China's Rising Foreign Ministry (Book Excerpt)

Dylan M.H. Loh assesses Chinese foreign policy in Southeast Asia from 2009 to 2020 and catalogs “assertive” and “cooperative” behavior.

Jul 25, 2024

In case you haven’t noticed on the webpage of Pekingnology, I have added a “book excerpts” column and put all book excerpts into the column. It’s been a great privilege and pleasure to, with the blessing of the authors and publishers, share the books on China with now nearly 15,000 subscribers!

Today, here is an excerpt from China’s Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy by Dylan M.H. Loh, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. The book is published by Stanford University Press.

Description

China's rise and its importance to international relations as a discipline-defining phenomenon is well recognized. Yet when scholars analyze China's foreign relations, they typically focus on Beijing's military power, economic might, or political leaders. As a result, most traditional assessments miss a crucial factor: China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). In China's Rising Foreign Ministry, Dylan M.H Loh upends conventional understandings of Chinese diplomacy by underlining the importance of the ministry and its diplomats in contemporary Chinese foreign policy. Loh explains how MOFA gradually became the main interface of China's foreign policy and the primary vehicle through which the idea of 'China' is produced, articulated, and represented on the world stage. This theoretically innovative and ambitious book offers an original reading of Chinese foreign policy, with wide-ranging implications for international relations. By shedding light on the dynamics of Chinese diplomacy and how assertiveness is constructed, Loh provides readers with a comprehensive re-appraisal of China's foreign ministry and the role it performs in China's re-emergence.
About the author
Dylan M.H. Loh is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He tweets @dylanloh.

Reviews

"Dylan M.H Loh persuasively argues against traditional state-centric understandings of China's rise and its place in the international system, calling attention to the marked growth in budget and influence of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs in ways that are suitable to both Chinese public opinion and to the country's top leadership."
—June Teufel Dreyer, University of Miami
"Dylan M.H Loh's historically in-depth and up-to-date case study provides a unique institutional perspective to explain China's increasingly assertive foreign policy. A timely addition to the scholarship of China's international behavior, this book is strongly recommended for those who want to learn about Chinese foreign policy and foreign relations as well as contemporary international geopolitics."
—Suisheng Zhao, University of Denver
"This remarkable book reveals the inner workings of the Chinese Foreign Ministry and demonstrates the profound significance of practice theory in unraveling the complex web of social dynamics that have propelled China towards becoming an assertive global power. Dylan M.H Loh convincingly shows that to understand China's ascent, one cannot overlook the diplomats whose everyday activities embody a rising China."
—Rebecca Adler-Nissen, University of Copenhagen
"China's Rising Foreign Ministry provides a rich, readable assessment of China's evolving diplomacy in Southeast Asia and beyond."
—ASEAN Wonk
"China's Rising Foreign Ministry will surely become a key reference for all those that are interested in understanding China's international behaviour and the reaction to it, especially in the Southeast Asian regional context."
—Andrea Ghiselli, Cambridge Review of International Affairs

Why China’s Foreign Ministry and Diplomats Matter (More Than We Think)

Quotidian, routine, and, perhaps, somewhat boring. These are qualities not typically associated with diplomacy and diplomats (e.g., Sharp, 1999, pp. 41–42; Kleiner, 2008). Indeed, diplomacy, viewed popularly, tends to play out as public spectacles: Donald Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un in 2018 and Xi Jinping’s meeting with Ma Ying-jeou in 2015 are a couple of examples. Whether one understands diplomacy as the “application of tact and intelligence to the conduct of official relations between governments” (Satow, 1979, p. 3), the mediation of estrangement (Der Derian, 1987), or the “management of frontlines between different political entities” (Cooper & Cornut, 2018, p. 300), diplomacy does not usually evoke images of mundanity. Yet diplomats often associate it with tedium, as one Chinese diplomat says plainly: “Actually, this involves a lot of hard work. This is a tough job. What we do every day consists of repeated meetings and paperwork. Most things and times are unexciting, even boring” (Interviewee 1, personal communication, November 20, 2016). In contrast, international relations (IR) as a discipline is often fixated on visible and major events of international life such as wars, crises, and revolutions that serve as “benchmark dates” (Buzan & Lawson, 2012). What is more, IR sometimes underestimates diplomacy’s relevance in that states and structures become “unproblematic and unproblematized entities” that “play out their games in ways that admit little attention to diplomats and diplomacy” (Sharp, 1999, p. 34). Thus diplomacy has been observed as being “epiphenomenal or redundant” to IR theory (Pouliot & Cornut, 2015, p. 298), despite being the “engine room” of international affairs (R. Cohen, 1998, p. 1).

