China’s Foreign Policy and Brain Cells
It had been such a long time since my mind was last stimulated in such a manner. Originally I looked forward to attending the conference on China’s Foreign policy by Dr Yan Xuetong because it would mean I get to leave the camp.
His thoughts were rather different from the usual spiel which I’m accustomed to when there is any talk on China’s policy. He said we could not predict events that would happen, yet he gave ideas as to what might happen, and his thoughts were rather interesting.
Amongst them this idea he put forth, caught my eye the most. The concept of “liberating ideas” which was first proposed by Deng Xiaopeng, in which he wanted to distance communist China from the orthodox practices of Marxist-lenninsm. This eventually led to the opening of China’s economy and is now powering their under inflated currency. However he asked potently how than does “liberating ideas” apply to the country now? This comes with China still embracing this concept in their policy. This effectively brings up two issues.
Firstly the fact that the government is not being transparent with their policy making and secondly that the definitions can change and requires updating. I do not intend to go into these issues, but instead go on to a possible definition as to what “liberating ideas” now mean.
China has always fought along the lines of ideology and I believe liberating ideas is about compromises in Ideology, which was in essence what took place as China opened its economy to the world. Recently in Ma Ying Jeou’s inauguration speech he mentioned that Taiwan is a democratic country. China did not refute this claim, as would have been expected. Instead they are in support of President Ma in general. This is a rather unique situation. Another example would be that of the Dalai Lama, even though considering the Dalai Lama to be secessionist, China has agreed to conduct dialogues with him. When it could be easier to refuse talks with him, just as the US and Israel refuse to have talks with Hamas. What I think this points to, is that the Chinese government might be changing its stance as a hard throwing authoratative government and becoming one which is more conciliatory. Dr Yan’s point however was that, is that perhaps liberating ideas is a shift on the simple ideology of sovereignty. He believes that China has come to a point in which they are not so closely worried by sovereignty and instead more of the other aspects such as the economy and the nations around them.
He believes that it is highly probable that China would be more receptive of the international community and play a larger role. However, he also thinks that China would not give to the international community as much as would be expected of them, for the economic size, because the people are not ready.
There was a lot which he said, that provoked more thought, but I’m disinclined to list them here. But if there ever be another chance to attend such conferences, I’m going to volunteer. At least it slows the rate at which my brain cells atrophies.
