China's Foreign Policy as a Rising Power in the Early Twenty-First Century

For more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, although China’s rising power status was increasingly recognized in most of the world capitals, Beijing followed Deng Xiaoping’s low profile (taoguangyanghui) policy set in the early 1990s—hiding its capabilities, building its national strength, and biding its time—to avoid controversial global affairs across a range of fronts and to focus on China’s immediate interests for many years, because Chinese leaders were not sure if China’s circumscribed capabilities would allow it to exert enough clout in the world stage. ¹ With the rapid growth of China’s economic, political and military strength in the early twenty-first century, however, Chinese diplomacy became increasingly active, significantly expanding its influence in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and taking a more assertive position against the United States and other Western powers. In response to US President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in early 2010, instead of following the low profile dictum, China reminded the West of the tough statement that Deng once made: “no one should expect China to swallow the bitter fruit that hurts its interest.” ² Many Western observers were astonished by what they perceived as China’s “increasingly muscular position” during the global financial meltdown, such as:

berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage-managing President Obama’s visit to China in November 2009, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran. ³

This development led to the suggestion that China emerged “sooner and more assertively than had been expected before the wrenching global financial crisis, which badly damaged all the established industrial powers, from the United States to Europe and Japan.” ⁴ A Western scholar even went so far to argue that “Beijing now asserts its interests—and its willingness to prevail, even at the expense of appearing the villain.” ⁵ Another Western observer believed that China was “moving gingerly beyond the paradigm of developmental modesty.” ⁶ Listening to the harsh Chinese criticism of Western countries and economic institutions at the 2009 Boao Asia Forum, an annual high-level gathering of political and business leaders from Asian-Pacific countries on China’s Hainan Island, an Australian observer suggested that the forum “may go down as the moment in history China binned the Deng Xiaoping dictum that had guided China’s foreign policy for 30 years: Keep a cool head, maintain a low profile and never take the lead.” ⁷ Another Western observer echoed, “It is now abundantly clear that China is prepared to take an active and interventionist role in international financial affairs.” ⁸