As the inaugural meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank sets to convene, Stanford researcher Thomas Fingar discusses findings from his new book that seeks to study China’s objectives and methods of engagement with other countries. Much of China’s behavior is determined by its own cost-benefit analysis of the perceived effect engagement would have on its security and development.

As China has pursued modernization over the past 35 years, patterns have emerged that shed light on the government’s foreign policy decision-making, according to new research by Thomas Fingar, a Stanford distinguished fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).

Since 1979, China’s foreign policy has been underscored by two priorities – security and development. Knowing those priorities, analysts can attempt to better study and anticipate China’s relations with other countries even in the wake of unforeseen events in the global system.

“China’s increased activity around the world has elicited both anxiety and admiration in neighboring countries eager to capitalize on opportunities but worried about Beijing’s growing capabilities. Yet as is the case with all countries, what China can do is shaped by global and regional developments beyond its control,” said Fingar, the editor of The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform.

The book, which has a total of 13 authors, is the first in a series published by Stanford University Press that examines China’s changing relationships in Asia and with other portions of the world. It is also an outcome of the research project “China and the World.” Fingar, who heads the project, draws upon his experience from five decades working on Asia and more than 25 years in U.S. government, including as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Framework to analyze China’s foreign policy

One dimension of the research project examines how China’s policies and priorities are shaped by China’s perceptions about how much a country threatens or addresses China’s security concerns; a second dimension examines China’s perceptions about how much a country can contribute to China’s pursuit of sustained economic growth and modernization.

To explore these relationships, Fingar developed a framework for analysis using a matrix that displays, on one axis, China’s perceptions about the threat to China’s security posed by a country or region, and on the other axis, China’s perceptions about a country or region’s capacity to contribute to China’s development.

By comparing the position of a given country or region from one period to another, the matrix both predicts the character of China’s policies and reveals a pattern over time. The figure below illustrates China’s views in 1979 and 2016.

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In 1979, India and countries in Central Asia figured high on the threat axis because of their relationship with the Soviet Union and low on capacity to provide the resources China needed to jumpstart its economy, Fingar said.

At that time, China sought to address both its priority security concerns and developmental goals by improving ties with Europe, Japan and the United States. South and Central Asia were afforded lower priority, he said.

In the 1990s, however, China’s perceptions shifted as a result of the demise of the Soviet Union and a decade of economic success in China, Fingar explained. Shown in the matrix, China’s policies toward Central Asia changed as the region transitioned to a more favorable security position by 2000 and as China required additional resources (energy, technology, training, etc.) to fuel its growing economy.

Fingar said China’s increased engagement with South Asia was buttressed by a need for markets and investment opportunities, and furthered along by a reduction in the threat environment as India altered its relationship with Russia and Pakistan became a less valuable security partner.

Calculating who China will engage with and how has become much clearer, yet in some ways it has also become more complicated, according to Fingar.

“The countries that can do the most for China today often pose the greatest perceived long-term threat, namely the United States and its allies,” he said. “Conversely, China’s proclaimed closest friends—North Korea and Pakistan—can do little to assist China’s development and pose increasing danger to its security.”

Current policy applications

Over the past three years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has embarked on numerous projects with neighbors and other countries around the world, such as the “new Silk Road,” a trans-continental trade route that will link countries together, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development bank that plans to lend money to poorer parts of Asia for building infrastructure.

The objectives of both initiatives are consistent with the China’s prioritization of security and development, Fingar said. The AIIB and Silk Road initiative indicate that China assumes there are gains from economic integration, and this is largely due to the fact that China has already benefited from past projects.

In 2001, the Chinese government launched concerted efforts to improve its relationships with Central Asian countries because of China’s concern that the United States was seeking to “contain” China, he said. Outcomes have included newfound markets for China’s manufactured goods and increased stability in separatist areas near or on its borders.

“By taking such a big stake in building infrastructure, China has changed the dynamic of the region,” he said. “Anybody can use a road, railroad or bridge. China has helped stitch together the economies of different countries in ways they have never been before.”

For China, the AIIB and the Silk Road initiative are also a form of “soft power,” said Fingar. The approach by the Chinese government evokes memories of U.S. “dollar diplomacy” early in the last century and Japanese “yen diplomacy” when financial assistance was extended to developing countries.

But Fingar doubts that “buying friends by building infrastructure” will be a major contributor to China’s quest for security and development. Going forward, the Chinese government must face the growing paradox between its foreign infrastructure projects and its principle of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said.

“When working in other countries, China cannot afford to dismiss internal stability, governance, rule of law,” he said. “Those facets are the baseline for building infrastructure.”

