They made use of Hong Kong as a bridge for connection and communication. For example, the US made some port visits to Hong Kong. There were American destroyers and the American aircraft carrier. Sometimes their visits to Hong Kong were a goodwill gesture.

The lengthy port visits to Hong Kong were essential in navigating the ups and downs of the China-US relationship. So let us say that in the past, you could be upset about bilateral relations because of American arms sales to Taiwan or because the American president met with Dalai Lama—however, when you have these upsets, you still had the American Navy port trips, which were a goodwill gesture such that the two countries could try to resume communications. However, you can see that the latest port visits and semiofficial exchanges from the US to Hong Kong have become sensitive issues. Most of the time, people in China doubt whether this is the American intervention in China for Hong Kong. However, the whole situation changed.

The second point regarding the strategy impact here would be the loss of hope. Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” once represented the hope of China’s flexibility or tolerance of a certain degree of democracy within its territory. However, the National Security Law’s imposition tells the US that China has never changed in its insistence on an independent developmental path. In other words, democracy is not an option in China’s periphery. Hong Kong is now a similar issue when compared to Tibet and Xinjiang from the eyes of the American government. 

That is why the two strategic impacts are a loss of a middleman and a loss of hope regarding whether China will be more liberal in the coming future. Hong Kong proved that China would not so easily allow the flourishing of Western democratic values as they once purported.

In your view, what is the most difficult challenge in US-China relations?

Many policy analysts and diplomats would say Taiwan. However, what I am trying to say is about political and ideological values. People talk about economic values, but there are increasing political and ideological values intervening in the relationship between China and the US. Taiwan is an important issue but not the most challenging one.

The relationship between the two countries is confrontational because of their divergent ideologies and values. In the past, people attributed these confrontational situations to the lack of communication and misunderstanding between China and the US. It is liberalism and social constructivism that build up shared preferences and socialization. However, the fundamental problem of China-US relations is not due to a lack of communication. On the contrary, they have communicated too well. The two sides know too much about each other. They also know that they cannot socialize with each other. China cannot persuade others to stay on its side, and the United States needs help persuading China to its side. That is the problem. Think about this: When you have no communication or misunderstanding, you can communicate, negotiate, talk to each other, and solve the crisis step by step. However, if you go back to the last two or three decades between the US and China, there was much communication between the two sides. The problem is that these communications have yet to work.

Drowning out the benefits of communication, forces in the American government, whether the Democrats or Republicans, the Congress, or the president, see China as a threat because the U.S. has failed to liberalize China. Even though China has integrated more profoundly with the current world order, Beijing still hosts other critical values and beliefs that influence how the US side interprets Chinese ambitions. During the Hu Jintao period, Hu stated that China was pursuing a peaceful rise. However, the American government and the Western media interpreted that peaceful rise negatively. However, they neglected the peaceful adjective. As a result, Hu changed peaceful rise to peaceful development. However, Western countries still did not believe it. Then comes Xi Jinping. He met with Obama and suggested that China and the US could have a “new type of great power” relationship. They talked about a community of common destiny, something like the Western-style international public goods. However, the US still does not believe in those ideas. The problem is that the two perceived each other very negatively because they have had a diversion in identity, values, and ideologies. They are working on economic, political, and ideological equivalents. It is the most critical challenge because everything starts from another actor’s interpretations and behaviors. This creates a fundamental bias on both sides.

As the tension between the U.S. and China rises, what role can Chinese think tanks play? Could they meaningfully contribute to the effort to erect guardrails to prevent bilateral relations from veering into conflict?

This is a good question because we can refer to other actors in the US-China relationship. There are government-to-government relationships, but there are also semiofficial and nongovernmental relations. The problem is that Chinese think tanks need more growth in doing this kind of job. Most of China’s think tanks are only partially independent of the government. It is the most significant difference when comparing Chinese and Western think tanks. In American society, you have various think tanks. They have different values and beliefs. They are independent of the government, meaning they can be a kind of third-party facilitating diplomatic talks. Most of these think tanks are based on traditions in Western societies and are independent of the government. 

However, Chinese think tanks cannot do that. Most of them have a relationship with the central government, with Beijing. That is a disadvantage. No matter what the Chinese think tanks do, they are labeled as a kind of hand of the Chinese government. Conversely, if you want to find someone to talk to with the Chinese government, you may turn to these think tanks. They have a strong background or relations with the central government. You can find some people and then try to deliver your message to the Chinese leaders. So, this is an advantage. The Chinese think tanks can facilitate something similar to track two diplomacy. If you refer to these people in a think tank in China, you may find that some of them are retired diplomats or diplomats who conducted the six-party talks in the North Korean nuclear crisis. If you find those people, you can learn Chinese attitudes and perspectives. However, the problem still would be that they cannot deviate too much from the party line or government policy because they are part of the Chinese government.

