Chinese Foreign Concept Factors

This thesis aims to examine the role of conceptual elements in PRC's foreign policy transformation, esp. since China's opening up to the outside world. It is self-evident that, led by the four generations of China's central collective leadership, China has undergone various diplomatic tests and has made great progress. Slightly comparing China's foreign policies under the four generations, it is not hard to find out the differences, transitions as well as inheritance. Among them, the differences between the first and the second generation are most eminent. If judging by time, the year 1982 marks a new starting- point where China's diplomacy diverted from the former revolutionary path to cooperation and construction. And this coincidently complies with China's domestic reforms and international opening-up.The central argument of this thesis is that the changing conceptual views of the four generations of China's central collective leadership on the world, on China itself has been constructing China's foreign policies. However, in the traditional China's diplomacy research, conceptual perspective is often neglected. In this thesis, by applying the methods of comparative analysis and case study, the author attempts to, from the conceptual perspective, observe the relevance between the changes of political leaders'views and the transitions of new China's diplomacy.In the context of foreign policy, conceptual view is not only a direct perception of what the material world is, but also the value judgment of what it should be. The two are closely intertwined and hard to be separated distinctively. When talking about China's foreign policies, conceptual view concerns how to perceive the world as well as how to recognize self-identity. Specifically, on the view of the theme of the times, Chinese leaders have experienced the transformation from war and revolution to peace and development; on the view of international structure, Chinese leaders have walked through the long path from two camps, three worlds, and multi-polarization to the harmonious world; and on the view of self identity, China has transformed from the previous world revolutionary to a member of the international community and now the responsible constructor. These changes eminently reflect the distinctive diplomatic thoughts of four generations with historical characteristics. Namely, Mao Zedong's revolutionary thought from the perspective of world revolution, Deng Xiaoping's pragmatic thought based upon domestic economic construction, Jiang Zemin's reserved thought of maintaining peace and seeking for the common and HuJintao's opening thought of constructive participation and construction of the harmonious world.Further questioning the reasons of the transformation of conceptual views, there have already existed two explanatory modes. one is domestic politics mode, assuming that the adaptations of foreign policy is the results of transformation in national development strategy; the other is international environment mode, assuming that the transformation of foreign policy is more influenced by the changes of international strategic structure and the influences exerted by China's economic and political interrelations with the outside world. In this thesis, the author argues that it is logically irrigid to explain China's diplomatic behavior just through any unilateral mode. It should be comprehensively analyzed from both domestic and international level. As for the international level, it could be judged by the source of security threat, the international strategic structure and the influence of international system upon national behavior. And for the domestic level, it includes the judgment on major contradictions, the determination of national development strategy and the choice of development path and so forth.In the case study of China's foreign policy to the United States, this thesis focuses on analyzing the changes of Chinese leaders'American views, and the consequent reflections on Sino-US foreign policies. In illustrating the transformation of Chinese leaders'American views, the thesis not only cites the narrative contrasts and differences reflected directly from various texts (including official documents and leaders'speech records), it also pays attention to testify the changes and transformation by combining domestic and international backgrounds facing China.This research demonstrates that changed historical and spatial conditions can only bring about specific adjustments to foreign policies through the switch of leaders'conceptual views. To some extent, conceptual elements functions as the route map, for it can not only explain the reason why China adopted a type of policy in specific period of time, but also it foresees the diplomatic trend that China may adopt in the future, as conceptual elements also contain certain kinds of value judgments.