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Xi Jinping’s foreign policy agenda for the next ten years envisions a “new type of major power relations” (xinxing daguo guanxi) and proactive, “peripheral diplomacy” (zhoubian waijiao) with neighboring countries. What do these initiatives mean for China’s relations with South Korea? Chinese official and scholarly assessments of the Xi leadership’s current policy directives elucidate possible emerging patterns in China’s external orientation as a rising power. They suggest how Beijing’s major power diplomacy and peripheral diplomacy are linked in the China-ROK relationship. South Korea offers a promising test because it is the US ally most vulnerable to Chinese pressure—due to Sino-North Korean relations, high economic dependence on China, and historical expectations about a close, vassal state. The patterns we may uncover include: pressure to draw closer in views of history; attempts to get agreement on a multilateral approach to North Korea different from the US one; silence on values that reinforce the US approach to the region; efforts to distance Seoul from joint military actions that strengthen the US alliance system; and insistence against cooperation with Japan that could be construed as helping it to elude the isolation Beijing is seeking. In writings on the themes of major power and peripheral relations as presented in China, the evidence about such patterns is not clear-cut, but we can begin to appreciate the linkages.

Linking China’s Major Power Diplomacy and Peripheral Diplomacy

The current Chinese discourse on relations with major powers and neighboring countries can be traced to domestic debates on China’s international power status since the early 1990s. During the Jiang Zemin period, these debates focused primarily on assessing Chinese power relative to other powers including the United States as the world’s dominant power.¹ While Jiang pursued a US-centered foreign policy, he introduced China’s “good-neighbor” (mulin) policy at the 15th National Party Congress in 1997 and placed top priority on China’s regional relations at the 16th National Party Congress in 2002.² The Hu Jintao administration’s “peaceful rise” concept aimed to mitigate external concerns over China’s intentions as a rising power by linking China’s stable development to a stable international environment.³ At an ASEAN summit in 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao identified China’s peripheral diplomacy of creating a “good, secure, and wealthy neighborhood” (mulin, anlin, fulin) as an integral part of China’s national development strategy.⁴

The 1990s are regarded as the best period of China’s peripheral relations since the PRC’s founding, during which Beijing engaged in settling border and other disputes and restoring or establishing diplomatic relations with neighboring states.⁵ Especially after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, scholars such as Wang Yizhou and Zhang Yunling emphasized China’s role as a “responsible great power” in an era of economic interdependence,⁶ but as Zhao Gancheng indicates, 9/11 presented new security and geopolitical challenges along China’s periphery, with major powers as key stakeholders.⁷ From 2009, the global financial crisis and China’s emergence as the world’s second biggest economy forced attention on the prospect of a great power conflict between China and the United States.⁸ This prospect was most evident in China’s confrontations with neighbors, where China’s peripheral diplomacy of the previous two decades had proven most successful. Such success could be found in its relations with South Korea, which had progressed well in the 1990s and much of the 2000s.

China’s Foreign Policy Discourse under the Xi Jinping Administration

Xi Jinping has laid out a comprehensive diplomatic agenda that prioritizes relations with major powers, neighboring countries, developing countries, and multilateral institutions. State Councilor Yang Jiechi specifies the Asia Pacific as the current driver of global economic growth and “center of gravity in the international geopolitical balance of forces.”⁹ This external strategic context frames the current Chinese discourse on major power and peripheral relations. Under Xi the Sunnylands summit of June 2013 and the October 2013 conference on peripheral diplomacy gave much greater visibility to the two major concepts covered in this paper. His more active diplomacy with South Korea also gave new visibility to this country as a test case for how these concepts are actually being applied.

The official line

Raised by Xi Jinping during his February 2012 visit to Washington as vice president, Beijing’s proposition for a new type of major power relations emphasizes: 1) no conflict, 2) mutual respect, and 3) win-win cooperation.¹⁰ Xi outlined the goals of peripheral diplomacy for the next five to ten years at the CCP’s historic Peripheral Diplomacy Work Conference in October 2013: to 1) realize the “Chinese Dream;” 2) develop friendly ties with neighboring countries in political, security, economic, and cultural fields; 3) promote mutually beneficial cooperation; and 3) uphold China’s national sovereignty, security, and development interests (or “core interests”).¹¹ Major power and peripheral strategies, thus, converge on two external goals: cooperation rather than conflict, and mutual respect for core interests. Yet, advancing the “China Dream” and upholding sovereignty and core interests may mean more conflict and insistence that others respect China’s core interests.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi identifies the Asia-Pacific as the “testing-ground” for implementing the major powers model, which argues that conflict between China and the United States is not inevitable.¹² As he stated at the June 2013 World Peace Forum in Beijing, “the process towards peace starts with the surrounding region. Changes in China’s relations with the world could first be perceived in China’s relations with its neighbors.”¹³ Presenting China’s major powers model in Washington in September 2013, Wang emphasized the need to “start the building of this new model of relationship from the Asia-Pacific region,” where both sides “have more converging interests…than anywhere else.”¹⁴

