Yan Xuetong in 2015: Generalization of Diplomatic Concepts Harms the World's Understanding of China
What is not a "Belt and Road Initiative" project? What is not a "new quality productive force"? With which country is China not in "a community with a shared future"?
I have been repeatedly asked over the years what is the “Belt and Road Initiative,” the “community with a shared future for mankind,” “new quality productive forces,” etc. My public response almost always included an admission that I may not have a likable answer, a book recommendation, and something to the effect of the following insight of Yan Xuetong, the leading international relations scholar at Tsinghua University.
The article was published in 2015 in 国际先驱导报 International Herald Leader, a newspaper of Xinhua News Agency that has ceased publication. The author’s name is 邓媛 Deng Yuan. It remains available on the website of the Institute of International Relations, Tsinghua University website, headed by Yan.
I must have read the article quite a few years back, but I stumbled upon it recently upon schoolwork. As we near the close of 2024, the in-depth observation in Yan’s 2015 article becomes ever more striking. Nearly a decade later, its insights not only resonate but hold an even greater relevance. — Zichen Wang
阎学通：外交概念泛化有损世界理解中国
Generalization of Diplomatic Concepts Harms the World's Understanding of China
In recent years, China has proposed several strategic concepts that serve the broader framework of its diplomacy and effectively convey its foreign policy concerns. These include the 中美新型大国关系 "new type of great power relationship between China and the United States" introduced in 2012 and neighbourhood diplomacy concepts such as the "Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)" and the "周边命运共同体 a neighborhood community with a shared future," both proposed in 2013.
Unfortunately, these diplomatic concepts have been subject to overgeneralization. For instance, "a neighborhood community with a shared future" has been broadened into the 世界命运共同体 "global community with a shared future for mankind."
This overgeneralization has stripped these concepts of their meaning, causing them to lose their effectiveness as guiding principles for foreign policy. Furthermore, it risks creating confusion among other countries about China's foreign policy. Hence, the phenomenon of overgeneralization in diplomatic concepts warrants attention and study.
What is the overgeneralization of concepts?
The overgeneralization of concepts is not a newly emerging issue. Let us examine two examples: security and confidentiality.
Initially, the concept of "security" was distinct from "development." Security referred to safeguarding existing interests from loss. However, through overgeneralization, people began to perceive "security" as also including the expansion of interests. Consequently, the boundaries between "security" and "development" became blurred. This overgeneralization, where "security" is viewed as a subset of “development,” effectively undermines the importance of "security."
Now, let's look at "confidentiality." Its original meaning is that certain information should not be disclosed. Over time, however, to emphasize the importance of certain matters, people started labeling everything as confidential. For instance, some magazines, to highlight the significance of their content, marked themselves as "for internal reference" and instructed readers to maintain confidentiality, even though the content marked as confidential was often not actually important.
When "confidentiality" is overgeneralized to equate with "importance," and importance becomes the criterion for labeling something as confidential, nearly everything starts being classified as secret. This leads to a situation where it becomes unclear what genuinely requires confidentiality. When confidentiality becomes so ubiquitous, there is effectively nothing left that warrants efforts to maintain confidentiality.
The above examples illustrate the harm caused by the overgeneralization of concepts.
First, when a concept is overgeneralized, it loses its boundaries. People can no longer discern what falls within its scope and what does not, making it difficult to understand its true meaning. Vague and ambiguous concepts are inherently meaningless.
Second, overgeneralization undermines the applicability of existing policies. Policies were originally formulated within the boundaries of their corresponding concepts. For instance, confidentiality regulations were initially designed to apply to intelligence information. However, with overgeneralization, important non-intelligence information also became classified as confidential, obstructing the smooth flow of information that is not of an intelligence nature.
Today, the harm caused by concept overgeneralization is impacting China's proposed diplomatic strategies.
From effective to ineffective: the case of "a new type of great power relationship"
Let us first examine the concept of the "new type of great power relationship."
Originally, the boundaries of this concept were well-defined: it referred to relationships between major global powers that avoid military conflict or war. For instance, whether Cambodia and Thailand engage in military conflict, their relationship does not meet the criteria for "a new type of great power relationship." This concept was explicitly formulated to describe the relationship between China and the United States: the U.S. as the current superpower and China as an emerging superpower. Their relationship was envisioned to break away from historical patterns, avoiding direct wars between the two most powerful nations or the proxy wars characteristic of the Cold War era between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
However, "a new type of great power relationship" was soon overgeneralized. It was no longer exclusive to China-U.S. relations; instead, China's relationships with countries such as India, Brazil, South Africa, and other nations were also described as "a new type of great power relationship." China's relationships with all regional powers began to fall under this term.
