TIU Global Dialogue #20: China's New World Order – Changes in the Non-Intervention Policy

China’s foreign policies show a discrepancy between principle and practice. Instead of a rhetorical insistence on the country’s traditional principle of non-interference, China has developed a soft-intervention policy towards North Korea, Myanmar and the two Sudans. By examining China’s diplomatic statements and behavior though empirical discussions of key Chinese mediations, interviews with Chinese scholars and analysis of official documents from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this research conceptualizes China’s soft-intervention policy as related to economic manipulation and diplomatic persuasion under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping. This discrepancy in China’s non-intervention policy indicates how Chinese ambitions to shape a new world order are characterized by normative principles, in particular, differentiating China’s rise from American hegemony while demonstrating Beijing’s willingness to compromise to secure other emerging national interests. Moreover, this study suggests that China is neither a status-quo nor a revisionist power. Rather, it is a self-restrained power.

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