China's National Interest.

Question

What are China's National Interests, specifically?

How is it going about achieving them?

and is it really working?

Answer 1

Arguably National Interest is a reflection of a nations Foriegn Policy.

The Chinese Embassy in the USA states on it's website the following:

"Independence is the basic principle of China's foreign policy. On the eve of the founding of the new China, Mao Zedong established the foreign policy of the new socialist China by first severing all links with the old China's foreign policy, or "thoroughly cleaning house", as he put it."

I would argue that China's rulers primary National Interest is to maintain their control of the social and political structure. One should not assume that the rulers in China are not very clever and astute people, they are well aware that to maintain their control they must improve the living standard of the population, hence the apparent increased level of engagement with the world and greater economic freedom for the population. Having said that they will brook no interference in what they consider their own interests and therefore are not truly engaged with the world.

I believe in a nutshell their objective is to become the most powerfull nation in the world. Call it economic or scientific power if you like and really isn't this same objective of every large socio/economic animal?

Arguably China's National Interests do not coincide with the rest of the world in area's such as human rights to name an obvious one. What about military expansion? They want to be considerted an equal on the world stage and that means having a strong military, hard to argue with from their perspective.

I could ramble on here and propose all sorts of scenarious and hypothesis but I suppose the real answer is that their is no simple answer!

For a probably much better perspective than I can give have a look at:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EH20A...

http://166.111.106.5/xi-suo/institute/en...

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article....

Answer 2

China refers to the People' s Republic of China, the mainland, not Hong Kong, not Thaiwan.

Refer to China's rulers interest: Stay in control at all costs.

As Chinese people's interest: Feeling good.

Face, food, s*x, money, power, fashion, descendents...anything make them feel superior among their own people.

Recently the people want China to be the most powerful country in the world, reminded by their rulers that China has been a leader thousand of years ago. That made them suddently excited.

So my answers is: Superiority.

How have them achived it?

By boasting! By covering up. By sending truth-tellers to prisons. By controling all Chinese media in and out of China. By lobbying US government policy makers and all other western politicians. By censoring internet. By sending virus and trojan hourse to trace up who is there telling the truth...

Is China's National Interests really working?

If that refers to their "sense of superiority", I tell you, most of mainland Chinese men always feel superior about themselves. China has a culture of rulers suppressing its people, men oppressing women, adults oppressing children, rich exploring poor...They feel good! They made it!

But if you are refering to whether China will truelly become a powerful nation that will become a role model of the world, I'd say:

Never if the rulers does not choose democracy, and people do not accept the concept that everyone should be equel (The majority Chinese people don't care if the rulers are fare to them. Many of them just try to become more powerful/wealther than their own people).

Not for another 5 thousands years!

PS. The overseas Chinese are different (they are honest, simply-minded and hard-working). Recently they got excited about China's rising. Although they know the Communists are not trustworthy, many of them are still happy with the Chinese rulers, simply because the rulers are helping China to become more powerful, thus make them look good - the world will respect them if their country becomes more powerful. They are wrong.

Answer 3

Trick question right?

The only evident national interests that can be seen are trying to coverup what actually goes on in the country. The Government tries to silence people on bad publicity issues, and the truth eventually comes out revealing that they killed off thousands because they were rebellious.

The current success of China is largely due to it's people and not at all to the Government or Hu Jintao. The Chinese people are going about achieving future prosperity through hard work and competitive labour.

Is it working? Most large Australia companies are getting products manufactured in China. Nearly everything these days are 'Made in China'. With the increased demand and work, I'd imagine so.