The official line on China’s foreign policy agenda reveals two points of tension. First, Xi’s diplomatic initiatives indicate peaceful rather than hegemonic intentions. As Wang Yi argues, “we have never thought about pushing the US out of the region.”¹⁵ This indication of peaceful intentions is aimed primarily to promote China’s domestic development or Xi’s “China Dream,” the prerequisite for which is said to be a stable external environment.¹⁶ At the April 2013 Boao Forum for Asia, Xi stressed that China’s regional initiatives support both his national reform agenda and “common development.”¹⁷ Yet, China’s peripheral strategy suggests suspicion over external responses to China’s rise. According to Wang, “China must clearly realize that in its surroundings there are still factors that could disrupt its peaceful development. This is why President Xi proposed that China emphasize the maintenance of peace and stability in its surrounding regions.”¹⁸

Second, the Xi leadership’s initiatives also reveal tensions between common interests and what are referred to as core interests around China’s periphery. As Xi makes clear, China seeks cooperative relations with neighbors “on the basis of firmly upholding its sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.”¹⁹ Although China’s leaders point to “converging interests” in the region, US-China competition over vital interests is also perceived as most likely in the Asia Pacific. The PRC Defense Ministry in April 2013 identified the expanding US military presence there as a primary source of recent regional tensions.²⁰ According to Yang Jiechi, China’s recent border defense agreement with India, and approaches to the Korean Peninsula, Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, and South China Sea, all demonstrate China’s defense of its core interests rather than aggression.²¹ Wang Yi further claims that China’s diplomatic efforts on the peninsula since North Korea’s third nuclear test—based on principles of 1) denuclearization “for the entire Korean Peninsula,” 2) dialogue, and 3) stability—exemplify “China’s positive role as a responsible major country.”²² Such claims disguise what others regard as aggression and contributions to instability as positive steps toward reducing regional tensions, blaming the United States and its allies—including South Korea at times—for causing the tensions that occur.

Elite interpretations

Xi’s foreign policy directives have prompted active scholarly debate on a “comprehensive diplomatic strategy” that seeks to positively shape not just major power relations but also China’s peripheral security environment.²³ These debates reveal four lines of Chinese thinking. First, the tone of Asian experts changed from maintaining stability to pursuing national interests. Zhang Xuegang highlights as current challenges maritime and territorial disputes in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and Yellow Sea, including with Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea.²⁴ Other ongoing areas of friction include US arms sales to Taiwan, the China-India relationship, and Korean Peninsula security,²⁵ but of greatest recent concern is Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, which many associate with “encirclement” by hostile neighbors around China’s maritime periphery.²⁶ According to Wang Sheng and Luo Xiao, territorial disputes in the Asia Pacific have prompted a shift in Chinese priorities from “maintaining stability” to “maintaining interests,” a trend that requires strengthening both hard and soft power around China’s periphery.²⁷ Qi Huaigao suggests that Xi’s regional strategy even applies more specifically to a “large periphery,” extending beyond traditional geographic boundaries, rather than just the “small periphery” of directly bordering regions.²⁸

Second, China’s America experts note Beijing’s more diversified strategy under Xi Jinping,²⁹ but focus on the Asia-Pacific’s primary significance in US-China major power relations. Xi’s major powers initiative supports their view that it is both possible and necessary to avoid hegemonic conflict with the United States,³⁰ but according to Jin Canrong, the priority of peripheral diplomacy is to ease regional tensions while also upholding China’s “basic stance” on such issues as territorial disputes and North Korea, where the United States also plays a strategic role.³¹ Xi’s strategy of maintaining stable peripheral relations, thus, addresses two main problems: China’s conflicts with neighbors and US distrust of China. Wang Wenfen emphasizes the strategic significance of Northeast Asia in particular, where recent North Korean military aggression and China-Japan territorial disputes demonstrate the complex stakes for both China and the United States.³² As Jia Qingguo and others suggest, North Korea is an increasing policy priority of China and the United States.³³

