Suchergebnisse

In the past three years, a trend towards the centralisation of decision-making power in Chinese foreign policy instituted by Xi Jinping has become more and more apparent. The driver of the shift in Chinese foreign policy is the reform of its decision-making system. The 'reform' not only refers to institution building but also includes change of the former procedures of foreign policy decisionmaking to create a more efficient decision-making system.

People-to-people exchange has become a heated topic of the Chinese foreign policy. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has established people-to-people dialogues with the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. In 2012, China and the EU established a high-level dialogue for people-to-people exchange, making people-to-people exchange the third pillar of China-EU relations. However, China is not a newcomer to people-to-people exchanges with Europe. Why does China launch the people-to-people diplomacy? Is it a plus or a must for China as well as for China-EU relations? The author reviews the history and current situation of China's people-to-people exchange and investigates China's motivations behind the policy. Using the historical institutionalism as an approach, this paper argues that people-to-people diplomacy is a key component of the contemporary Chinese foreign policy towards Europe. China has long been an unequal counterpart to Europe since the 1840s. After the development of bilateral political and economic cooperation in the past four decades, people-to-people diplomacy is the last part that China needs to finish in order to regain equal status with Europe. In addition, it is also a step towards realising the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

AbstractIt is well‐documented that interlocal learning and competition could drive policy innovation diffusion. However, their interconnection in non‐western regimes as China is less explored. Utilizing the method of qualitative comparative analysis on the case of River Chief Innovation, this article intends to explore the multiple conjunctural causation of Chinese policy diffusion and the impacts of central recognition. Our findings suggest that interlocal learning and tournament could intimately stimulate Chinese policy diffusion through different combinations. Different governments would adopt innovation for various reasons in a continuum of diffusion mechanisms, involving the technical learning, the championship‐induced learning, the mandate‐induced learning, and the innovation tournament. Hence, despite the ongoing centralization under Xi, space for local spontaneous learning remains. We also find that central recognition could activate the interlocal tournament and extend the diffusion continuum to the tournament side. Therefore, it facilitates policy diffusion toward governments that lack learning motivations and promotes the local implementation of central preferences.