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David M. Lampton is George and Sadie Hyman Professor and Director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Director of Chinese Studies at The Nixon Center, Washington, D.C. His most recent book is Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing United States-China Relations, 1989-2000.

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The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, 1978-2000

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Figures and Tables.............................................................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments........................................................................................................................................................................xiList of Abbreviations..................................................................................................................................................................xv1. China's Foreign and National Security Policy-Making Process: Is It Changing and Does It Matter? DAVID M. LAMPTON...................................................................1PART ONE | INSTITUTIONS AND LOCALITIES2. The Central Leadership, Supraministry Coordinating Bodies, State Council Ministries, and Party Departments LU NING.................................................................393. The Influence of the Gun: China's Central Military Commission and Its Relationship with the Military, Party, and State Decision-Making Systems TAI MING CHEUNG.....................614. The External Relations of China's Provinces PETER T. Y. CHEUNG AND JAMES T. H. TANG................................................................................................91PART TWO | ELITE AND SOCIETAL OPINION5. The Foreign Policy Outlook of China's "Third Generation" Elite H. LYMAN MILLER AND LIU XIAOHONG....................................................................................1236. The Domestic Context of Chinese Foreign Policy: Does "Public Opinion" Matter? JOSEPH FEWSMITH AND STANLEY ROSEN....................................................................151PART THREE | INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM INFLUENCES7. Empowered and Restrained: Chinese Foreign Policy in the Age of Economic Interdependence THOMAS G. MOORE AND DIXIA YANG.............................................................1918. The Impact of International Regimes on Chinese Foreign Policy-Making: Broadening Perspectives and Policies ... But Only to a Point ELIZABETH ECONOMY...............................230PART FOUR | CASE STUDIES9. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Dynamics of Chinese Nonproliferation and Arms Control Policy-Making in an Era of Reform BATES GILL...........................................25710. Chinese Decision-Making Regarding Taiwan, 1979-2000 MICHAEL D. SWAINE.............................................................................................................28911. The Case of China's Accession to GATT/WTO MARGARET M. PEARSON.....................................................................................................................33712. The Making of China's Korea Policy in the Era of Reform SAMUEL S. KIM.............................................................................................................371Notes..................................................................................................................................................................................409Contributors...........................................................................................................................................................................473Index..................................................................................................................................................................................479

Chapter One

DAVID M. LAMPTON

When asked what he and other economic officials thought about the February 21, 2000, white paper on Taiwan that threatened a restorm of reaction in Washington that might affect pending China-related legislation, a PRC [People's Republic of China] economic official responded as follows: "We [economic officials] said it would be bad for WTO [the World Trade Organization], but we were not the leading group creating this policy so ours was just a voice in a room. Nobody was going to listen to us.... Policies are created not by the whole government, but by parts in the government. We often don't know what the other side is doing."

INTRODUCTION

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a gradual and important change in the Chinese foreign and national security policy-making process as it successively moved through the eras of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin. This shift is not only of theoretical importance; it also has significant consequences for China's international behavior in the early twenty-first century. The world involvement of the PRC is now much more extensive than in the earlier period, particularly in the domains of economics, culture, and multilateral organizations. Moreover, the role of expertise in government is much greater, the bureaucracy is more differentiated and complex, and therefore the way in which recurrent policy issues are handled is different. Concisely, the process for making recurrent, noncrisis decisions is more bureaucratic in character, with elite options constrained; decisions are often harder to produce. Frequently, as the quote opening this chapter suggests, the left hand does not know what the right is doing.

On the other hand, showing some continuity with the period of Mao, the most senior political elite, headed by General Secretary Jiang Zemin, continues to play the decisive role in establishing broad national strategy. It alone determines policy on issues such as China's big power alignments, whether or not to join the WTO, and whether or not to set a timetable for national reunification with Taiwan, potentially jeopardizing other important national goals. With regard to these strategic questions, it is essential to know the arena in which decisions are made and who sits at the table.

The Chinese policy-making process, therefore, presents the analyst with two faces. With regard to major issues of strategy, the setting of broad agendas, and crisis management, the senior elite still has considerable latitude. As Nathan and Ross observe, "Of all the large countries, China has had the greatest freedom to maneuver, act on grand strategy, shift alignments, and conduct a strategic foreign policy in the rational pursuit of national interest." Dramatic changes in policy are, therefore, possible, although the personalized authority of Jiang Zemin is dramatically less than that of Mao Zedong in the earlier era, and (as Bates Gill points out in his contribution to this volume), the elite is often hemmed in by the cumulative logic of previous, recurrent decisions.

At the same time, in its myriad dealings with the rest of the world on routine issues ranging from arms control to economic relations, Beijing increasingly speaks, often with multiple voices, in terms familiar to the rest of the world, and policy changes gradually. In this realm, decisions tend toward global and professional norms, against the ever-present backdrop of real-politik and considerations of national interest. Those who deal with Beijing, therefore, must be aware of the potential for abrupt changes arising from a system that is compartmentalized and personalized at the very top. At the same time, they may be reassured by the constraints that offer the prospect of a China that eventually may fit more comfortably into the international order.