Third, those who favor economic interdependence and regional multilateralism suggest that political tensions should not impede China’s promotion of regional integration. According to Qi Huaigao, Northeast Asian security will remain China’s highest policy priority, but economic cooperation should promote sustained security cooperation.³⁴ Specifically, Northeast Asia’s geopolitical stability requires creating a Northeast Asian security mechanism based on the Six-Party Talks, and coexistence between China-supported multilateral institutions and US-led bilateral alliances. Others, however, view China’s current regional economic initiatives through the lens of strategic competition with the United States.³⁵ For example, Song Guoyou argues that China’s peripheral diplomacy should focus on economic diplomacy around China’s periphery partly to mitigate the potential effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.³⁶

Elite interpretations of Xi’s initiatives underscore close linkages between China’s major power diplomacy and peripheral diplomacy. Song Ronghua identifies three obstacles to China’s regional strategies that reflect these linkages.³⁷ First, among all major powers, China faces the most complex set of traditional and nontraditional security challenges in its surrounding environment. Second, most of China’s neighbors seek security benefits from the United States and economic benefits from China, an “ambivalent mentality” that is unlikely to change in the next five to ten years. According to Zhai Kun. the global financial crisis further reinforced this tendency among China’s neighbors.³⁸ Third, China’s periphery remains characterized by competition among major powers, with the United States exerting the greatest influence. Obama’s Asia policy has exacerbated US-China strategic distrust according to Zhang Tuosheng, who argues that a future conflict will more likely involve a third party.³⁹ The linkages between Xi’s diplomatic initiatives toward major powers and neighbors underlie current Chinese debates on relations with South Korea.

Sino-South Korean relations in the Xi Jinping era

The Korean Peninsula represents the complex peripheral security environment facing the Xi leadership. Analysts such as Zhang Ying project a positive outlook for relations with South Korea under Park Geun-hye.⁴⁰ Others such as Wang Sheng, however, recognize persistent “contradictions” in China-ROK relations since normalization.⁴¹ Shi Yuanhua points to this inherent “dual structure” of the relationship: despite common political, security, economic, and cultural interests, differences remain over North Korea and the United States.⁴² Assessments of Sino-South Korean strategic relations in the context of Xi’s diplomatic agenda draw attention to three priority issues: North Korea, the US-ROK alliance, and political trust. All test the linkage of major power and peripheral relations.

Xi’s engagement of major powers and China’s neighbors is perceived to have a favorable impact on the North Korean nuclear issue. According to Yu Yingli, Xi’s peripheral diplomacy will ease peninsula tensions by increasing China’s political and economic influence on North Korea, restraining Pyongyang from engaging in provocative actions, and intensifying regional coordination on North Korea.⁴³ As Shen Dingli suggests, Xi’s remarks at the 2013 Boao Forum for Asia—that “no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain”—was largely interpreted as a reference to North Korea and a demonstration of China’s positive role on the issue.⁴⁴ Given the recurring nuclear crisis, Guo Rui argues that China should promote not only peninsula denuclearization and stability but also “normal” relations with Pyongyang beyond the traditional friendship.⁴⁵

Many Chinese see the US-ROK alliance as part of the Obama administration’s strategy to counter China’s rise and reassert US dominance in the Asia-Pacific.⁴⁶ Among Northeast Asia experts, Huang Fengzhi and Liu Boran describe the alliance as a smaller form of NATO that threatens Chinese geopolitical and security interests.⁴⁷ Zhang Huizhi and Wang Xiaoke trace Sino-South Korean differences over North Korea, history, and maritime issues to the presence of the alliance, the key constraint to further deepening the 20-year China-ROK relationship.⁴⁸ For Qiu Changqing, maritime disputes reflect the growing significance of non-traditional security challenges that provide an opening for major power confrontation.⁴⁹

