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CONFIDENTIAL
CHINA'S FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY
1. Chinese sentiments and attitudes are formed in large part by painful historical experience. Older sentiments in relation to China's integrity, distinctiveness and history are also important (paragraphs 1-7)
2.
"Proletarian internationalist" ideology is now largely absent, both from the motivation of China's policy and from its expression. The Chinese leaders are unlikely to give speedy or preferential response even to direct pleas for help from fellow-Communists. Ideological baggage being shed on the quiet (paragraphs 8-9).
Their
3. The current principles of Chinese foreign policy, articulated by Zhao Ziyang in March 1986, emphasize independence; preference for peaceful methods; "opening" to the world; and internationalism. application is tempered in practice by lack of scruple in pursuit of national interests, inter alia on arms sales (paragraphs 10-11).
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4. At the top table, China aspires to participate as a large regional power with global influence. She regards Soviet geo-strategic ambitions as the main obstacle to this; but in working to bridle them will not fall into dependence on the United States or seek to provoke super-power confrontation. She has a complex and uneasy relationship with Japan, essentially about long-term regional leadership. Sino-Japanese "tandem" is unlikely to be practical politics (paragraph 12-17).
5. At "inner regional" level, recovery of Taiwan is China's first priority. In neighbouring disputes, China seeks to protect or promote her security and territorial interests while containing the level of military involvement and confrontation. She is in no hurry for negotiated solutions. On "outer regional" issues, China sometimes plays a responsible large-power role, sometimes bangs the drum of Third-World rhetoric, but could be drawn into doing more of the former over time (paragraphs 18-19).
6. Chinese foreign policy today is Sinocentric, but not isolationist or static. It is interest-driven and reactive, but not unprincipled or divorced from domestic policy. It could in logic. be altered by domestic political change, though dramatic or dangerous turnings are now unlikely. If and when China becomes a world power in control of her regional destiny, the use of her strength will depend on the ways she has been offered in the meantime of exercising and enjoying it. There are consequences for British policy (paragraphs 20-2).
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CONFIDENTIAT