China’s growing economic, military, and diplomatic power has shaped a wide range of critical issue areas from regional security to global governance institutions and norms related to sovereignty, development, and technology. For outside observers, the bottom line question seems to always be — what does China want?

It turns out this is not an easy question to answer. Explaining China’s foreign policy is a moving target. We are all hampered by inconsistent data and our own biases. But there are several competing, sometimes contradictory explanations, rooted in specific interpretations of how history, ideology, regime type, distributions of material power, distributions of ideational structures, and personalities matter in explaining foreign policy. The Critical Issues Confronting China in Foreign Relations and Security Policy portal examines leading explanations for change and continuity in China’s foreign and security policies under Xi Jinping. We aim to introduce rigorous historical and social scientific research that readers can use to analyze different analytical claims made by governments, think tanks, media, and scholars more systematically.

This portal will highlight research on how to estimate the degree and direction of change in China’s foreign policy behavior — that is, research on how to conceptualize the ‘dependent variable’ (China’s actions). There is considerable disagreement as to the motives or causes (the “independent variables”) behind these actions. Competing hypotheses and hunches shape government, think tank, and media claims, often without rigorous testing and sometimes driven by prior policy preferences.

Below are many of the more prominent explanations, in no particular order of plausibility or popularity or influence.

Power transition: China, like past rising powers, is both contributing and responding to the redistribution of military and economic power generated by its rapid rise and to U.S. resistance to its rise. U.S. resistance, in turn, pushes China to generate even more coercive power to deter or replace U.S. hegemony. This argument is essentially similar to traditional materialist structural power transition theory. Ideology and culture matter little; power transitions are seen as trans-historical and trans-ideological.

Authoritarian regime survival: PRC leaders have primarily been motivated in both foreign and domestic policies to defend the longevity and power of the Chinese Communist Party. In this regard, Xi Jinping is particularly focused on avoiding the mistakes of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party — weak Party control over the military, rampant corruption in the Party, ideological slackness in the Party and society in general, and excessive cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities. Foreign policy, therefore, focuses on (a) building external institutions and relationships that defend sovereignty, territorial integrity, and noninterference, (b) countering the internal weaknesses that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and (c) preventing other countries, particularly the U.S., from accentuating and exploiting these problems. Sometimes this may require more coercive policies abroad to make “the world safe for autocracy” in the face of (perceived or real) resistance from other political systems. 

Nationalism and territorial integrity: The CCP is primarily a nationalist party, born during China’s Century of Humiliation. Thus the primary driver in China’s foreign and security policies is to prevent the loss of historically claimed territory, with Taiwan at the core, followed by other disputed maritime and territorial claims. Resolving these issues is seen as critical to legitimacy of the CCP. Securing those historical claims can even justify China’s expanded regional presence. This is not surprising as many post-colonial Global South countries prioritize defending sovereignty, non-interference, and the redistribution of global wealth and influence controlled by former colonial powers in the Global North.

Civilizational exceptionalism and social identity: Xi Jinping, more so than previous leaders, believes that foreign policy is rooted in China’s civilizational, philosophical, even ethnic history. He argues that Chinese traditions explain the country’s exceptional peacefulness (e.g. China’s “peace genes” (和平基因) in contrast, say, to an exceptionally hegemonistic U.S. This language about exceptionalism infuses China’s various global governance initiatives. Social identity theory helps explain how Chinese and American myths of their own benign exceptionalism and the other’s malign exceptionalism mutually reinforce zero-sum threat perceptions and helps generate escalating insecurity spirals.

Neo-tribute/hierarchical order: China’s leaders, drawing on their interpretation of a pre-modern history, seek to construct a neo-tribute system. As its material and ideational power grows, China aims to dominate existing international institutions and create new ones infused with Beijing-crafted norms and practices, enhancing its legitimacy as the global hegemon. China will become the central power in a hierarchy of weaker, partially sovereign, deferential states. In theoretical terms, this resembles a hegemonic stability system with the hegemon using material power and international institutions to provide public goods and a legitimating ideology in exchange for deference.

Marxist-Leninist ideology: Xi Jinping and the CCP are genuine Marxist-Leninists committed to perfecting communism at home and promoting it abroad. Thus, Marxist-Leninist constructs that are often invoked by Xi should be treated as meaningful guides to China’s long-term strategy.

Standard social science asks: how much of China’s behavior can be explained by these theories, alone or in combination? Government, think tank, and media discourses about China’s intentions, however, often do not engage in systematically testing these explanations against each other. Often, analyses sound like zealous trial lawyers advocating for a favored hypothesis regardless of empirical fit. Yet given the messiness of the real world and the limits on available information—particularly about internal decision making—an analytical starting point that there is an obvious and incontestable explanation is likely a faulty one.

The Critical Issues in China’s Foreign Relations and Security Policy portal will highlight up-to-date academic research rather than policy analysis or journalistic commentary. We will highlight theories, hypotheses, evidence, and methods for evaluating alternative explanations for China’s foreign policy. We will include related work on decision-making processes, public opinion, leadership psychology, the foreign policy implications of China’s international development policies, China’s role in international institutions, among other topics.

— Alastair Iain Johnston, Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Government Department, Harvard University