China’s New Asia Policy

China’s Asian policy has changed significantly since the global financial crisis. Yet the argument here is that in essence, it has not changed. China’s ambition, as first articulated by Mao Zedong, was and has remained to achieve national greatness. Over time, the goal itself has become more focused on China’s own national interests and less on transforming the international order. The means to this end have always been flexible, depending on China’s growth in capabilities and on the opportunities offered by the international environment. In the first decades of the 21st century, China perceived a strategic opportunity to achieve major advances towards achieving this goal, focusing on its immediate regional environment. To do so, it has devised tactics shrewdly designed to do so without precipitating a confrontation with the United States or impinging on its core interests. This “new course” in Chinese foreign policy, addressed primarily to the Asian neighbourhood, was confirmed with mostly cosmetic adjustments in the 2012–13 transition to the fifth generation of the Communist Party of China (CCP) leadership and seems likely to remain in effect for the foreseeable future. The implications of this new Asia policy have already achieved modest success and more importantly no convincing defence has yet been devised.