The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
China and Coexistence
Related Topics: Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding, Governance, Asia, China Mainland
"Peaceful coexistence," long a key phrase in China's strategic thinking, is a constructive doctrine that offers China a path for influencing the international system. So argues Liselotte Odgaard in this timely analysis of China's national security strategy in the context of its foreign policy practice.
China's program of peaceful coexistence emphasizes absolute sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. Odgaard suggests that China's policy of working within the international community and with non-state actors such as the UN aims to win for China greater power and influence without requiring widespread exercise of military or economic pressure.
Odgaard examines the origins of peaceful coexistence in early Soviet doctrine, its midcentury development by China and India, and its ongoing appeal to developing countries. She reveals what this foreign policy offers China through a comparative study of aspiring powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She explores its role in China's border disputes in the South China Sea and with Russia and India; in diplomacy in the UN Security Council over Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar; and in China's handling of challenges to the legitimacy of its regime from Taiwan, Xinjiang, and Japan.
Liselotte Odgaard is a professor in the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College. She was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2008–2009.
What People are Saying
"Rather than dismissing the principle of (peaceful) coexistence as either propaganda or a necessary policy of a weak power, Liselotte Odgaard unravels the concept as the driving strategy behind China's foreign and national security policy and shows how it has been successful in both protecting and progressively maximizing China's interests."—David Shambaugh, George Washington University
"A superior analysis of a topic of tremendous importance to scholars and policy makers alike."—Qingmin Zhang, Peking University
Chapter List
List of Tables and Figures x
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 The Art of Walking on Two Legs: China’s National Security
Strategy since the Cold War 1
2 Theoretical, Historical, and Strategic Alternatives to
Chinese-Style Peaceful Coexistence 23
3 Coexistence: A Strategy of Infl uence for Would-Be
Great Powers 54
4 China’s Policies on Confl ict Resolution: The South China
Sea, the Chinese-Russian, and the Chinese-Indian Border
Disputes 87
5 China’s Policies on Diplomacy: The Cases of Iran, Sudan,
and Myanmar 128
6 China’s Policies on Legitimacy: The Cases of Taiwan,
Xinjiang, and Japan 153
7 Conclusion: Making Sense of China’s National Security
Strategy 181
Notes 203
Index 227