A Study On China’s Non-alignment Strategy

Nonalignment is a basic foreign policy of contemporary China. Since 1980 s, the nonalignment strategy has achieved two aspects of development in China’s diplomatic practice process: one is that the object referred by "nonalignment" is expanded from the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers in the end of the cold war, to “all countries”, so as to realize the deepening of the strategy; second, after the cold war, China combines the nonalignment strategy with the partnership strategy, initiates the diplomatic security concept of conversation but no confrontation, cooperation but no conflict, and forms an external relationship model of “making partnership but not alignment”.As a diplomatic strategy, non-alignment is the consequence of the rational choice made China after its comprehensive evaluation on the costs and benefits as well as the necessity and feasibility of the establishment of military alliance, under the background of the gradually eased and balanced external security threats toward China. The goal of the strategy is to avoid tit-for-tat military confrontation with leading powers, and to seek independent and relatively flexible strategic position, so as to create a peaceful and stable international environment conducive to China’s economic development and national strength enhancement. The path to the strategy realization is to switch the thinking of diplomatic security, to dilute the enemy consciousness, to oppose the act of hegemony but not aim at a particular country, to deliver our strategic intentions of peace and coexistence, peaceful competition and win-win cooperation to countries of hegemonic power, countries of strategic competitor, and countries having geopolitical tensions with China, and to actively develop friendly relations with all countries in the world.Since the 1980 s when China proposed the nonalignment strategy, despite the profound adjustment of the contrasting relationship between world powers, the changes of the security situation and international circumstance and China’s peripheral, as well as the ups and downs of the relationship between China and the United States as the superpower, the nonalignment strategy has realized positive effects. The effects are reflected in three aspects, which are avoiding direct confrontation with big powers, maintaining the independent and peaceful development of China, and promoting the transformation of China’s diplomatic thinking. However, with the shift of the world power center and China’s gradual entry into the role of the world’s second largest country, the nonalignment strategy of China has begun to face some practical difficulties.First, diplomatic rights protection actions often fall into isolation and passiveness; second, China is lack of “true friends” in foreign cooperation; third, the maintenance of overseas interests is held in bondage. For these reason, China can consider to achieve the optimization of the nonalignment strategy, as well as seize and take the initiative to create a period of strategic opportunities for China’s peaceful development, through methods such as creating a new type of relations between major countries, establishing communities of common destiny, and building strategic fulcrum countries.