South Korea’s security relationship with the United States reinforces the third issue of Sino-South Korean political distrust. Men Honghua and Liu Xiaoyang argue that although the China-ROK relationship since 1992 has shifted away from its primary dependence on the United States by expanding in various functional areas of cooperation, mutual suspicion undermines further development of the strategic partnership.⁵⁰ As Yang Lihui indicates, Park Geun-hye’s regional trust-building initiatives present an important opportunity for consolidating the strategic partnership, but bilateral trust remains limited despite newly-expanded political and security consultations.⁵¹ According to Zhi Zhanghui and Yu Ting, this lack of mutual trust between China and South Korea as well as other regional players impedes broader multilateral security cooperation as envisioned by Park’s Northeast Asia peace and cooperation initiative.⁵² Frequent mention of insufficient trust at least hints at South Korea’s unwelcome linkage to the major power Sino-US relationship. In an interview with the Korea Times in December 2012, Yang Xiyu tied Sino-South Korean strategic mistrust to the scope of the US-ROK alliance, referring to the alliance as “definitely not limited to North Korea” and instead an indication that “South Korea has become integrated into US regional strategy that has China and Russia in mind.”⁵³

The Evolution of China’s Major Powers Diplomacy and Peripheral Diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula

Chinese elite assessments suggest that Xi’s diplomatic initiatives respond to the immediate dangers of US-China conflict that heightened in the Asia Pacific from 2009, but America watchers have cautioned against the risks of competition with the United States since the 1990s, most importantly for regional hegemony in the Asia Pacific.⁵⁴ Similarly, peripheral diplomacy stems from efforts in the 1990s to improve the tense surrounding environment since the PRC’s founding, when China had engaged in conflict with nearly all its neighbors including the Soviet Union, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan as well as South Korea in the Korean War.⁵⁵ The current Chinese discourse on major power relations and peripheral relations underscores three enduring patterns in China’s external orientation.

First, as Zhang Yunling and Zhou Fangyin indicate, “peripheral diplomacy is inseparable from big power diplomacy.”⁵⁶ Xi’s diplomatic strategy is consistent with the CCP’s principle introduced at the 16th National Congress more than a decade ago in 2002: “major powers are the key; neighbors are the first priority; developing countries are the foundation; and multilateralism is an important stage (daguo shi guanjian, zhoubian shi shouyao, fazhanzhong guojia shi jichu, duobian shi zhongyao wutai).”⁵⁷ Wang Yi’s claim that changes in China’s international relations begin with China’s relations with neighbors similarly reasserts the claims of his predecessors since the Jiang Zemin era.⁵⁸

Second, China’s major power and peripheral diplomacy are most fundamentally linked in their goal of creating a stable external environment for “peaceful development.” As Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping argue, China’s regional strategy is “the core of its grand strategy,” the goal of which is “to serve the central purpose of development.”⁵⁹ China’s insistence on peaceful rather than expansionist aims in the Asia Pacific is embodied in the US-China Joint Communique of 1972 that “neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.”⁶⁰ Xi’s reassurance at the 2013 Boao Forum that “the more China grows itself, the more development opportunities it will create for the rest of Asia and the world,” is a continuation of Zheng Bijian’s assertion of “peaceful development” at the 2004 Boao Forum.⁶¹

Third, China’s peripheral diplomacy of consolidating ties with neighbors also reveals underlying uncertainty over US responses to China’s “peaceful rise.” Even during the high period of US-China cooperation in the mid-2000s, Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping referred to China’s regional strategy as a “hedge against downturns in Sino-US relations.”⁶² From this perspective, China’s reliance on the SCO and other regional multilateral organizations can counter US bilateral security alliances and “block the infiltration of the United States into China’s peripheral areas.”⁶³ Such perceptions of US-China balancing behavior have increasingly extended to views of US-China competition in the economic arena, where bilateral FTA talks with South Korea support its broader strategy of consolidating regional FTA relationships.⁶⁴

These patterns in China’s external orientation characterize the evolution of China’s major power and peripheral diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula. On the one hand, China showcases its role on the peninsula as a responsible rising power committed to peaceful development. Since the 1990s, Korea specialists such as Cui Zhiying have maintained that a cooperative relationship with South Korea is key to promoting broader stability and development in Northeast Asia.⁶⁵ Especially from the mid-2000s, this partnership was viewed as central to Northeast Asia’s economic integration,⁶⁶ and even as a successful model of the five principles of peaceful coexistence.⁶⁷ According to Qian Yong and Bi Yingda, China’s relations with South Korea since 1992 most importantly reflect the CCP’s opposition to hegemony since the Mao Zedong era.⁶⁸ Zhao Gancheng further claims that the very dangers of great power competition on the peninsula since the Cold War minimize the likelihood of any major escalation of peninsula tensions.⁶⁹ Such assessments underscore that conflict on the peninsula is avoidable and unnecessary, as envisioned by Xi’s model of major power relations.