As I mentioned, the problem of the China-US relationship is not that they have no communication or lack of communication to solve the dispute. The problem is that they have fundamental differences regarding their wills, values, and ideologies. Chinese think tanks can offer a kind of networking or semiofficial communications channel, they cannot offer views independent of the Chinese government. That is why they cannot do much from the perspective of improving hostile China-US relations in recent years.

You mentioned that Chinese think tanks have some relationships with the central government. Therefore, they should have some potential influence on China’s policies. So my next question is, what are China’s top three think tanks contributing to China’s policies toward the U.S. and Japan?

We have some very influential Chinese think tanks, including the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the China Institute of International Studies, the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, and the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University. China has many think tanks, which are becoming much more organized and diverse because they publish different policy papers and organize different conferences. In addition, they try to present Chinese views overseas, including organizing conferences with American think tanks and some exchanges with Japan.

Nevertheless, the question of China’s top three think tanks is a challenging question to answer. To rank the Chinese think tanks, you must know their influence, capacity, and power to shape government policies. This can be partially discerned by the interviews I did in Beijing some years ago. I asked some retired diplomats who worked in the think tanks, and some of them told me there had been an internal reference system in China. The internal reference system means one has some particular units in the think tanks or can submit internal references, perhaps indirectly through the institutes or directly to the Chinese leadership. However, they do not know how they will be processed once they submit those policy suggestions or whether they are put forward to the Chinese leadership.

Let us assume some Chinese leaders read what’s published internally by think tanks. We do not know what portions of the policy memo the Chinese leaders will adopt. We do not have any knowledge of the internal decision-making process, and no one can tell us these mechanisms. China wants to refrain from discussing these mechanisms with others. Therefore, ranking the top three regarding how they could shape the Chinese policies towards U.S. and Japan is tricky. However, the thinks tanks I mentioned at the beginning of this question would be the most important and influential think tanks in the past decade. They are still doing their job, but ranking and saying how they could shape their Chinese policies towards the U.S. and Japan is challenging.

What is your opinion on the change in Chinese public diplomacy from “civic diplomacy” and “panda diplomacy” in Mao’s era, the “all-directional” diplomacy in Jiang Zemin’s era, and now the “major-country diplomacy” under Xi’s administration?

I will organize my answers into three categories. The first one is that China seeks great power status. My second thought is that we still have some limitations regarding Chinese public diplomacy, and they cannot help Beijing improve its image. My last observation is that China should target the South and Third World countries regarding that kind of diplomacy rather than the North countries, including the States or Western European countries.

First, China is seeking great power status. When you refer to major-country diplomacy, it is about great power and the domestic expectations of the Chinese people. They want China to become much more potent and on an equal footing status with the United States. In the past, China was not that resourceful. The international environment was not stable because of the Cold War. There was competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. That is why Mao and Deng embraced panda diplomacy and civilian exchanges. Jiang Zemin’s all-directional diplomacy is indeed an extension of his predecessors, as China was still incapable of dealing with the US. Jiang Zemin tried to seek help from the neighboring countries. This was called all-directional diplomacy. China tried to make friends with different countries, which could counterbalance American hegemony in the 1990s. If you go back to the 1990s, Jiang Zemin was in a tricky situation because China faced American interventions in the Taiwan Strait regarding the elections of the Taiwanese president and the United States bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. That is why Jiang Zemin referred to all-directional diplomacy, which aimed to preserve Chinese interests with the help of other countries in the region.

Today, however, major-country diplomacy now pairs China as a rising power with relevant capability with the Chinese great power mentality. You can trace the term back to the Hu Jintao period because Hu also talked about China’s rise, referring to a peaceful rise in developing China. In 2009, Hu published an article in the party’s publication, Qiushi, and mentioned that China should increase its discourse power internationally in order to match China’s increasing capability.  Xi Jinping’s emphasis on major-country diplomacy is just another upgrade of that previous policy. The reason behind that is that China has solid domestic expectations. The Chinese people want to see China as stronger than the United States. That is why Xi Jinping finds considerable domestic forces expecting China to be powerful.

