Professor Ashok Kapur publishes new article in Indian Council of World Affairs
China's Changing Approach to Strategy and Negotiations: Past and Present
China’s negotiating experiences with the non-Chinese world – Britain in the 1800s, Korea in the early 50s, Indo-China in mid 50s, USA in the mid 40s and the 70s, and India, from 1949 to the present day- shows the primacy of key strategic principles which are embedded in China’s view of the world and its position in it, and its view of her rivals’ position in a geopolitical context. China’s approach shows a continuous attention to the external environment but its diplomatic style varies. It adopted the position of the Middle Kingdom when it could govern unaided. It was attentive about external threats when it came in contact with Russian, British and Tibetan power in the 19th century and it asserted its rules of discourse with the barbarians in a vague and inconclusive manner in which China’s style was dictated by a position of weakness and imperial destiny. China’s view was that diplomatic discourse could be separated from trade links. The Korean War was a transformative phase for China because Soviet, Chinese and American diplomatic/military interactions and China’s ability to stalemate American power gave it confidence, and China’s diplomatic style in the negotiations showed signs of rudeness and arrogance. But lessons were learnt and China pursued a charming diplomacy in the Indo-China crisis in the 1950s and in the Bandung conference, where its assessment of international politics led it to take an independent diplomatic stance. One observes a slow, albeit calculated, change in style and orientation while comparing China’s pre-1949 view of diplomacy to the Mao-Zhou approach and the Deng and post-Deng approach. However, the non-Chinese world has provided the catalyst of change in China’s diplomatic orientation. Beijing changes in response to external pressures and the cascading effect of these on internal politics is important. This is a durable pattern in contemporary China’s diplomacy because it can no longer pursue its strategic interests unaided.