ABSTRACT
The early years of the Cold War appeared to separate a clustering of the world’s nations into two distinct camps, allies and supporters of the United States and of the Soviet Union as the twentieth century’s superpowers. However, by the middle of the Cold War period, a larger number of non-aligned states appeared in the developing world as the era of colonialism abated. At the same time, a greater focus was placed upon the development of regions rather than alliances, and the methods by which these regions established their own political, economic and strategic identity. This trend appeared to accelerate after the fall of the Soviet Union as states which were closely tied to one superpower camp or another could now more directly engage their own neighbours and develop regional organisations which better suited more local geopolitics. However, with the onset of globalisation and the ever-growing number of linkages via organisations, trade, laws and person-to-person connections ranging from government contacts to individuals, it has been argued that the world’s regions are growing more ‘porous’ and often more difficult to differentiate, due to increased economic ties but also shared diplomatic and strategic concerns.1 This has led to much new study in international relations being given over to ‘cross-regional’ diplomacy, which has been a common practice of superpowers and great powers but a facet of foreign policy which China has only recently embraced to any great degree. As noted in previous chapters, during the first decade of China’s foreign policy reforms
under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, much foreign policy attention was placed on the superpowers and great powers, including the United States and the USSR/Russian Federation, as well as China’s immediate neighbours in East, Southeast and Central Asia. China sought to establish a stable periphery by strengthening relations with surrounding Asia-Pacific states (see Chapter 6) through improving bilateral ties, such as the complicated relationship with Japan, and multilateral cooperation with regional regimes such as APEC, the ARF and the SCO. However, in the last few years of the Jiang government and especially after the start of Hu Jintao’s presidency, Beijing has been seeking to build upon its Asia-Pacific diplomatic successes and has sought to forge deeper ties with states and regions far beyond the Pacific Rim. Since the turn of the century, China has been active in improving diplomatic relations through summitry, economic cooperation and multifaceted diplomatic initiatives. In the 1990s, Jiang sought improved ties with selected states via the development of bilateral ‘partnerships’ (huoban) based on closer international cooperation and shared regional and/or global interests. The first such partnership was with Russia in 1996, but similar deals were also struck with the United States,
Canada and Mexico (1997), the European Union (1998) and South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (1999).2 These agreements signalled China’s first tentative steps into modern cross-regional diplomacy and provided Beijing with the first windows into regional political and economic affairs beyond China’s periphery. These policies, often referred to as parts of Beijing’s overall global ‘charm offensive’
have brought up a question once considered a non-issue by international relations scholars, namely does China have so-called ‘soft power’ capabilities to wield power via attraction rather than coercion? As previous chapters have noted, China’s current foreign policy has been influential on an increasing number of states. At the same time, China’s more activist foreign policy in further-flung regions has raised the issue of whether Beijing is or will be in competition with the United States for diplomatic influence, especially in regions such as Latin America and the Middle East where Washington traditionally has enjoyed unchallenged levels of influence since the end of the Cold War. As with China’s peripheral diplomacy, Beijing has had different levels of success with
its still-developing cross-regional foreign policy initiatives, but it can be argued that we have seen only the beginning stages of this process and further progress will depend greatly on the politics of both China and those states with which it is seeking deeper relations. This chapter will examine how China’s cross-regional diplomacy has evolved in recent years by examining case examples of this process, specially in the regions of Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