Related links:

The Diplomat - Q&A on Chinese diplomacy in the 21st century

CISAC senior fellow Martha Crenshaw challenges statements from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that “thousands upon thousands of people” are entering the United States, “many of whom have the same thought process” as the Orlando shooter, and his assertions that they are forming “large pockets” of people who want to “slaughter us” in an OpEd for The Washington Post.

You can read Crenshaw's full article here.

In 2013, China’s president, Xi Jinping, launched a massive reclamation and construction campaign on seven reefs in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Beijing insisted that its actions were responsible and in accord with international law, but foreign critics questioned Xi’s real intentions. Recently available internal documents involving China’s leader reveal his views about war, the importance of oceans in protecting and rejuvenating the nation, and the motives underlying his moves in the South China Sea. Central to those motives is China’s rivalry with the United States and the grand strategy needed to determine its outcome. To this end, Xi created five externally oriented and proactive military theater commands, one of which would protect newly built assets in the South China Sea and the sea lanes – sometimes referred to as the Maritime Silk Road – that pass through this sea to Eurasia and beyond. Simultaneously, China’s actions in the Spratlys complicated and worsened the US-China rivalry, and security communities in both countries recognized that these actions could erupt into armed crises – despite decades of engagement to prevent them. A permanent problem-solving mechanism may allow the two countries to move toward a positive shared future.

You can read the full article from CISAC co-founder John Lewis and Xue Litai on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Web site.

MCFAUL SPEAKS ON AMERICA'S RELATIONSHIP WITH PUTIN'S RUSSIA

FSI director Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, testified in front of the House Foreign Relations Committee on June 14, 2016. Invited to provide his perspective on how the U.S. should move forward diplomatically with Putin's Russia, McFaul made a forceful case for deliberate and strategic engagement with the Russian government, its citizens, and Ukraine. "The best way to support reform, and those who care about democracy and markets in Russia, is to have Ukraine succeed," he said.

Watch the full hearing below, with McFaul's remarks at the 23-minute and 1-hour marks:

Prof. McFaul also provided written testimony to the Committee (available here). In it, he emphasizes the domestic factors that influence Russian foreign policy, particularly Putin's internal political concerns and the situation with Ukraine and Crimea. U.S. foreign policy does not need a "correction," in this case, he writes. Instead, he argues, we should hold fast to President Obama's current policy of supporting the current international order and refusing to condone Russia's territorial expansions. 

In all the remarks, Prof. McFaul was careful to separate the policies of the Kremlin from the needs of the Russian people. "Many Russians in the government, business, and society quietly believe that Putin’s current course of confrontation with the West does not serve Russia’s long-term economic and strategic interests," he writes in the conclusion of his testimony. "The United States and our European allies should increase efforts to engage directly with the Russian people, including students through exchanges and scholarships, peer-to-peer dialogue with non-government organizations, and allowing Russian companies not tied to the state to continue to work with Western partners." 

In Spring 2016, Stanford's U.S.-Asia Security Initiative launched an innovative new graduate-level course - "The United States, China, and Global Security" - a class taught simultaneously at Stanford University and SCPKU on Peking University's (PKU) Beijing campus using a high definition video teleconference facility called the Highly Immersive Classroom.  The course featured topics relevant to current U.S.-China relations and their respective roles in regional and global security.  This video provides course highlights and features commentary from the two lead instructors - Karl Eikenberry, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Director of Stanford's U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, and Professor and Assistant Dean of PKU's School of International Studies, Fan Shiming.

Karl Eikenberry, Stanford's U.S.-Asia Security Initiative Director, and SCPKU Director Jean Oi lead a session from the Stanford campus.

Karl Eikenberry, Stanford's U.S.-Asia Security Initiative Director,
and SCPKU Director Jean Oi lead a session from the Stanford campus.
Photo credit:  Courtesy of Stanford University

Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law congratulates its undergraduate honors class for completing their original research and undergraduate theses. They graduated from Stanford University on June 12 with honors in their respective disciplines.

Graduates include Vehbi “Deger” Turan, who was awarded the Firestone Medal for his thesis entitled “Augmenting Citizen Participation in Governance through Natural Language Processing.” Turan’s project employed existing literature on democratic participation, case studies and an original algorithm in order to devise a means by which government agencies can evaluate public comments received via the Internet on political issues.

The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes Stanford's top ten percent of honors theses in social science, science and engineering among the graduating senior class.

Turan decided to explore this topic shortly after joining the Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program.

According to the program’s Director Stephen Stedman, “After listening to a research seminar at our Center, Deger believed that he could develop an aggregation tool to help policy makers understand such immense data.”

Francis Fukuyama, the Mosbacher Director of CDDRL also noted, “Deger is perhaps the best example to date of why interschool honors programs are valuable. He is a computer science major who came to us expressing an interest in using his background in artificial intelligence to help solve critical public policy problems.” Fukuyama together with Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Grimmer advised Turan on his honor’s thesis.

