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XI JINPING, CHINA AND THE GLOBAL ORDER:
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHINA’S 2018 CENTRAL
FOREIGN POLICY WORK CONFERENCE
THE HON. KEVIN RUDD
26 TH PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
PRESIDENT OF THE ASIA SOCIETY POLICY INSTITUTE, NEW YORK
AN ADDRESS TO THE LEE KUAN YEW SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
TUESDAY 26 JUNE, 2018
On 22-23 June 2018, the Chinese Communist Party concluded its Central Conference on Work
Relating to Foreign Affairs, the second since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Party
and Chairman of the Central Military Commission in November 2012. The last one was held in
November 2014. These are not everyday affairs in the party’s deliberations on the great
questions of China’s unfolding global engagement.
These conferences are major, authoritative gatherings of the entire leadership, designed to
synthesise China’s official analysis of international trends, and assess how China should
anticipate and respond to them in the prosecution of its own national interests. This one, like
the last one, was presided over by Xi Jinping and attended by all seven members of the
politburo standing committee, plus ex-officio member Vice President Wang Qishan, together
with all other eighteen members of the regular politburo, in addition to everybody who is
anybody in the entire Chinese foreign, security, military, economic, trade, finance, cyber and
intelligence community, as well as the central think tank community.
It’s a meeting that’s meant to be noticed by the entire Chinese international policy
establishment, because if there is to be any new directive concerning China’s place in the
world, it’s likely to be found somewhere in Xi Jinping’s 3,000 character report to this
conference.
Of course, the entire deliberations of the conference are not made public. Three-and-a-half
years ago, only a selected part of it was broadcast and reported in the central media. The
same this time as well. And unlike in Washington, the Chinese system doesn’t leak every
twelve hours. There is, therefore, an often hazardous reading of the tea leaves in interpreting
what it all means, discerning what is new, what is new-ish, and what is not.
WHAT IS NEW?
How does the 2018 Work Conference compare with the one in 2014? The 2014 iteration
represented the formal, official funeral of Deng Xiaoping’s international policy dictum of the
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previous 30 years of “hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead”. It also heralded
the beginning of a new period of confident, independent international policy activism
by Beijing. In part this change reflected Xi Jinping’s greater centralisation of political power in
the Chinese system. In part it reflected the Chinese system’s deep conclusion that American
global power was in relative decline and that the United States would not confront China
militarily if China sought to expand its regional military presence. In part it reflected a Chinese
institutional conclusion that China had finally become an indispensable global economic power
to most countries in the world, thereby enabling China to begin to project its economic
influence bilaterally, regionally and also multilaterally. It also was an expression of Xi Jinping’s
personal leadership temperament, which is impatient with the incremental bureaucratism
endemic to the Chinese system, and with which the international community had become
relaxed, comfortable and thoroughly accustomed.
For those who follow these events closely and have written on the importance of this
significant departure from China’s traditional strategic framework dating from the 2014
conference, a number of developments since then have been illustrative of this overall change
in the style, content and direction of China’s international policy approach. China worked
overtime in 2014-16 to expand its military position in the South China Sea with a rapid program
of island reclamation. China took the idea of the New Silk Road and turned it into a multitrillion
dollar trade, investment, infrastructure and wider geo-political and geo-economic
initiative, engaging 73 different countries across much of Eurasia, Africa and beyond. China
signed up most of the developed world in the first large-scale non-Bretton Woods multilateral
development bank called the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), capitalised it and
launched it so that it now has a balance sheet already approaching the size of the Asian
Development Bank.
China has also become for the first time a multilateral diplomatic activist, launching diplomatic
initiatives of its own beyond its own immediate sphere of strategic interest here in the East
Asian hemisphere, as well as actively participating in other initiatives such as the JCPOA on
Iran, rather than declining to reach beyond its own narrowly defined core national interests
as we have often seen in the past. China has also developed naval bases in Sri Lanka, Pakistan
and now Djibouti (the latter with some 5,000 troops based there), as well as participating in
naval exercises with the Russians in the Sea of Japan, the Mediterranean and even the Baltic.
And now in the most recent National People’s Conference in March 2018, we have the decision
to establish China’s first ever International Development Cooperation Agency to manage
China’s burgeoning aid programs across the developing world. Of course, these leave to one
side the activities of Chinese state financial institutions, other Chinese SOE’s as well as Chinese
mixed investment funds operating on every continent and in every region of the world.