Beyond change and continuity in China's foreign policy and national security decision-making processes and how these alterations have affected Beijing's declaratory policies and actual behavior, a number of questions animate the chapters that follow: Do nations learn from prior experience, and, if so, how? What is the relationship between bureaucratic structure and policymaking behavior? To what degree and how do professionalism, pluralization, decentralization, and globalization affect substantive Chinese policy and the policy-making process? What is the relationship between domestic politics and external action? How do foreign policy-making processes and behavior change as systems move from the hands of a charismatic, revolutionary leadership to a more technocratic elite? Are global economic, information, security, and technological interdependencies shaping the behavior of foreign policy leaderships, and, if so, how? How do transnational communities of experts ("epistemic communities") affect policy? What role does "national interest" play in the formation of foreign policy, and are state-centered (parochial) notions giving way to broader concepts of "cooperative security"? Why do some areas of a nation's foreign policy and behavior see pronounced change and others demonstrate great continuity? What factors account for the gaps between declaratory foreign policy pronouncements and actual behavior? And to what degree have China's foreign relations exceeded the capacity of its foreign policy apparatus to control such relations? In the latter respect, are we likely to see the emergence of formal institutions of government that are more dedicated to international cooperation just as the ability of such institutions to control society's behavior in the international context declines?

This volume explores these practical and theoretical issues by examining several domains. Part I addresses the changing structures and roles of institutions and localities. Part II assesses the changing patterns of elite and societal opinion, while Part III examines the influences of the international system. The volume concludes, in Part IV, by exploring how the preceding variables (institutions and localities, elite and societal opinion, and the international system) have played out in important cases: arms control, Taiwan policymaking, WTO entry, and Chinese policy-making with regard to the volatile Korean Peninsula. In short, this volume examines both the dimensions of change in PRC foreign and national security policy-making processes and the implications of those changes for system behavior in areas of substantive policy-making.

THE PROCESSES OF PROFESSIONALIZATION, CORPORATE PLURALIZATION, DECENTRALIZATION, AND GLOBALIZATION

Two broad changes in the Chinese policy-making process are documented in the chapters that follow: First, the number of actors, though still comparatively small, is increasing; in the words of Fewsmith and Rosen in their contribution to this volume, the elite is thickening. As part of this expansion, previously peripheral actors are becoming more numerous and more proximate to the decision-making arenas, particularly with respect to routinized, noncrisis categories of policy choice. Second, individuals, organizations, and localities not formally involved in the foreign and national security policymaking process nonetheless have more space to act internationally. Beyond changing the character of much foreign interaction with the PRC, the actions of somewhat autonomous Chinese individuals, groups, and localities increasingly generate issues and problems and exert pressures to which the central foreign policy elite must respond.

With respect to the latter dynamic, those not formally involved in the foreign policy-making and implementation processes often act internationally and thereby play a role (inadvertently perhaps) in setting the central elite's foreign policy agenda and establishing some of the broad parameters within which Beijing must make decisions. For example, somewhat autonomous exporters can transfer technology and hardware that raise security problems for the United States or others, thereby generating external pressure on Beijing to develop export controls and clamp down on those actors. Similarly, local officials can turn a blind eye to the illegal trade in human beings smuggled abroad because the money remitted to their home locality by the emigrants (not to mention initial bribes) have become important sources of local revenue and personal income. This trade, in turn, produces foreign pressure on Beijing to stop the illegal flow. Finally, as the chapters by Peter T. Y. Cheung and James T. H. Tang and by Samuel S. Kim amply demonstrate, in the case of policy-making related to the Republic of Korea, provinces can nudge central policy-makers either to move in directions in which they might not otherwise spontaneously move or to change policy earlier than was anticipated.

Four "-izations" (si hua)-professionalization, corporate pluralization, decentralization, and globalization-are driving the twin developments noted earlier in this section. It is with respect to these transformations that the following chapters are most illuminating. Using these chapters as my principal data, in this chapter I address these changes, assess their impact on policy formulation and implementation, and conclude with a discussion of what they mean for system behavior and our understanding of some basic theoretical issues.

Professionalization

Professionalization, as used here, refers to a number of related developments. These include the trend toward a higher level of specialized knowledge among Chinese elite and subelite foreign policy decision-makers; the proliferation of expert-based bureaucracies in the decision-making process; and the increased reliance by decision-makers on information provided by specialized bureaucracies (and their attention to the quality and diversity of such information). The baseline for understanding what happened in this dimension between 1978 and 2000 is presented in this volume in the chapters by Lu Ning, H. Lyman Miller and Liu Xiaohong, and Michael Swaine. Almost every contribution to this volume, however, speaks to professionalism and its profound effect on the Chinese foreign and national security policy-making process.