Addressing this issue head on, scholarship motivated by the “practice turn”—analytical inquiry focusing on human/institutional “doings and sayings”—has made important inroads in highlighting diplomacy’s importance to a wide range of IR phenomena such as international hierarchy (Pouliot, 2016), power in multilateral arenas (Adler-Nissen & Pouliot, 2014), politics of knowledge production (Neumann, 2012), and international humanitarian interventions (Autesserre, 2014). Even as diplomatic studies have made important progress in studying diplomats and foreign ministries in the West (e.g., Neumann, 2012; Cornut, 2015; Bicchi & Bremberg, 2016), little has been said regarding Chinese diplomacy. This presents a gap in our understanding of international diplomacy, particularly as Chinese diplomats and diplomacy become more consequential in world politics. Running parallel to this gap is IR’s tendency to theoretically minimize China’s rise, which, despite its importance, “has yet to systematically appeal to the core IR theoretical community” as “a potentially theory generating event” (Pan & Kavalski, 2018, p. 291). How do we make sense of China’s consul-general in Brazil insulting the Canadian prime minister by calling him a “running dog of the US” (Ceco, 2021), People’s Republic of China (PRC) diplomats allegedly beating up Taiwanese representatives during a reception for Taiwan’s national day in Fiji (Hille, 2020b), or the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) insisting that the US deputy secretary of state meet with China’s foreign minister under the downgraded diplomatic nomenclature of huijian (diplomatic meeting 会见) instead of huitan (diplomatic talk 会谈) (Xinhua, 2021)? In words and in deeds, a more assertive “wolf warrior” shift has been observed in Chinese diplomacy (D. Loh, 2020b). Even so, relatively little is known about how MOFA and its diplomats contribute to foreign policy and the reasons for, and effects of, this more muscular diplomacy.

Against this backdrop, this research seeks to extend the insights of the practice turn in IR to investigate Chinese diplomacy—particularly its assertive diplomatic shift from 2009 to 2020. Prevailing interpretations of China’s assertiveness often describe this phenomenon in terms of China’s military rise (J. Zhang, 2013), ascendant nationalism (Carlson, 2009), President Xi’s strategic intent (Mastro, 2015, pp. 155–156), or a combination of these factors (see Friedberg, 2014). I argue instead that Chinese assertiveness has increasingly come to be represented by Chinese diplomats and MOFA—so much so that MOFA is now the central driver and representation of the “assertive China” meme.

China’s Rising Foreign Ministry and Its Representational Role

The research questions motivating this book include: How is China’s assertiveness (defined as the tendency to use its power and influence to impose costs on others to extract compliance and/or police behavior) represented, and what are its concrete manifestations? Why is Chinese behavior on the international stage increasingly evaluated by different international actors and publics as assertive? How do other state actors construct and understand Chinese foreign policy behavior? As I will demonstrate, these questions can be answered only by investigating MOFA’s representational role (acting/speaking on behalf of the state/Party and expressing its interests, values, and ideologies) and its diplomatic practices. Indeed, President Xi asserts that China’s diplomacy now “represents the will of the state” (Xinhua, 2018), underlining MOFA’s representational significance. What is more, China has “bolstered the political clout” of MOFA and further invested in its diplomacy since 2008 (Thomas, 2021, para. 14). This is evinced in the promotion of foreign minister Wang Yi, in 2018, to one of only five state councillor positions and the elevation of former foreign minister Yang Jiechi to the Politburo in 2017—the apex of political power, which “restores the top diplomat’s status to the level once enjoyed by his former mentor Qian Qichen” (Y. Wang, 2017, p. 11). Wang Yi himself was, subsequently, promoted to the twenty-four-member Politburo in October 2022 (Kaneko, 2022).

