Self-Confidence and Self-Reliance, Openness and Inclusiveness, Fairness and Justice, and Win-Win Cooperation
Wang Yi
The year 2023 was a year of progress and harvest for China's diplomacy. Six highlights demonstrate distinct Chinese characteristics, style, and ethos, and speak to China's enhanced international influence, stronger capacity to steer new endeavors, and greater moral appeal in the new era. In 2024, China's diplomacy will focus on the theme of building a community with a shared future for mankind and comprehensively serve Chinese modernization as the top political priority of the new era, break new ground while upholding fundamental principles, bear in mind the big picture, and make new headway in major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.
China's Diplomacy Towards Developing Countries and the Building of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind
Jiang Shixue
Developing countries play a critical role in China's pursuit of a community with a shared future for mankind. To facilitate diplomacy towards developing countries, China must stick to its identity as a developing country, uphold justice while pursuing shared interests, and use cultural and people-to-people exchanges well. It must also promote integrated cooperation with Chinese characteristics, take developing countries' varied expectations and demands seriously, and deliver a firm counterblow against the US-fomented dispute.
The Geopolitical Shift in the EU's Africa Policy Reorientation
Jin Ling
The great-power rivalry, the once-in-a-century pandemic and the Ukraine crisis have profoundly altered the EU's worldview, and the EU's Africa policy has experienced a reorientation in this context, which refocuses on long-term strategic goals and serves its geopolitical shift in great-power competition. The EU wishes to move beyond the "donor-recipient" relationship and forge a reciprocal, equal, and balanced partnership with Africa, but the geopolitical shift in its strategy for Africa under the Cold War mentality is at odds with the goal, with deep-seated contradictions exposed in the process of policy reorientation.
The Multiple Roles of the EU in China-US-Europe Interaction and China-EU Relations
Zhao Huaipu
In China-US-Europe interaction, the EU plays a threefold role of a stakeholder and power balancer, an informal ally, and an ambivalent partner. These roles interact and shape the EU's unique identity and interest orientation. Facing fierce China-US competition, the EU's current strategy is to demonstrate its autonomy and independence, avoid choosing sides, and balance and mediate China-US relations. In strategizing its diplomacy toward Europe, China also needs to consider, as it sees fit, expanding its opening-up to Europe, deepen China-EU cooperation, and ensure that China-EU relations are more cooperative than competitive.
The Establishment and Implications of US-Japan-ROK Trilateral Cooperation Mechanism
Yang Yanlong & Zhang Yunling
The establishment of the US-Japan-ROK cooperation mechanism and its permanent presence in the region marks a historic turning point in trilateral relations. By synergizing the US-Japan and US-ROK alliances and enhancing tripartite collaboration, the mechanism will be oriented to serving American strategic goals and have profound implications for the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the broader Northeast Asia. Despite its strategic intention and actual deployment to contain China, the US-promoted mechanism will not completely exclude or replace China-Japan-ROK dialogue and cooperation.
The US Manufacturing Reshoring Policy: Progress and Constraints
Gong Xiaofei & Yuan Zheng
For over a decade, successive US administrations have made manufacturing reshoring a priority of their policy agendas, with multi-pronged measures to bring both manufacturing operations and jobs back to America. With economic, political, strategic, and security considerations behind the push, it has witnessed some progress but still falls short of expectations. Driven by the US reshoring policy, the race for local manufacturing among major global economies will intensify their competition and fragment the once-globalizing supply chain cooperation network.