It would be wrong, analytically, to say that all these suddenly began after the 2014 Central
Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs. Some began in the two years before then
after Xi first became General Secretary in late 2012. And some have their antecedents in the
late Hu Jintao period. But my point is that they all either began, were intensified or else were
formally publicly legitimised by the conclusions of the last Central Conference. In short, the
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system was given the mandate to contest, assert, and where possible to lead in the various
councils of the world. And this was new.
Furthermore, anyone who continues to entertain the fanciful idea, which I still sometimes
seen in Western commentary, that these changes are not the product of a well-considered
Chinese grand strategy, is simply choosing to ignore the clear evidence of clearly defined
policy purpose systematically at work in the field. Our Chinese friends think things through
carefully. They observe carefully. Not just what is happening in the headlines, which is the
permanent obsession of the Western political establishment. But what is happening, in what
Xi Jinping would describe as “the underlying historical trends” in international relations. And
then, after a period of detailed internal reflection, consideration, and where necessary
consensus building within the system, a new direction is set.
That indeed is what these Central Foreign Policy Work Conferences are all about. They sum
up where the system has got to in its analysis. And then what the system intends to do about
it. It’s part of the rolling system of policy analysis, implementation and review that
characterises the entire Chinese public policy system, both foreign and domestic. It is both
one of the great strengths of the Chinese system. But also one of its great weaknesses if the
conclusions reached prove it be analytically flawed, or unsustainable in practice. It takes a lot
to turn the Chinese ship of state around once that course has been set at the top.
So what changes with the 2018 Central Conference? Is it more of the same? Or simply an
intensification of the trajectory? Or a change in content and tone. The answer is all of the
above—a blend of continuity and change.
A NEW ROLE FOR PARTY IDEOLOGY IN FOREIGN POLICY
First, the press reporting of the conference asserts the absolute centrality of the party to the
country’s foreign policy mission. This is not entirely new. But the emphasis on the role of the
party is much stronger than before. In the recent past, the country’s international policy
establishment, like its econocrats, have seen themselves, and have been seen by the Chinese
political establishment, as a technocratic elite. That is now changing in foreign policy as much
as it has already changed in economic policy.
This is part of a broader trend in Xi Jinping’s China, whose focus is to rehabilitate the party
from moral death from corruption on the one hand, and practical death from policy irrelevance
on the other.
Xi has been concerned that the party had become marginal to the country’s major policy
debates given the technocratic complexity inherent to most of the country’s contemporary
challenges. That is why, for example, we now see a revitalisation of theory over practice, a
reassertion of the power of the major institutions of the party over the major departments of
state, and once again of political ideology over mere technocratic policy.
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Nor does Xi Jinping intend presiding over the party’s “death by a thousand cuts” as it contends
with a range of unfolding political forces unleashed by a combination of the market economy,
social liberalisation and foreign influence.
No—Xi Jinping intends for the party to defy the trend-line of Western history, to see off
Fukuyama’s end of history with the inevitable triumph of Western liberal-democratic capitalism
and to preserve a Leninist state for the long term as the most effective means of ensuring
that China prevails in its domestic and international challenges. That is why there is lengthy
treatment in this conference on, to use the language of the Xinhua report, “Upholding the
authority of the CPC Central Committee as the overarching principle and strengthening the
centralised, unified leadership of the Party on external work.”
In case we missed the emphasis, Xi Jinping also states that “diplomacy represents the will of
the state, and diplomatic power must stay with the CPC Central Committee, while external
work is a systematic project.” Xi calls “for implementing reform of the institutions and
mechanisms concerning foreign affairs under the decision of the Central Party leadership and
enhancing party-building in institutions abroad so as to form a management mechanism
catering to the requirements of the new era.”
The conference also emphasised that China’s diplomacy would now be a “diplomacy of
socialism with Chinese characteristics” and as such would take Xi Jinping thought from the
domestic into the foreign policy domain. In the past, this language of “socialism with Chinese
characteristics” applied to the overall Chinese ideological system, usually interpreted as
China’s own form of state capitalism. But now it is applied to diplomacy, and it infers
something else.
It seems to mean conforming diplomacy with a wider ideological worldview which lies beyond
the simple policy pragmatism we have seen for decades guiding most elements of Chinese
foreign policy in the prosecution of China’s national interests. There now seems to be a new
national and-or global vision that now sits above the simple maximisation of national interests.
