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Feb 07 2011
New Features of International Developments and New Challenges to China’s Diplomacy
By

——With a view on Sino-African Relations

Talking Points at the meeting organized by Inter Region Economic Network,
Pan Africa Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya(January 3, 2011)
Jiemian Yang, President of Shanghai Institute for International Studies

1. New Features of Current International Situation. The configuration of powers develops in the direction of relatively more equilibrium. The reform of international system enters into the substantive change period in favor of the major developing powers (Emerging Powers).

1.1. The Western dominance over the world affairs is declining whereas the Emerging Powers are gaining in taking G20 as the premier platform for rule making. Four Groups of Forces are emerging, namely, gaining group, defending group, losing group and weakening group.

1.2. The world economy has achieved a basic recovery but the financial and fiscal crises in Greece and Ireland have put the whole year of 2010 in unstable and uncertain status.

1.3. The compounding effects of both traditional and non-traditional security issues have produced new issues and new problems in international relations. For instances, the Korean and Iranian nuclear issues are the hybrids of both traditional and non-traditional security threats covering non-proliferatrion, regional stability and major power relations.

1.4. Global efforts to re-shape international system are confronting with hard bargains and consultation fatigues but regional and forum-type mechanism is making noticeable progresses, such as BRICS, African Union, and Latin American and Caribbean group.

2. Sino-African Relations by Broader Perspectives

2.1. The increasing role of China and Africa in international configuration of powers has become an important mark of the shifting center of gravity towards more equilibrium.

2.1.1. China has become an engine for world economic recovery by its growth rate and contribution. Africa enjoys important elements of future growth, resources and market potentials.

2.1.2. China and Africa constitutes new and important momentum for reshaping international system. Respectively, Asian and African regionalism has moved ahead as a supplement to the on-going changes in international system.

2.1.3. China and Africa handle the relations of their different cultures in a mutual respectable and learning manner, which also is an important factor to break Western monopoly and dominance in world cultural affairs.

2.2. Sino-African cooperation also represents a new trend of regional and cross-regional cooperation.

2.2.1. Both of China and Africa are on the right side of history, demanding for correcting the unfairness and inequality of the past 500 years of international relations dominated by the West. Africa provides the world with UN secretaries-general, internationally influential figures and marked progresses of regional and sub-regional cooperation such as AU, EAC and COMESEA.

2.2.2. Both China and Africa are adding new dimensions and contents to regionalism, such as openness and inclusiveness of Asian cooperation, inter-regional cooperation based on non-interference in internal affairs and mutual respect, concrete and pragmatic cooperation in infra-structural building.

2.3. Complementarities and Accommodations

2.3.1. China and Africa are complementary each other in many fields. Moreover, China and Africa could join together for new and common values, such as gradually building up the principles of international relations from interest-driven to objective-oriented ones.

2.3.2. While China and Africa are strengthening their cooperation, they should, at the same time, pay greater attention to working together with other parties in the world as there is enough room for all parties concerned in a globalized and networking world. Perhaps second track dialogues would serve to that purpose well.

2.3.3. Differences do exist between China and Africa but the two sides should be more accommodating each other and tackle with these differences in a down-to-earth way.

3. New Challenges to China’s Diplomacy and African Policy

3.1. Rapid development has made defining China’s position an urgent task to China per se as well as to other countries.

3.2. In the important transitional period, China needs to enhance and consolidate domestic support to its foreign policy.

3.2.1. Mushrooming of participants in foreign policy decision making calls for strengthened coordination in China’s diplomacy and creative restructuring in the decision making processes.

3.2.2. China also needs to cope with other challenges such as an increasingly diversified society and more pluralistic media and public opinion.

3.3. China’s African policy confronts with three major challenges in the second decade of the 21st Century.

3.3.1. There are multi-tier and multi-field of challenges. China needs to expand its bilateral focus in two directions: to pay greater attention to sub-regional, regional, cross-regional and global aspects on the one hand and to the sub-state and even local ones on the other hand. The former is to cope with the challenges of globalization and regionalism and the latter is to tackle with a more pluralistic and diversifying society within the African countries.

3.3.2. China needs to readjust its African policy in face of its ever-deepening relations in many fields with Africa. China should and will seek for closer political and diplomatic ties to ensure Sino-African cooperation in the areas of, among others, economy, tourism, cultures and people-to-people. In order to achieve the abovementioned objectives, China needs to coordinate and integrate its decision-making and –implementation.

3.3.3. China needs to enhance its pragmatic cooperation in and with Africa. Roughly speaking China’s cooperation with Africa has traversed three stages. Stage 1.0 symbolized by mutual support for political independence and nation-building in the 1950s and 1960s. Stage 2.0 marked for common identity of the Third World calling for New International Economic Order in the 1970s and 1980s. Stage 3.0 was a period of self and mutual readjustment to meet the Post-Cold War challenges in the 1990s and 2000s. Upon entering the 2010s, China needs to upgrade its relations with Africa to a more comprehensive and upper-tier cooperation, especially in the economic field.

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