There is a common global perception that the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) dictates the country’s foreign policy agenda. In reality, political decision-making within China is driven by a range of interests and shaped by different stakeholders. While President Xi Jinping has centralized power in the CPC, certain actors still have varying degrees of autonomy and capacity to intervene in the foreign policymaking process.
This briefing paper argues against the misconceived idea of a top-down foreign policy approach in China. This misconception is less prevalent among China specialists, but it still persists at all levels of foreign policy debate around the world.
This paper focuses on the individual actors involved in China’s foreign policy formulation and implementation process. These actors span the country’s economic, security and soft-power domains. While recognizing the core role of the CPC in critical decisions related to foreign affairs, this paper argues that such decisions are, in fact, often the result of seeking the broadest consensus among a myriad of actors. In making this argument, the paper offers a concise overview of Chinese foreign policy decision-making across economic, cultural and security spheres.
China is at the centre of numerous global foreign policy debates. Yet policymakers around the world still struggle to understand the country at a deeper level, beyond the sensationalist headlines. As a result, China is often treated as a single, unified entity. This assessment is flawed as it overlooks the bargaining that takes place between various actors during policy planning and implementation.
Studies on China’s decision-making have recently gained traction within academia and think-tanks, both in China and globally. Scholars such as Shaun Breslin, Linda Jakobson, David Lampton and Zhang Qingmin have analysed complex aspects of Beijing’s decision-making process.
However, the existing literature on China’s pluralistic decision-making in foreign affairs is limited compared with the large number of publications that consider China as a monolithic entity. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, decision-making within Beijing’s political establishment is fluid in nature, opaque in implementation, and flexible in terms of determining policy success. Published policy documents are usually heavy with jargon, which makes it difficult, especially for non-Chinese speakers, to investigate the policymaking process.
Secondly, in line with the increased breadth and depth of Beijing’s foreign policy agenda, Chinese policymakers have extended their thinking beyond a geopolitical understanding of foreign affairs. Consequently, several central government institutions that specialize in domestic economic and industrial policies now actively participate in foreign policy agenda-setting. This has led to the ‘professionalization’ of Beijing’s diplomatic civil service, with the recruitment of specialists to carry out planning and implementation. This shift can be confusing to outsiders, in both the public and private sectors.
In Western foreign affairs communities, references to ‘China’ are largely confined to Beijing or the central governmental apparatus. However, China spans numerous provincial-level administrations, each with its own unique geographical and economic outlook. Since 1978, a process of limited economic liberalization has taken place that allows provincial governments some autonomy over their own economic policies.
As a result, many provinces utilize their limited autonomy to directly engage with foreign governments and major multinational corporations. To some extent, these provinces are also adopting a bottom-up approach to shape the central government’s foreign policy agenda.
China is at the centre of numerous global foreign policy debates. Yet policymakers around the world still struggle to understand the country at a deeper level, beyond the sensationalist headlines.
Other key stakeholders in Beijing’s foreign policy formulation and implementation are the centrally controlled state-owned enterprises (SOEs), whose involvement in foreign policy ranges from Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) investments to provocative activities in the South China Sea. The conventional wisdom is that Chinese SOEs act on behalf of the state; however, their commercial interests do not always converge with the state’s agenda.
This paper adopts Graham Allison’s bureaucratic politics model to analyse the evolving relationships between different players in China’s foreign policy agenda-setting. This analytical model has been widely applied to liberal democracies, but it can also be applied to a one-party state like China, where multiple stakeholders shape outcomes across different policy spheres. In addition, the paper draws on three mechanisms of influence identified by Audrye Wong – ‘carpetbagging’, ‘resisting’ and ‘trailblazing’ – to demonstrate the extent to which provincial-level authorities are able to influence the formulation and implementation of foreign policy.