This seems more than the routine incantations of the China Dream, the party’s centenary
objectives for 2021, and the national centenary mission for 2049 with which we have become
familiar since Xi came to power. At this stage, this new overarching ideological mission may
be inchoate, but the fact that it is as yet not fully formed does not mean that it does not exist.
Lest there be any doubt on this count, the ranking foreign policy technocrat attending the
Work Conference, former Foreign Minister and State Councillor Yang Jiechi, and now Director
of the Foreign Policy Office of the Party Central Committee, refers explicitly to the ideological
significance of this conference. It is worth quoting Yang’s remarks at the conference at some
length. He states that the most important outcome of this conference is that:
“It established the guiding position of Xi Jinping thought on diplomacy.
Xi Jinping thought on diplomacy is an important part of Xi Jinping Thought
on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era...It is a major
theoretical achievement in the thoughts on state governance in the area of
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diplomacy by the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the
core, and a fundamental guideline for China's external work in the new
era...We should integrate our thoughts and actions into General Secretary
Xi Jinping's important address and Xi Jinping thought on diplomacy, and
make new advances in China's external work."
To an international foreign policy audience, this may all seem a little arcane. That’s because
in the internal ideological deliberations of a one party state, it is arcane. But we would be
blind not to see that there is something new at play here. It is unclear whether this means
Chinese foreign policy is likely to be more Marxist in its conceptualisation, or even its
execution? Whether it likely to be more Nationalist? Whether it will seek to more actively
promote the Chinese development model of “authoritarian capitalism” as a model for the
world, in competition with the “liberal democratic capitalism” of the West? Whether it is a
much more unformed worldview which will ultimately take shape around Xi Jinping’s as-yetdeliberately-vague
concept of “a global community of common destiny,” which is now the
subject of intense work within China’s think tank community, and with the international
academic community.
Or whether it is something more mechanistic than that altogether, involving a desire to fire
up China’s current diplomatic establishment into a more invigorated, imaginative, creative,
even forceful effort to shape the future global rules-based order more in China’s image, rather
than China being the permanent “price -taker” for rules already determined elsewhere by
others. Particularly where elements of the existing order are seen to represent a continuing
and unwelcome challenge to the legitimacy of China’s domestic political order, for example in
areas such as the rule of law, human rights and democracy.
A NEW IDEOLOGICAL CONFIDENCE THAT HISTORY FAVOURS CHINA
There is a second element to the June 2018 Conference which grows out of the first. It is Xi’s
deeply Marxist, dialectical-materialist view of history based on permanently evolving
“contradictions” between what dialecticians call thesis, antithesis and synthesis. In Xi’s view,
this in turn gives rise to defined “laws” of historical development which are both prescriptive
and predictive.
This may sound like old-fashioned Marxism. That’s because it is. The intellectual software of
generations of Chinese leaders has been shaped by this conceptual framework for interpreting
and responding to what they define as scientific, objective reality. And Xi Jinping belongs to
that tradition. Remember he has already convened special study sessions of the politburo on
understanding both dialectical and historical materialism in the past.
According to the conference report: “Xi suggested to not only observe the current international
situation, but also review the past, summarise historical laws, and look towards the future to
better understand the trend of history.” Furthermore, according to the same report in Xinhua,
to obtain “an accurate understanding of the overall situation, Xi underlined not only the
observation of detailed phenomena, but also a deep appreciation of the essence of the overall
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situation in order not to get lost in complexity and the changing international situation.”
Xi concludes on this count by stating that “throughout human history, the development of the
world has always been the result of contradictions intertwining and interacting with each
other.”
Once again, all this will seem more than a little arcane. But in the ideological dialect of the
Communist Party, it seems to mean several things. First, that there is nothing random about
what is unfolding in the world today. Second, these reflect certain immutable laws of political
and economic development. Third, the business of Chinese foreign policy is to use this dialectal
prism to understand precisely what is happening in the world today, why it is happening and
what to do about it. And fourth, applying these disciplines to the current period, it means that
the global order is at a turning point with the relative decline of the US and the West, with
this coinciding with the fortuitous national and international circumstances currently enabling
China’s rise.
To use Xi’s own language, this: “has been in the best period of development since modern
times, while the world is undergoing the most profound and unprecedented changes in a
century” adding that “the two aspects are intertwined and interact with each other.” Xi refers
to the current period as a period of unprecedented strategic opportunity for China and the
current mission of the party. Although this is not itself a new term, Xi says the party’s mission
is to extend this period. To do this, he calls for the party to engage in “in-depth analysis of
the law of how the international situation changes as the world comes into this transitional
period, as well as developing an accurate grasp of the basic characteristics of the external
environment China is facing at this historical juncture in order to better plan and facilitate the
country's work on foreign affairs.”