At this stage, the "new type" no longer signified the avoidance of war, as China was unlikely to engage in war with countries like Brazil or Germany. The original boundaries of the China-U.S. "new type of great power relationship" were thus broadened, and the term "new type" became generalized to mean "friendly." At the same time, the degree of this friendliness had to be kept below the level of a formal "alliance."
Subsequently, the concept of "a new type of great power relationship" spread further, gradually evolving into the idea that China's relationships with all nations constituted "a new type of inter-country relations." As a result, the term "new type" lost even more of its original meaning. People began to question: what differentiates this "new type of inter-country relations" from China's "old type"?
The United States, too, started to wonder: if China regards its relationships with all countries as "a new type of inter-country relations," does the "new type" of China-U.S. relations retain any unique significance? Is there still a need to discuss a " new type of great power relationship" between China and the United States? Recently, U.S. officials have ceased using the term "a new type of great power relationship." What was originally an effective policy for China’s diplomacy toward the U.S. has lost its impact due to the overgeneralization of the concept.
The overgeneralization of "a new type of great power relationship" has affected not only China-U.S. relations but also China-Russia relations. Initially, the purpose of establishing a "new type" relationship between China and the United States was to address tensions in their bilateral relations and prevent serious military confrontations or war.
However, applying this label to China-Russia relations diminishes the significance of the China-Russia partnership. Can the essence of China-Russia relations be reduced merely to the absence of war? When the term "new type" is extended to China-Russia relations, it even becomes challenging to differentiate China-Russia ties from those between China and the United States.
What kind of relationship would not qualify as "a community with a shared future"?
The same issue plagues the concept of "a community with a shared future."
"A neighborhood community with a shared future," introduced in 2013, is a commendable concept with a clearly defined geographical scope, referring specifically to China and its neighboring countries. It emphasizes that, beyond economic interests, there are shared security interests, highlighting that security cooperation with neighboring countries is a key focus of China's diplomacy.
However, the term "a community with a shared future" has also been extended to describe China's relationships with various regions, such as the "China-Africa community with a shared future" and the "China-Latin America community with a shared future." When applied to Africa and Latin America, the original emphasis on security cooperation loses its relevance, as there is no strategic military cooperation between China and these regions.
This broadening of the concept raises several questions: What kind of relationship would not qualify as "a community with a shared future"? If China states that it has long been in "a community with a shared future" with Africa, what new dimensions exist to establish? Some might even ask, with which countries is China not in "a community with a shared future"?
Eventually, in China, the concept even went further to "a global community with a shared future," which raises additional questions: Are China and Japan part of "a community with a shared future"? If so, how come territorial and sovereignty disputes exist between them? If countries with territorial disputes are still regarded as part of "a community with a shared future," does this imply that even nations at war could also be considered part of such a community?
Even more surprisingly, the concept has also been applied to cross-strait relations, prompting questions: Does a "community with a shared future" pertain to foreign or domestic relations? Does it address China's relationships with foreign political entities or interactions between internal entities? The concept of a "community with a shared future" thus becomes even more ambiguous.
Consequently, how can China use the "community with a shared future" to guide its diplomacy? How will it inform policies toward Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan?
Unifying Diplomatic Concepts Requires Top-Level Design
Finally, let us briefly discuss the BRI. This diplomatic concept was introduced during the 2013 Central Conference on the Diplomatic Work with Neighbouring Countries, with the aim of prioritizing and ensuring the implementation of neighborhood diplomacy. However, the geographical scope of the BRI was later expanded to include Africa and Europe. What initially started as a strategy to cultivate strategic and friendly relations with neighboring countries gradually evolved into a vague synonym for economic cooperation and infrastructure development.
As a result of this overgeneralization, China itself became unclear about the primary nature of the BRI: Is it an economic cooperation strategy, a diplomatic strategy, or a national development strategy? The ambiguity surrounding its strategic purpose has created difficulties in guiding specific implementation. For instance, what is the primary objective of building a railway? Should the decision be based on potential economic returns, or on whether it enhances the strategic relationship between the two countries?
In my personal view, the core reason behind the overgeneralization of diplomatic concepts lies in the lack of coordination in China's foreign strategies. When major foreign policy concepts are introduced, different government departments often operate on their own. If a concept appears beneficial to a particular department, it is adopted and repurposed for their own objectives. This competition for resources and concepts leads to their overgeneralization.
I believe it is now essential to address the issues stemming from the overgeneralization of foreign strategy concepts. China should designate one relevant department to coordinate its foreign strategies comprehensively. This department's responsibilities should extend beyond aligning the work of various departments to include standardizing the use of core concepts and ensuring consistent terminology across all departments. Such measures should be incorporated into the top-level design. Only in this way can these concepts better serve China's overall diplomatic efforts and its international image.
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