listed as the top priority when discussing Chinese foreign policy. Scholars and analysts also tend to emphasize the importance of peripheral diplomacy more compared to the major power diplomacy in recent years. They argue that periphery has the most direct impact upon China’s political, economic and security interests and is an important support for China’s foreign relations. Periphery has significant impact upon China’s overall security, especially when the international situation has been undergoing dramatic changes.58 As some scholars pointed out, from the historical experience, a peaceful and prosperous peripheral diplomacy is the best for China’s reform and openness, or a necessary condition. Peripheral instability on the other hand, definitely will drag on or disrupt China’s course of development as China was forced to get involved in several wars during the Cold War period making it hard for China to concentrate on economic development.59 Therefore, China should put peripheral security at a prominent position in China’s overall security because at the current stage, the main external security pressures are concentrated on China’s periphery. China now also has the strategic capability to maintain its peripheral stability and is fully prepared to deal with all kinds of complexities in its periphery.60
This leads us to China’s approach to managing an evolving periphery. For those who fully recognize the dynamic changes in China’s periphery environment, a new periphery strategy is advisable. What happened in the last 7–8 years in the periphery convinced them that the traditional approach toward China’s neighbors is no longer sufficient to maintain peripheral stability of China. A new strategy is urgently needed. This line of thinking among scholars and analysts finally reached to the top leadership. Xi Jinping tried to articulate a new strategy of China’s peripheral diplomacy at a high-level meeting in 2013.61 While he recognizes his predecessors’ contribution to China’s success in peripheral diplomacy, he did point out that the new situation demands China’s diplomatic strategy and work to keep pace with the times implying that China needs new thinking and practices to update its peripheral diplomacy.
Then what kind of new peripheral strategy should China pursue under the new circumstances? Xi’s speech at the peripheral diplomacy conference sketched out a broad outline. China’s overall strategic goal, according to him, remains the same, that is to maintain a stable and peaceful periphery to help realize great rejuvenation of China and make full use of the important strategic opportunity period for China’s development. However, this is not the only foreign policy goal in his mind. China should also maintain its national sovereignty, security and development interests. In other words, maintaining a stable and peaceful periphery should not be achieved at the expense of China’s security interests.
In terms of achieving these policy objectives, Xi Jinping tried to come up with something new. He suggested that China should carry out its periphery diplomacy in “a solid, polyphyletic and cross-time and space viewing angle.” He did not elaborate on what these terms really mean. It is safe to say that his point is that China’s peripheral diplomacy cannot be carried out in a one-dimensional and parochial fashion. Rather, it should be multi-dimensional, comprehensive and pursued in connection with other components of China’s diplomacy. In a way, this is a subtle criticism of China’s periphery diplomacy in the past which pretty much took “economic diplomacy” as its main thrust with the expectation that economic benefits could spillover to political and security domains in China’s relations with its neighbors. It turned out not to be the case.
Another problem with the traditional Chinese peripheral diplomacy is that it mainly deals with the government and those who are in power often neglecting the opposition and societal forces. China’s setback during Obama years in Myanmar is just one example to the point. The implications of advocating a peripheral diplomacy that’s across-space and time could point to Xi and Li’s diplomacy in recent years which pays more equal and balanced attention to China’s entire periphery instead of just focusing on one sub-region such as Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. The top Chinese leadership’s diplomatic offensive in the following years seems to be the typical implementation of the Xi doctrine on periphery diplomacy, or for that matter, even for the entire Chinese foreign policy.
One interesting change in Xi’s periphery approach is that it pays more attention to enhancing China’s soft power in the region. Besides the existing slogans of yu lin wei shan, yu lin wei ban (pursuing friendship and partnership with neighbors) and mu lin, an lin, and fu lin (keeping good neighboring relationship and helping stabilizing and enriching neighbors), he puts forward another set of four Chinese words to illustrate China’s good intention, will and manner in dealing with its neighbors: qin, chen, hui and rong (intimate, sincere, benefiting and tolerant). Xi spent a lot of time talking about how China should do more benevolent work to make peripheral countries feel more warm, kinder, and intimate toward China, thus recognizing and supporting China more. China should increase its affinity and influence in the region that way. This is the “soft becoming softer” side of China’s new strategy. For the purpose of increasing China’s soft power in the periphery, China should strengthen public diplomacy and people-to-people diplomacy to win the heart and soul of the population in the neighboring countries making the awareness of “community of common destiny”, a concept Xi invented in March 2013,62 take root in the periphery countries.
Being softer, however, does not necessarily mean China should be passive and reactive as often has been the case in the past. The new Chinese leadership obviously learnt a lesson from the sudden deterioration of China’s position in the region in the previous years. In many ways, China was caught off guard by a chain of reactions and sentiments not in favor of China in the region, putting China in a disadvantageous position. As a result, China was busy reacting to the initiatives made by others. Xi is determined to change that pattern of interactions with the periphery countries. He emphasized that China should be more proactive in its peripheral diplomacy. This is consistent with his style and tone of foreign policy as a whole. For that purpose, China should do better in grasping general trends, devising strategy and drawing up plans in order to improve China’s capabilities of controlling the overall situation. In other words, China should learn to lead than to be led, to control the development instead of being controlled. In this sense, China does not want to stay on the receiving side of the power game in the region. Instead, China intends to take the lost initiative back. The announcement of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over East China Sea in 2013 could be understood in this context. It is said that Xi mentioned this initiative at the very periphery diplomacy conference showcasing China’s soft power diplomacy and charming offensive to its neighboring countries.63 By the same token, the accelerated land reclamation and island building in South China Sea since Xi Jinping came to power also showed Beijing’s urgency to secure a better strategic position in the region.
To stabilize China’s peripheral security situation, China definitely needs new thinking and new methods. Under the guidance of Xi’s new strategy, Chinese scholars and officials came up with various policy recommendations to improve China’s peripheral diplomacy. Many agree that China has become more proactive rather than reactive in its peripheral diplomacy in recent years. For example, China increasingly offers new proposals and programs for regional cooperation.64 That is certainly a positive development. However, some scholars argue that it is not enough to just rely upon China’s great contribution to the regional economy and the BRI. For example, China should also strengthen its cooperation with Southeast Asian countries on non-traditional security issues. It should also pay much closer attention to the changes in domestic politics in neighboring countries, make objective and cool-minded analysis and come up with measures to deal with these changes in China. Finally, in dealing with maritime disputes such as the South China Sea issue, China should demonstrate its strategic determination and manage the disputes through the construction of cooperative institutions and regimes.65
Others also argue that the understanding of China’s periphery should be updated. Instead of just talking about those countries that have a border with China, the intension and extension of China’s peripheral diplomacy should be expanded to include countries not necessarily bordering China. This is the so-called “grand or macro periphery”. China should cultivate relations with countries in all its peripheral areas, not just one: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and South Asia making all of them into its stable strategic