In other words, what is being said here is that China now has the wind at its back. Of course
there are formidable obstacles ahead. But a dialectical analysis of history causes China to
conclude that the forces of reaction facing the US and the West are greater. Just as the
contradictions operating domestically within the US and the West (in their particular political
systems) are greater as well. Which in turn renders China’s overall domestic and international
circumstances much better by comparison in the emerging contest between the two. All of
which, again in this view, pushes towards a new historical synthesis more in China’s (and
Chinese socialism’s) favour.
You will all be forgiven if you think this all sounds more like medieval theology than modern
international relations. And it’s anyone’s guess what any of this actually will have to do with
concrete foreign policy reality. But we often forget that how one-party states, and in particular
Marxist states, choose to ‘ideate’ reality actually matters. It’s how the system speaks to itself.
It’s the political lingua franca among political and policy elites.
And the important thing here is that the message from Xi Jinping to his international policy
elite is one of great confidence. Not just because China wills it to be so, but because from a
Marxist theoretical perspective, which in their view articulates certain immutable ‘laws’ of
political and economic development, the forces of history are now with China. Furthermore,
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this is a call to greater international policy activism, rather than retrenchment in response to
the rise of Trump. In other words, the conclusion is that the great trends of history, or to use
an old Soviet term, the ‘correlation of forces’, are moving China’s way.
TOWARDS A SHARPER CHINESE DIPLOMACY
A third element of the 2018 Work Conference is its injunction to the country’s international
policy institutions and personnel to get with the Xi Jinping project. Xi seems to have the
Foreign Ministry in his sights when he says that “the reform of the institutions and mechanisms
concerning foreign affairs is the internal demand of advancing modernisation in the state
governance system and governance capabilities.” It will be recalled from above that “partybuilding”
within the country’s foreign policy institutions will be a core part of that.
On personnel, Xi Jinping reminds the nation’s diplomats that they are first and foremost “party
cadres.” This has a certain ideological retro to it all. Indeed it’s been a long time since I’ve
heard Chinese diplomats refer to their seniors as cadres. In fact I’m not sure that over the
last 35 years that I can. To quote the Xinhua report: “Stressing that cadres are the decisive
factor after setting the political course, Xi called for a strong contingent of foreign affairs
personnel that are loyal to the CPC, the country and the people and are politically solid,
professionally competent and strongly disciplined in their conduct. He called on foreign affairs
cadres to enhance their ideals and their training so as to upgrade their competency and overall
quality...”
Does this presage a new type of Chinese foreign ministry diplomat abroad? Perhaps. It’s long
been reported that Xi has been frustrated by the performance of parts of his foreign policy
establishment. He sees them proceeding at a glacial pace. Whereas China’s strategic
challenges and opportunities are urgent. Once again, this tends to point in the direction of
greater foreign policy activism in the future in a system that is struggling to keep up with the
political and policy vision of its leader.
CHINA LEADING THE REFORM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
Fourth, the sharpest substantive new development to emerge from the 2018 Foreign Policy
Work Conference is what is says about global governance.
In the 2014 Work Conference, Xi referred to an impending struggle for the future structure of
the international order. He did not elaborate on this back then. But much work has gone on
within the Chinese system since on three inter-related concepts: the international order (guoji
zhixu); the international system (guoji xitong), and global governance (quanqiu zhili).
Of course, these mean different but overlapping things in English too. Broadly speaking, in
Chinese, the term “international” or “global” order refers to a combination of the UN, the
Bretton Woods Institutions, the G20 and other global plurilateral or multilateral institutions on
the one hand; and the US system of global alliances to enforce the US definition of
international security on the other. The term “international system” tends to refer to the first
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half of this international order—namely the complex web of multilateral institutions which
operate under international treaty law and which seek to govern the global commons on the
basis of the principle of shared sovereignty. As for “global governance”, it tends to refer to
the actual performance, for good or for ill, be it effective or ineffective, of the “international
system” so defined.
It is deeply significant that at the 2018 Work Conference, Xi Jinping states boldly that a core
component of his new ideology of a “diplomacy of socialism with Chinese characteristics”
would be for China to: “lead the reform of the global governance system with the concepts of
fairness and justice.” This is by far the most direct, unqualified and expansive statement on
China’s intentions on this important question we have seen.
