Diplomacy with salient features

China's initiatives in interacting with other nations mean it should take more global responsibility to build up influence

A distinctive diplomatic approach should be developed, President Xi Jinping stressed at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs at the end of November.

"We should, on the basis of summing up our past practice and experience, enrich and further develop our diplomatic perceptions, and conduct diplomacy with a salient Chinese feature and a Chinese vision," he said.

That is the first time the phrase "a salient Chinese feature" has been used, and the first time that diplomacy been included in the Chinese characteristics, which signals a breakthrough in China's diplomatic philosophy.

Compared with other global and regional powers, China's diplomacy is characterized by three distinct features: it pursues a non-alignment policy and refuses any military alliance with another country; it promotes good economic ties with its neighbors even amid political disputes and confrontations; and, despite its growing comprehensive capabilities, it still faces security challenges such as the maritime territorial disputes in East and South China seas.

All three features call for changes in its diplomacy.

The non-alignment policy has helped China avoid the danger of becoming involved in an ally's affairs or having an ally intervene in its affairs, thus ensuring its diplomacy has remained independent. This was especially important during the decades of the Cold War when China was relatively weak. However, all powers in history have needed alliance systems, without which it would be impossible to influence international affairs; besides, being able to form alliance means a power shares interests with others, whether those be economic and military benefits or common values.

As China insists on adhering to its non-alignment policy, it needs to construct a new type of security relations featuring cooperation and win-win benefits, and find a way of rallying wide support and agreement in the international society. That will be a tough task for its diplomacy in the coming years.

Over the past 30 years, China has taken economic cooperation as a key part of its diplomacy, as conveyed by the famous slogan "diplomacy shall serve domestic development".

However, as the situations in Southeast Asia show, economic cooperation can meet a bottleneck without a solid political foundation and the wide support of local people. And China's worsening relations with Japan are testimony to the fact that economic interdependence does not necessarily result in political trust.

With 14 land neighbors and eight maritime neighbors, China has geographic surroundings that are perhaps the most complicated in the world. In order to maintain security the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were formulated by former Chinese leaders.

The current leadership on its part has made innovative breakthroughs with concepts like the "community of shared destiny" with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiatives. These initiatives can improve the security situation in the neighborhood, but more needs to be done to propel real change.

To some extent, these challenges have external causes, for instance the US' "pivot to Asia" and the misunderstandings of China's neighbors, but much also needs to be improved in the nation's own diplomatic policies to deal with the external pressures and disperse mistrust from neighbors.

A series of moves, like forging "a new type of major-country relationship" with the United States and emphasizing a salient feature in diplomacy, have outlined the top leadership's sincerity for interaction and interconnectivity with others, that's a positive move that not only suits China's growing comprehensive capabilities, but also stresses the need to turn such capability into global influence.

In the current world with ripe international mechanisms, major countries generally realize their will through influences that are softer and more acceptable, instead of direct actions that involve confrontation. Influence is what China lacks in the global diplomacy and should be what it pursues in the coming years.

That requires China to not only act progressively, but also bear more global responsibility on the higher moral ground. Realism in international relations theory used to regard the moral high ground as childish, but in today's world, where information is widely transparent and communication convenient, it is indispensable for winning wide support from people both at home and abroad.

Successfully turning its comprehensive capability into equivalent global influence should be China's first step toward the diplomacy of a true major country. There is hope of China coping with the challenges and practicing diplomacy with Chinese features, which is also the prerequisite for its realization of the Chinese Dream.

The author is a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.