Assessing the Role of Foreign Policy Elites in China: Impact on Chinese Foreign Policy Formulation

By CHIN-HAO HUANG

China’s foreign policy is increasingly shaped by foreign policy elites—experts from universities, research organizations, businesses, and military academies—who operate at the margins of the traditional centralized confines of the Chinese Communist Party and government apparatus. Yet given China’s growing impact on global affairs, it is remarkable how little we know about this change in Chinese foreign policy formulation.

With the support of the USC U.S.-China Institute, this project examines the following research puzzle: if the formulation of Chinese foreign policy is becoming more inclusive and receptive to ideas and interests originating from outside the traditional party-state apparatus, how and when do these foreign policy elites play a role in shaping official decision-making? Carrying out research interviews with nearly 40 Chinese policy elites over the course of the summer in 2011, this report focuses on the unique and emergent role Chinese epistemic communities are playing in a one-party authoritarian state.

Understanding the influences on official decision-making in China has traditionally been and continues to be a challenging research puzzle. Yet, as China opens up, becomes more pluralized at home, and becomes more deeply engaged in the complexities of the international system abroad, the demand for additional expertise increases. One of the major findings of this project is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the traditional source that provides foreign policy advice to the senior Chinese leadership, no longer retains that unique role.  This is not to say that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is no longer relevant.  It remains very much at the center of major foreign and security policy decision-making in China, but it is now joined by a wider array of voices eager to have an input and influence in China’s foreign affairs. 

As such, the input has widened and broadened, which inevitably leads to a more deliberative and at time incongruent approach.  Bureaucratic turf battles between various ministries and agencies (e.g., Ministry of Commerce, the People’s Liberation Army, provincial governments, state-owned enterprises with foreign ventures) have made significant impacts on foreign policy decision-making as each organization within the system puts forward its own bureaucratic interests.  The PLA, for example, in a string of recent security developments (e.g., the launch of the stealth fighter during then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ visit to Beijing, the build-up and subsequent launch of the aircraft carrier, and the more forceful positions on the South China Sea, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea) all point to the military and defense establishment’s narrowed focus on attaining greater budgetary allocation from the central government and on wielding greater input and influence during the impending senior leadership transition within the government in 2012.  These factors have led to the justification for the military’s rapid modernization to meet the increasing challenges in China’s periphery and to help secure and defend China’s national interests and territorial integrity. 

Another important finding from this project is that when deliberating policy decisions, China’s top leaders increasingly consult an ever-widening circle of foreign policy elites and individuals.  China today cannot be approached as a monolith: there is great diversity of interests and ideas within the society and this is increasingly reflected in the development of policy decisions on a broad range of subjects. Those responsible for China’s strategic foreign policy choices are scrambling to come to grips with the increased activities of a diverse group of Chinese foreign policy elites in the international arena. For example, these foreign policy elites -- e.g., academic scholars, retired military and foreign policy personnel, business executives -- have exerted a degree of influence in the official policy-making discourse, urging Chinese leaders to drop the term “peaceful rise” in favor of “peaceful development” to describe China’s broad foreign policy objectives. The involvement of academics and scholars is particularly noteworthy because their writing in both the public domain and internal publications provides a window through which Internet discussions, foreign ideas and international debates can be channeled to senior decision-makers. While in previous years Chinese academics tended to be defensive and cautious in their statements, in recent years many senior researchers have become increasingly forthright and articulate in expressing their ideas—both progressive and conservative/nationalist—on a broadening range of international relations issues. The media, public intellectuals commenting on the Internet, as well as business representatives are all sources of influences and insight on the foreign policy decision-making process in China.

The research project sheds important theoretical and empirical insights as well as policy implications for U.S.-China relations. As discussed earlier, in the making of foreign policy, there are trade-offs between the practical and feasibility of an idea, and a variety of political concerns such as bureaucratic infighting, the current political culture, and prioritization among other issues.  Going forward, it is important to shift from solely looking at the impact on policy to the broader notion of absorption of new ideas and interests emanating from networks of new foreign policy elites such as knowledge-based experts or epistemic communities. Studying the debates and ultimately the utility of new ideas concerning foreign policy issues, springing from various emergent epistemic communities that have become increasingly socialized to the Western international norms and conventions and that are outside the formal party- state foreign policy apparatus, will thus help illuminate the nature and dynamics of the changes and continuities in Chinese foreign policy formulation.

Click here to view projects of other 2011-2012 USCI Graduate Summer Fieldwork Grant receipients.