Counter-Globalization and China’s Foreign Policy – Lecture by Professor Yan Xuetong

Danube Institute

China’s foreign policy is mainly conditioned by three factors, China-US strategic competition, the trend of counter-globalization, and digital technology progress. The Chinese decision makers know that the major strategic obstacle to China’s rise is the containment strategy adopted by Washington. The popular understanding is that it is impossible for China to achieve the goal of national rejuvenation if it cannot overcome Washington’s containment. The Chinese government is fully aware of the differences between the current trend of counter-globalization and the globalization during the post-Cold War, as well as the US-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War. Thus, Beijing continues the principle of opening-up, which was initiated in 1978, to improve international cooperation and to prevent a new Cold War from occurring. Policy makers in Beijing deeply understands that the specialty of present competition between major powers is greatly defined by digital technology innovation. Therefore, they put importance to improving digital cooperation with as many countries as possible, especially through BRI digital projects, and oppose the Cold War mentality of organizing technology clubs according to ideology. YAN Xuetong is a distinguished professor of Tsinghua University. He is serving as the Dean of The Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University. He obtained Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1992 and was named as one of world's Top 100 public intellectuals by the American journal Foreign Policy in 2008. He has been listed in Most Cited Chinese Researchers by Elsevier since 2014. Some of his books have been translated into English, Japanese, Korean, Farsi or Albanian.