Tag: foreign policy

Is the United States Following Deng Xiaopeng’s Advice?

| April 3, 2015

That is what the below Diplomat article discusses which is based on a Chinese news media article:

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During the Deng Xiaoping era, China’s foreign policy was characterized by the phrase “tao guang yang hui,” generally translated as “keeping a low profile.” In recent years, however, observers have begun to question whether this strategy still holds sway in Chinese diplomacy, particularly in light of Xi Jinping’s recent exhortation for China to practice “major power diplomacy.”

Chinese media just turned that debate over on its head, by positing that it’s Washington, rather than Beijing, that is entering a period of “low profile” foreign policy today.

An article in Xinhua, published online Wednesday, posits that the U.S. has turned inward and is entering its own period of tao guang yang hui. The article argues that America’s “confidence and power” to “interfere” in external affairs has weakened over the past six years, with President Barack Obama preoccupied with domestic economic development. The lede cites Obama’s philosophy of “don’t do stupid stuff” as evidence.

The piece interviews Chinese experts who agree, as Xinhua puts it, that the U.S. inward-focus is growing “more and more obvious” and that “for the last two years of Obama’s term, [the U.S.] may enter an American-style period of ‘keeping a low profile.’”

One of the experts who contributed to the debate is scholar Wang Jisi of Peking University, who notes that although the U.S. isn’t in an irreversible decline, “U.S. influence on global political affairs has obviously declined.” The reason for this, Wang says, is a combination of weakening influence and power among U.S. allies (notably in Europe and Japan) and the rise of developing countries like China. Wang and another expert, Xu Changyin of Xinhua’s own World Affairs Research Center, both argue that Obama will try to focus on internal economic issues for the remainder of his term.  [The Diplomat]

You can read the rest at the link, but one way to look at this is that the Chinese government knows that now is the time to push hard on issues of contention knowing the US will do little about it.  An example of this appears to be happening in the South China Sea where the Chinese continue to claim sovereignty over the entire sea while the US pushes allies in the region to do more.  The South China Sea issue is actually small compared to if China tries to use this time frame to push militarily on the Taiwan issue.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.