Constraints on China’s Foreign Policy: Inside and Out

A conference on China's Foreign Policy will be held at Stanford University.

What China is doing in the global arena and ways in which China's activities on the world stage have changed China and the international system.  Many commentaries on China's rise and growing engagement in international affairs seem to posit inexorable behaviors explained by realist theories about the behavior of rising states or the will, cunning, and putative goals of Chinese leaders.  Such explanations often ignore or downplay the many ways in which China's foreign policy and behavior on the world stage are shaped by domestic pressures, structural features of the international system, and the initiatives and responses of other countries.  Several distinguished scholars will delve more deeply in the fot the following specifics.

Panel 1: Inside Looking Out:  Foreign Requisites for Economic Development, will examine some of the internal drivers and constraints, such as the importance of sustained economic growth to regime legitimacy and pressures from "Netizens" demanding that China take more assertive positions on a host of foreign policy issues.

Panel 2: Outside Looking In: Engagement in the World Changing China, will focus on how and why China has adjusted its foreign policy to conform to pre-existing international norms and requirements levied by other governments.

RSVP required by 5:00 p.m. on May 2. To register, please visit the event website: http://aparc.stanford.edu/events/2011_oksenberg.