Study On China’s Countermeasure Diplomacy (1992-2012)

Since 1992, China has successfully achieved a lot in the field of foreign affairs, while facing increasing number of foreign pressure and challenges, especially for the diplomatic disputes when dealing with the bilateral diplomacy. So after more than twenty years’ development in terms of diplomatic theory and practice, countermeasure diplomacy with Chinese characteristics is beginning to gel. Based upon diplomatic disputes cases published on People’s Daily from 1992 to June 2012, this thesis tried to define China’s countermeasure diplomacy, quantitatively analyze the correlation among related variables, distinguish different kinds of countermeasure diplomacy caused by different disputes, conduct case studies on two cases focusing France and Japan in 1992 and 2010, respectively, and conclude the characteristics of China’s countermeasure diplomacy.The conclusion is that, there exist four basic elements on China’s countermeasure diplomacy, including an Independent Foreign Policy of Peace, the domestic and international law, the national core interest and values, and the principle that politics and economics could not be separated. Upon this background, four characteristics of China’s countermeasure diplomacy are illustrated, including combination between negotiation and countermeasure, combination between limitation and effectiveness, combination between positive countermeasure and negative countermeasure, and combination between initiative countermeasure and leverage countermeasure. Even though China’s countermeasure diplomacy did matter in several bilateral diplomatic dispute settlements, actually it is hard to resolve the issues involving bilateral core interest recently. Thus, current theory and practice on countermeasure diplomacy need to be improved, and diversification of the dispute settlement system distinguishably also serves as the essential task for China’s diplomacy in future.