Turan will be starting a new position at Atomic Labs’ Zenreach start-up after graduation.

The CDDRL Award for Outstanding Thesis was given to Rehan Adamjee whose thesis explored the different factors at play in choosing between healthcare providers in a rural area of Pakistan.

Adamjee and Turan are just two members of a the 2016 cohort of 11 honors students, many of whom traveled to foreign countries to collect original data, conduct interviews and research their thesis topics. Their topics range from timely case studies on the use of social media as a tool of empowerment to a glimpse at the effects of regional politics on healthcare reform in Post-Soviet Russia.

The 2016 class joins 76 graduates from CDDRL’s honors program since its launch in 2007.

The Fisher Family CDDRL Honors Program trains Stanford students from diverse majors to write theses with global policy implications on a subject related to democracy, development and the rule of law. Students attend a class on research methods the spring quarter of their junior year. During their senior year, in tandem with the CDDRL research community and their faculty advisor, students conduct both local and international research in order to write their theses. Students travel to Washington, DC for the annual honors college to meet policymakers and members of the development community to enrich their thesis topics.

A list of our graduating students along with links to all their theses can be found below.

Meet our Class of 2017 

Fifty years have passed since the beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution, a mass political movement led by Mao Zedong that lasted a decade and provoked widespread violence and social upheaval. Stanford sociologist Andrew Walder, a noted expert on contemporary Chinese society, offered his commentary and analysis to various media outlets, cited below.

In the years just following Mao’s death in 1976, the Communist Party showed an “incredible openness” toward addressing the horrors caused by the Cultural Revolution, he told The Guardian. The Communist Party denounced the Cultural Revolution and some within the Party led efforts to document the chaos and bloodshed under Mao’s tenure, Walder recounted on CNN International.

In the 1980s, however, young Chinese activists began to shift their attention from the legacy of the Cultural Revolution to the lack of government reform in China. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, despite being short-lived, disquieted the regime more than the Cultural Revolution did, he told The Guardian.

The Chinese government today, compared to the 1970s and early 80s, is much less inclined to discuss Mao’s historical record. Yet, when compared to other socialist regimes that experienced rebellion such as the Soviet Union, China has been much more open to confronting its dark historical past, Walder said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Walder is the author of China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed and Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Harvard University Press, 2015 and 2009, respectively). He leads a research project focused on political movements in authoritarian regimes and recently published a journal article on transitions from state socialism and its economic impact.

Secretaries Rice & Albright anchor joint event with the Carnegie Endowment

At FSI in May 2016, Washington DC met Silicon Valley and the results were enlightening.

On May 11 and 12, FSI director Michael McFaul welcomed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to Stanford for a series of in-depth discussions on technology and international affairs. Anchored by appearances from Carnegie president William Burns, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, and former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, the inaugural Carnegie Forum on Technology, Innovation and International Affairs offered a close examination of the intersection of geopolitics and technology.

The invitation-only event opened with a fireside chat between Burns and Hoffman, covering questions from China’s digital future to European privacy concerns with U.S. trends in between. Despite waves of nationalism and violent extremism worldwide, Burns struck a note of long-term optimism about the ways in which technology affects individuals’ and nations’ relationships to one another.

On the second day, a lineup of regional and subject-matter experts from Stanford, Carnegie and beyond addressed longstanding concerns in the Middle East, new challenges in Asia, and the myriad opportunities for both connection and conflict offered by rapid technological advances. “We tend to have just one narrative for the Middle East, and that is crisis and conflict,” said venture capitalist Christopher Schroeder, who moderated a discussion among Carnegie and FSI senior scholars on the region. “But I would submit that something else is happening too. Last December I went to a gathering of 5,000 entrepreneurs – the type of event that you would all recognize here in Silicon Valley – but it was in Cairo.”

It was a familiar theme throughout the day, from a forward-looking panel on the growth of Asian economies to a comparison of privacy and cybersecurity issues around the world. Moderated by World Affairs Council CEO Jane Wales, the final panel on “Disrupting International Affairs” featured Carnegie visiting scholar James Rothkopf and Matthew Stepka, the former VP of Google Special Projects.

In an off-the-record keynote conversation, Rice, Albright and Burns discussed the foreign policy highlights of their own tenures and offered candid thoughts on today’s challenges. “In many ways, the digital age poses similar challenges to the nuclear age,” said Burns. “Scholars at Carnegie and at Stanford made profound contributions to the international response to nuclear proliferation. The challenges of the 21^st century require the same focus and discipline, the same commitment to understanding divergent international perspectives, and working toward shared solutions.”