Besides, China’s assertiveness is one of the biggest foreign policy debates in recent times, so it needs to be more accurately assessed. Currently, much of this discussion centers on China’s purportedly assertive behavior since 2009 and the factors that gave rise to this phenomenon (e.g., Y. Shi, 2013; I. Chen & Hao 2013). Some argue that it is a result of competition between China and the US due to America’s rebalance to Asia (Buszynski, 2012). Others maintain that China is practicing “proactive assertiveness,” like the staging of maneuvers in the South China Sea to reinforce future claims (J. Zhang, 2013). The popular charge of “creeping assertiveness” describes China as making slow and seemingly harmless advances to score consolidated gains over time (Storey, 1999). Finally, some scholars claim that China’s foreign policy assertiveness is “new” and denotes greater willingness to flex its military and diplomatic muscle, especially over its territorial claims (Yahuda, 2013; Thayer, 2011). Conversely, others have identified the post-2008 period as one in which China has become more cooperative and responsible (Zheng et al., 2010). Through an analysis of seven major foreign policy events in 2010—often touted as cases of Chinese assertiveness—Johnston argues that extant literature on China’s assertiveness has not properly accounted for assertive behavior before 2010, while also suffering from flawed “selection on the dependent variable; ahistoricism; and poor causal specification” (2013, p. 31). Jerdén (2014) questions the assertive characterization itself and insists that there has been no change in China’s foreign policy behavior. G. Chan et al. add that China has “adopted an increasingly cooperative approach to working with major international institutions” and that it has played a bigger regional role in the wake of the 2007–2009 economic crisis (2012, p. 61). Others acknowledge China’s assertiveness but also explain how Beijing is positively contributing to the international order (Godement, 2012, pp. 231–232). Finally, some scholars aver that the most obvious feature of Chinese foreign policy is its fluidity and inconsistency (M. Li & Loh, 2015; Shambaugh, 2013, p. 14; Goldstein, 2012, pp. 55–57).

Intervening in this debate, I assess Chinese foreign policy in Southeast Asia from 2009 to 2020 and catalog “assertive” and “cooperative” behavior (Appendix A). The data indeed shows that assertive practices can be empirically documented across the military, diplomatic, and economic realms. Nevertheless, cooperative and “positive” Chinese practices are also regularly identified, underlining the sometimes contradictory character of China’s foreign policy (see Rühlig, 2022). While the presence of assertiveness or inconsistencies in foreign policy is not unique to China, what is more interesting is to understand why international actors are increasingly making such appraisals of China and to flesh out specific instances of assertive practices. It is not an understatement to stress that perceptions matter in international politics because they elicit significant political (re)actions (see Jervis, 1976). In the context of China’s rise, this is all the more important because countries’ China policies are informed by their evaluations and perceptions of the PRC. As Shambaugh reminds us, mischaracterizations of China will “contribute to an inexorable action-reaction cycle” that will make it “increasingly difficult to cooperate with China internationally” (2011, p. 25).

Relatedly, IR theorists of different persuasions have engaged in discussions on China’s rise anchored in its assertive behavior. Realists contend that China’s forceful international behavior mostly derives from its burgeoning might (e.g., Bisley, 2011; S. Zhao, 2013a). Nevertheless, they cannot satisfactorily explain why this assertiveness is seen now, given that the growth of China’s economic and military prowess precedes it. Liberal institutionalism, like constructivism, underlines Beijing’s dissatisfaction with the existing normative world order and points out how the government is harnessing China’s economic vitality to advance national interests. This, they argue, will take place not through conflict but through jostling for international leadership positions and bargaining power (Ikenberry 2011, p. 57). Growing international trade, according to institutional liberalism, will make China’s rise peaceful since its economy has become inextricably embedded in global trade relations (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 62). Furthermore, it is claimed that participation in international life will curb the PRC’s worst impulses (Qin, 2010, p. 247). Indeed, China’s limited role in shaping global norms and rules and its reputed role as a “price taker” are often presented, by constructivist and liberalist scholars (e.g., Breslin, 2010; Christiansen, 2016), as key reasons for China’s global push for the Belt and Road Initiative. Still, it is important to note that China has emerged as a staunch defender of multilateralism, free trade, and climate mitigation efforts (Guo, 2019)—normative packages that it played only a modest role in shaping. China has also proven that it can conduct assertive and even belligerent activities while deepening economic integration with other nations and partaking meaningfully in international life (see Appendix A). He and Feng (2013, p. 215) pointedly observe how, “like liberals, constructivists also face difficulties when accounting for China’s ‘assertive turn’ of foreign policy since 2009.” In short, liberalist and constructivist IR scholars offer few explanations for China’s truculent diplomacy. Revealingly, they have also shown little interest in understanding China’s diplomacy within the context of China’s emergence. By contrast, this book underlines how diplomatic assertiveness is, in fact, integral to the trope of China’s assertiveness more broadly because of MOFA’s representational role. Getting a more accurate grip on Chinese foreign policy and how assertiveness is “made” will give us better indications as to the course China will take. Why has China’s diplomacy experienced an emphatic uptick in assertiveness? Why do international actors, across different geographies, increasingly perceive Chinese practices as such?

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