These changes in Chinese diplomacy are necessary, but Beijing still needs to improve its image in the world, particularly in Western countries. We have some limitations regarding Chinese public diplomacy, namely the lack of improvement in China’s image and soft power. When you track data on the outcomes of China’s public diplomacy in the past one or two decades, you find that whatever China has tried to do, there are ineffective outcomes. Take the surveys by the Pew Research Center, for instance. The Pew Research Center conducted opinions annually. They find that an increasing number of people in the North, including the United States, European countries, and Japan, have become more hostile to China. They were not favorable to China and felt China’s diplomacy was increasingly offensive. Hence, the above public diplomatic policies have yet to improve China’s image in the North. In contrast, there are an increasing number of people in the South, for example, the African countries, Southeast Asia, and other Southeastern countries. They have a much more favorable attitude to China. It would be something interesting here. It means Chinese public diplomacy is not successful in the North but is welcomed in South countries. The BRICS, the BRI, the non-intervention policy, and the independent developmental path offer an alternative to the Western development model. At the same time, some South countries suffered in the past from the IMF.’s structural adjustment policy or other kinds of Western intervention in their internal affairs. Some scholars argue that the Chinese international norms will be part of that soft power for China, adding up with the Chinese unconditional help and very generous financial lending to other countries for the BRI. Once again, there are fundamental differences in the values and beliefs between China and the U.S. Beijing’s major-country diplomacy cannot bring China to great power in a short time. Meanwhile, if you look at these diplomatic policies, you find that China does not emphasize democracy and human rights. That is why the Western countries think that the BRI. or other kinds of China’s help in the Third World countries would be the extensions of its hegemonic ambition. China receives support for itself because they shared similar experiences in the past. They suffered from the Western interventions when they brought money from the IMF. However, China does not request standard terms or loans when lending money to these countries. 

The third observation regarding changing Chinese public diplomacy is that China should focus on the South rather than the North because Western perceptions of China have been biased. They do not understand China’s motive or fail to understand it because of different barriers. So, it is difficult for Beijing to build a positive image model of countries no matter what it does. Confucius Institutes and Beijing Olympic Games will not help. By focusing on itself, China has further challenged, if not entirely upset, the Western world order because it has enough values and norms prevailing in the South. Somehow it weakened the Western intervention. That is the dilemma because you cannot achieve both situations.

How do you view the phrase “wolf-warrior diplomacy” popularized in Chinese and American social media?

Again, every diplomatic strategy has advantages and disadvantages. First, I would say that wolf warrior diplomacy has advantages for China because it is about Chinese nationalism and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. However, the disadvantage would be the counter event, in which Chinese diplomacy is inconsistent from the Western perspective or the rest of the world’s perspective. On one side, the policies based on Chinese public diplomacy show a friendly China. On the other side, China has a very assertive wolf-warrior diplomacy. When they call this wolf warrior diplomacy, some Chinese people say, “Look, Chinese is a second-tier power, but China will be on an equal footing status with the United States and other countries one day.” Some Chinese diplomats talk a bit assertively because of such domestic expectations, which are crucial to the CCP’s legitimacy. However, everyone still remembers when the former top diplomatic personnel, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, met with the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in the Alaska meeting in 2021. Yang Jiechi mentioned that the United States could not look at China from the great power perspective because they are on an equal footing status. These are domestic expectations and are not something China can compromise. It means that you have to be strong, powerful, and candid. You must deliver and keep the Chinese basis for the Chinese people. It is about both Chinese nationalism and the legitimacy of the CCP.

However, there are still counter effects. If you refer to the Western responses, the wolf warrior diplomacy would be self-contradictory to the Chinese traditional public diplomacy because public diplomacy targets foreign publics. You want to win the hearts of the foreign public so that you can increase the positive perceptions of China’s image. Ultimately, you see two different China spaces; one is very friendly, while the other is very assertive. China paints itself as a peace-loving country with rich culture and history, but on the other side, China looks very unyielding, blunt, impolite or over-confident, and sometimes assertive with the US and other countries. So, wolf-warrior diplomacy costs consistency within China’s foreign policy in general. It hurts the building of the Chinese image overseas. The phenomenon shows China has complicated decision-making policies and driving forces behind its foreign policy, which one policy may contradict the other. One can argue that there needs to be a cohesive plan from the top. However, the fact is that even the top leaders may find that people have different conflictual expectations, domestic versus international. There is a constraint to forming foreign policy because one must handle the domestic practice. However, it would help if you compromised your original goal to build a friendly image overseas. China is still polishing its foreign policy because it has emerging national interests overseas and increasing domestic expectations of strong China. Ultimately, wolf-warrior diplomacy will not be that helpful externally. One may get some support internally, but this will not help improve Chinese relations with the US or other countries externally.