By Lukas Fiala
Over the past week, two conversations with some of our American counterparts reminded me of a perennial question in the China space: How much of China’s foreign policy — broadly conceived — is about the U.S.? At first sight, this question might seem to have a relatively intuitive answer.
After all, as the great power relationship of the early 21st century, U.S. strategy and power, as well as likely U.S. responses to Chinese strategy and policy choices, must evidently loom large when the CPC higher-ups in Beijing make decisions.
Even within my own experience of studying China—at Western and Chinese universities—this seems to be a broadly accepted truism. I recall one of my Chinese academic mentors arguing that most large shifts in Chinese foreign policy behavior could be explained with reference to structural realism, a mainstream International Relations theory.
Given the latter’s tendency to privilege relations between the great powers, it stands to reason that if one wants to understand Chinese foreign policy, one must look at what China thinks of the U.S.
And yet, I argue it would be unwise to exaggerate the centrality of “America” in China’s international strategy — and the Global South is a key example of why a balanced view is so important. The first caveat is simply about levels of analysis. During the early days of Going Out, Chinese state-owned enterprises, in many ways, became the implementing agents of Beijing’s foreign economic policy agenda.
Operating far away from Beijing — and often with limited regulatory oversight from the party apparatus — commercial actors were often relatively free to pursue individual interests while working within the (very) broad strategic guidelines of the state.
By assuming that rising powers necessarily prioritize the incumbent hegemon within all levels of decision-making, our discussions on power transitions and U.S.-China relations often lack a nuanced understanding of just how complex the Party-state architecture is.
Much has changed, of course, since the rise of Xi Jinping. And — as evidenced by related commentary and the publication of some well-known books in the U.S. — Xi’s recentralization efforts and assertive foreign policy agenda have seemingly lent further credibility to those arguing in favor of China’s grand plan to replace U.S. primacy.
However, these overarching arguments are not very helpful as they lead us to assume that rising powers will inevitably follow the incumbent power’s behavior. For instance, despite many commentators asserting that China would take advantage of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Beijing seems to have little appetite to make the same mistakes that various great powers have made in the region.
China is simply not competing with the U.S. across all policy areas and domains. With more than half of China’s arms transfers going to Pakistan alone, for instance, it can hardly be argued that China is an effective and global competitor of the U.S. foreign military sales program — at least not in the way in which we might think and not on a systemic level.
For instance, instead of focusing exclusively on providing external security, Beijing and China’s military-industrial establishment have doubled down on helping partner countries enhance internal security by building capacity across intelligence, surveillance, law enforcement, and policing.
This is not to defend China or naively assume that Beijing does not consider the U.S. when making important strategic decisions. It is to remind us that nuance — not generality — wins the day when it comes to understanding Chinese foreign policy and its motifs.
At a time when Washington seems to have finally understood that it cannot make all its foreign policy across the Global South about China, we shouldn’t make the same mistake and render all of China’s foreign policy about the U.S. During our conversations, our friends from the U.S. were all too aware of this — I hope they are not alone.
Lukas Fiala is the project head of China Foresight at LSE IDEAS.