The character of China's elite has undergone a dramatic change in the post- Mao Zedong era. This evolution is apparent when one examines the distinct attributes of the leadership ranks at the Twelfth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1982, the first full-fledged congress with Deng Xiaoping at the helm, and at the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1997, the first at which Jiang Zemin was preeminent. Comparing the respective Politburos elected by each, the Jiang leadership was nearly a decade younger, on average, than that of the 1982 Politburo; more than half of the Fifteenth Congress Politburo did not join the CCP until after the PRC's founding in 1949; and, as Miller and Liu report, although none of the members of the 1982 Politburo had a university degree, 70 percent of the Fifteenth Congress Politburo did. Similarly, Lu Ning notes that although past senior leaderships included very few persons who spoke foreign languages, the Politburo selected by the Fifteenth Party Congress consisted entirely of members who could speak a foreign language, save one person. If one examines local leadership in China, the trend toward technocratic leadership is also apparent, suggesting that those in the promotion pipeline will reinforce an already evident technocratic trend. As Cheung and Tang explain in their chapter on provinces, "The training and backgrounds of FAO [provincial foreign affairs office] officials has gradually improved. Young recruits tend to be graduates of foreign language universities or colleges, with a specialty in international studies. Some of the senior officials, such as those in Guangdong, have postgraduate degrees from Western countries or have received overseas training."

There is not an easily demonstrable linkage between aggregate attributes of the elite and subsequent policy-making behavior. Nonetheless, such statistics and generalizations take concrete form when one encounters central PRC leaders and officials from China's provinces. To meet General Secretary Jiang Zemin, for example, likely means that you will hear about the latest book he is reading. One of Jiang's closest confidants is former Shanghai Mayor Wang Daohan, who, beyond his many foreign policy-related responsibilities, periodically provides the general secretary with a list of books and articles containing new ideas. Indeed, a best-selling book entitled Jiang Zemin's Counselors includes Wang Daohan as the subject of the first chapter, "The Red Dynasty's Imperial Mentor Wang Daohan" (Hong chao di shi Wang Daohan). As Swaine observes in his chapter, "Wang is widely viewed as Jiang's most trusted advisor on Taiwan affairs and a key channel for [expert] advice." From the elite on down, expert knowledge and information are part of the legitimating gestalt for leadership. The elite is in a constant search for information, and such information has resulted in policy change. Nonetheless, just because the elite seeks out information does not mean that it collects, processes, or uses that information to which outsiders might attach importance.

In September 1998, Jiang Zemin set up a foreign policy group of "wise men" composed of about twenty-five former Chinese ambassadors. With limited staff, this group discusses those foreign policy questions of most interest to Jiang (who is not only general secretary of the CCP and state president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, but also head of the Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group and the Taiwan Affairs Leading Small Group), conveying its conclusions back to the general secretary. Jiang also relies on academic and policy advisors in Shanghai. Jiang's reliance on personal advisors, his creation of the group of wise men, and his close connections to the Shanghai intellectual community all represent efforts to obtain a broad range of information before issues are decided and to move beyond the perspectives provided by Beijing's permanent bureaucracies. In his chapter, Lu Ning summarizes the fundamental transition that has occurred in the elite in the 1990s; as Lu says, "The emergence of Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and Zhu Rongji at the center of political power represents a transition of Chinese political leadership from a generation of revolutionary politicians to a generation of technocrat politicians."

Beyond the changing character of China's central (or "core") political and foreign policy elite that Lu Ning describes, changes in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) are also important. The MFA, the agency with the day-to-day responsibility for policy recommendation and implementation in the area of foreign affairs, is singular among Chinese ministries. It has a deeply ingrained professional culture that dates back to the late 1930s and 1940s, when Zhou Enlai began to build the CCP cadre (many members of which had had a Western education), first in Hubei, and later in Sichuan, during the war against the Japanese. Even with this baseline, the movement of the reform-era MFA toward greater professionalization and internal differentiation during the eras of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin has been notable. This increased professionalism can be seen in the number of persons the MFA sends abroad for graduate-level training in international affairs and in the increasing introduction of foreign materials and lecturers into training programs such as those at the Foreign Affairs College. Increasing professionalization is also apparent in the MFA's extensive information-gathering and dissemination system, which is described in detail by Lu Ning in his contribution to this volume and evidenced in the fact that the ministry itself increasingly seeks outside expert advice.

The MFA's professionalization and specialization is also reflected in the agency's bureaucratic structure. For example, as Gill points out in his chapter, the MFA has gradually created not only an arms control department (under the leadership of Sha Zukang), but has hired personnel who are increasingly conversant with the technical dimensions of arms control issues. This permits the MFA to be more effective not only in dealing with foreign negotiators, but also in acting as a counterweight to domestic constituencies in the military and arms industry that have an interest in looser export controls. As Gill writes: "The MFA became a more important and institutionalized participant in arms export decision-making, along with trade-related and military-related organizations. In the case of highly advanced exports and exports to 'sensitive regions,' the MFA takes part in a high-level interagency body ... that was first established in 1989. If an export is expected to generate opposition abroad, the MFA is to write up a justification for the transfer for the leadership to consider.... Chinese export control regulations issued in the late 1990s likewise describe a prominent role for the MFA in vetting military-related exports." As the MFA has increased its capability to articulate its arms control interests, it appears that the military has likewise supplemented its in-house expertise to protect its equities. In short, there is something of a bureaucratic arms race going on in which the increasing specialization of one bureaucratic combatant requires others to increase their own expertise.

(Continues...)

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