system was given the mandate to contest, assert, and where possible to lead in the various councils of the world. And this was new.
Furthermore, anyone who continues to entertain the fanciful idea, which I still sometimes seen in Western commentary, that these changes are not the product of a well-considered Chinese grand strategy, is simply choosing to ignore the clear evidence of clearly defined policy purpose systematically at work in the field. Our Chinese friends think things through carefully. They observe carefully. Not just what is happening in the headlines, which is the permanent obsession of the Western political establishment. But what is happening, in what Xi Jinping would describe as “the underlying historical trends” in international relations. And then, after a period of detailed internal reflection, consideration, and where necessary consensus building within the system, a new direction is set.
That indeed is what these Central Foreign Policy Work Conferences are all about. They sum up where the system has got to in its analysis. And then what the system intends to do about it. It’s part of the rolling system of policy analysis, implementation and review that characterises the entire Chinese public policy system, both foreign and domestic. It is both one of the great strengths of the Chinese system. But also one of its great weaknesses if the conclusions reached prove it be analytically flawed, or unsustainable in practice. It takes a lot to turn the Chinese ship of state around once that course has been set at the top.
So what changes with the 2018 Central Conference? Is it more of the same? Or simply an intensification of the trajectory? Or a change in content and tone. The answer is all of the above—a blend of continuity and change.
A NEW ROLE FOR PARTY IDEOLOGY IN FOREIGN POLICY
First, the press reporting of the conference asserts the absolute centrality of the party to the country’s foreign policy mission. This is not entirely new. But the emphasis on the role of the party is much stronger than before. In the recent past, the country’s international policy establishment, like its econocrats, have seen themselves, and have been seen by the Chinese political establishment, as a technocratic elite. That is now changing in foreign policy as much as it has already changed in economic policy.
This is part of a broader trend in Xi Jinping’s China, whose focus is to rehabilitate the party from moral death from corruption on the one hand, and practical death from policy irrelevance on the other.
Xi has been concerned that the party had become marginal to the country’s major policy debates given the technocratic complexity inherent to most of the country’s contemporary challenges. That is why, for example, we now see a revitalisation of theory over practice, a reassertion of the power of the major institutions of the party over the major departments of state, and once again of political ideology over mere technocratic policy.
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