China, like the rest of the international community, is acutely conscious of the dysfunctionality
of much of the current multilateral system. It also sees the US walking away from much of
the system as well: from the JCPOA which was agreed to by the UN Security Council; from
the UN’s Paris Agreement on Climate Change; its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights
Commission; its open defiance of the Refugees Convention; and its challenging of the
underlying fabric of the WTO.
Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum. International relations even more so. And we all saw
Xi Jinping’s riposte to President Trump on climate change and trade at Davos 18 months ago
just after President Trump’s election. If China is indeed serious about leading the reform of
global governance, its attitude to various of these multilateral institutions will be radically
different to the historical posture of the US. Take for example the Human Rights Council in
Geneva, which China would like to see emasculated. Mind you, so too now, apparently, does
the current US administration!
The reference to “China leading the reform of global governance” in this conference is not an
accident. It also reflects a growing Chinese diplomatic activism in a number of UN and Bretton
Woods institutions around the world as China begins to seek to recast these institutions, their
cultures, their work practices and their personnel in a direction more compatible with China’s
core national interests. As I have written before, rather than China having to consistently
resist the pressures of “Westernisation” inherent in the existing laws, institutions and culture
of the current international system, particularly when these prove to be incompatible with the
retention of a Marxist-Leninist Chinese state, the resolve of China’s leadership now seems to
be to use its newfound global power to refashion those institutions within the international
system that may be most problematic for China on the home front.
As for the principles of fairness and justice that Xi refers to as the core principles that will
guide China’s reform of global governance, these terms historically imply China’s preference
for a more “multipolar” international system in which the unilateral voice of the United States
is reduced. China has already developed a strong constituency in Africa, parts of Asia and
Latin America in support of this. ‘Multipolarity’ in Chinese strategic parlance is code for the
dilution of American power in the post-war international system.
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THE CENTRALITY OF CHINESE NATIONAL INTERESTS
Lest anyone gets too starry-eyed about China’s intentions for reforming global governance, in
Xi Jinping’s description of the core principles of its new “diplomacy of socialism with Chinese
characteristics,” Xi concludes his list of ten governing principles with the following: that China
must take its “core national interests as the bottom line to safeguard China's sovereignty,
security and development interests”.
Xi makes plain that China’s foreign policy is unapologetically nationalist. Xi assumes that all
other countries’ foreign policies are nationalist as well.
Of course, China’s definition of its core national interests has evolved over time. As have other
nations. It now includes, for example, the South China Sea. A decade ago, that was not a
feature of Chinese official statements defining China’s core interests. Now it is. As for any
state, therefore, the concept of “core national interests” varies over time and will be defined
by the government of the day.
CONCLUSION
But we will soon see how the 2018 Central Foreign Policy Conference translates into different
Chinese foreign policy behaviours on the ground. If the 2014 Conference is an effective guide,
we will see a heightened period of Chinese foreign policy activism. However the precise
content of that activism remains to be seen. But what we are seeing is the slow, steady
emergence of a more integrated Chinese worldview which links China’s domestic vision with
its international vision - and a vision which very much reflects the deep views of China’s
paramount leader Xi Jinping.
The first policy terrain where we are likely to see this is in the existing institutions of global
governance. But it will not be restricted to this area. The text of the report of the 2018 Central
Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs suggests that we will also see this across
China’s bilateral relations, its engagement with regional institutions, as well as its approach to
major power relations as well - all of which are likely to be met with an increasingly forthright
Chinese diplomacy.
The challenge for the rest of the international community is to define what type of future
international order, system and governance it wants. And to take China’s invitation seriously
to engage the Middle Kingdom in a frank and forthright discourse on what the region and the
world precisely want in any future “global community of common destiny”.
What does the European Union want? What does ASEAN want? What does the East Asia
Summit want? What does the African Union want? What does the Organization of American
States want? What does the Gulf Cooperation Council want? What exactly does America want,
with or without Trump?
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And in this dialogue, how will the values already entrenched in the UN Charter, Bretton Woods
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the founding instruments of various
regional organisations, be preserved for the future?
The future of the global order is now in a state of some flux. In part induced by the recent
posture of the United States. In part induced by the rise of China. China it seems has a clear
script for the future. It’s time for the rest of the international community to do the same.
***
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