More pessimistic views, however, are based on assumptions of US-led hostile forces against a rising China.⁷⁰ Despite the rapid expansion of China-ROK ties after normalization, experts such as Liu Jinzhi argued in 2002 that bilateral relations remain constrained by the role of the United States and North Korea as well as by differences in political systems and ideologies.⁷¹ South Korea’s shift to conservative rule in 2008 raised debate on the potential impact of South Korean nationalism on bilateral relations,⁷² and specialists such as Zhan Debin drew particular attention to Seoul’s reevaluation of China policy after the 2010 Cheonan sinking. A CASS survey of Korean experts in 2011 concluded that South Korea is likely to continue its security dependence on the United States given basic security, political, and historical differences and a lack of strategic mutual trust in relations with China.⁷⁴ By 2011, many reassessed China’s relations with neighbors in the context of a perceived US strategy of containment along China’s periphery.⁷⁵ Zhong Feiteng and Zhang Jie argued that China should reconsolidate its security ties with Asian neighbors in response to US-led efforts to “check and balance China.”⁷⁶ From these perspectives, China’s peripheral strategies are driven by suspicion toward the United States, and hedge against the possibility that cooperative approaches may fail to preclude future conflict.

Others hold a more pragmatic view of South Korea’s relations with China and the United States. Even in 2008, Wang Sheng stressed that Seoul’s strategic alignment with the United States is not intended to alienate China in the long run since friendly ties serve the national interests and needs of both South Korea and China.⁷⁷ After North Korea’s 2009 nuclear test, Zhang Yushan advocated the continued expansion of China-ROK ties,⁷⁸ while Yu Shaohua claimed that the bilateral relationship had entered a new phase in which regional security cooperation is increasingly important.⁷⁹ Wei Zhijiang sees the China-ROK partnership and US-ROK alliance as two components of Seoul’s pragmatic diplomatic strategy rather than competing alternatives.⁸⁰

Seoul has pursued this pragmatic strategy under Park Geun-hye, who ahead of her presidential term advocated a strong US-China relationship and a more flexible North Korea policy to promote closer ties with China. However, even new achievements since the 2013 Xi-Park summit suggest the strategic competition underlying Xi’s major power and regional initiatives. Although the expansion in bilateral dialogue mechanisms indicates a greater focus on common security interests that have previously remained subordinate to economic interests, China’s opposition to recent US-ROK military exercises clearly conflicts with Park’s DPRK policy of both pressure and dialogue. Most notably, recent China-ROK cooperation on history issues is a positive development since the Koguryo dispute a decade ago, but can be tied to Chinese strategies toward Japan and the United States. Ahead of the opening of the Ahn Jung-geun memorial in Harbin in January, the PRC Foreign Ministry more specifically voiced its willingness to cooperate on “common concerns on Japan-related historical issues.”⁸¹ Such declarations of China’s joint stance with Seoul against Japanese behavior only seem to further Chinese efforts to divide US allies and weaken South Korea’s integration into the US-centered regional security order in the name of opposing hegemony. At the end of 2012, Yang Xiyu claimed that: “South Korea and the US have not publicly declared “strategic flexibility about their alliance. But if that alliance expands to cover the entire region, then I would call it ‘hegemony.’”⁸²

Conclusion

Chinese perceptions of the contradictory dimensions of China-ROK relations correspond to what Park Geun-hye referred to in 2012 as “Asia’s paradox” of military competition and economic cooperation. In such a regional environment, the diplomatic initiatives of both the Xi and Park administrations are aligned in their policy rhetoric of promoting regional strategic trust. The future orientation of the China-ROK partnership will importantly determine the extent to which they are aligned in practice. Perhaps the most salient feature of China’s foreign policy discourse under the Xi leadership is the assertion of China’s vital interests as a rising major power. China’s America and Asia experts identify such interests along China’s periphery to claim that its first priority indeed lies in China’s neighborhood, as Jiang declared in 2002. But according to Chen Xulong, what is new about Xi’s peripheral diplomacy is that China is no longer managing its regional challenges “just by keeping a low profile.” Such views suggest a shift from the practice of self-restraint that Deng had preached in the early-1990s.