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4.4 An Illustrative Case
One of the most well-known and oft-cited examples of policy being influenced by academia is the case of Zheng Bijian (郑必坚) and his idea of China’s Peaceful Rise (和平 崛起, heping jueqi). This case illustrates the models, pathways, levels, and sources discussed in this chapter.
Zheng Bijian was named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010.He has previously worked as vice-director of CASS, vice-Minister of the Propaganda Department, vice-president of the Central Party School, and then as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Standing Committee, as well as chairman of the China Reform Forum and dean of postgraduate Humanities and Social Sciences studies at CASS. (China Vitae)Zheng was also Deng Xiaoping’s speechwriter of choice during the beginning of the reform period. (Leonard, 2008) As such, Zheng’s roles have combined academia with some political work, enabling him to understand the Party system first-hand and make a range of influential contacts. He is a well-known and highly esteemed academic, with impeccable credentials.
Zheng first came up with the idea of the Peaceful Rise after a trip to the USA in 2002. Following his interaction with foreign officials and academics there, he found that there was a deep sense of unease amongst Americans regarding China’s growing role on the world stage. This interaction with foreign counterparts thus began the germination of the policy idea. (Zheng, 2011a) On his return from the trip, and fully understanding how to manoeuvre within the Party, Zheng submitted a report under the name of the Central Policy Research Office to the then President Hu Jintao – who also happened to
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be a close associate of Zheng following their time working as colleagues at the Central Party School. (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007) Zheng requested funding to research the implications of China’s rise; the funding was granted, and a xiaozu task force of academics were assembled to collaborate and research together. This group outlined the concept of the ‘Peaceful Rise,’ a policy recommendation which stated that China’s development would be institutionalised and balanced, and that China would actively and positively engage with the outside world and eschew the hegemony and expansionism seen in many rapidly rising countries throughout history, such as Nazi Germany or pre-WWII Japan. (Zheng, 2005a) Zheng also argues that China’s rise will bring about benefits for the entire region and even the world. Pursuing a Peaceful Rise is intended to demonstrate that China is a status quo and not a revisionist power.
(Zheng 2005a; 2011a)
Once the concept had been formulated, in November 2003 Zheng gave a speech at the Bo’ao Forum for Asia – an international platform to express visionary ideas to academics, politicians, and business leaders alike, and a sure-fire way of propelling the idea into the orbit of key decision makers and the media. (Zheng, 2005a) Soon after, the concept received an even bigger boost when Hu Jintao promulgated the Peaceful Rise in a Politburo collective study programme in February 2004. (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007) According to Tsai and Dean (2013), “Whatever topics are studied in these Politburo collective programmes are extended as topics of learning for all the Party.” As such, Zheng was able to transmit his idea throughout the entire Party by way of his guanxi with the influential Hu Jintao, and it soon became entrenched in Party parlance. Next, just as in the model “research as part of the intellectual enterprise of society,” discussed in Section 4.1, the trend towards the Peaceful Rise meant that funding was granted to
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research this topic and learn more about its potential implications and dimensions.
Horizontal internal conferences were held to study the concept. It became a hot topic for both academia and the media. (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007) By April 2004, Xinhua news concluded that Peaceful Rise had become China’s national strategy. (Xinhua, 2004)
In short, as Glaser and Medeiros (2007) summarise: “Zheng’s professional experience, Party credentials, credibility in the Chinese system, and guanxi network are all central to understanding the evolution of the Peaceful Rise… [his] experience and connections were critical to propagation of the idea.” Zheng had positional, expertise, experiential, and personal sources of influence at his disposal. In terms of pathways to research utilisation, he used formal and informal consultation, research of the topic in a xiaozu task force, internal reports, academic conferences, and the foreign and domestic media. He raised awareness of the topic at the three levels of influence: amongst the decision makers themselves, amongst fellow academics, and in the public arena. As an academic working in a range of units, but not including an official research institute, rather than submitting his initial report through an official channel, he passed it on to President Hu by making use of his guanxi and reputation.
As mentioned previously, this collection of events was no happy accident; this was the result of Zheng’s own ‘marketing’ of his idea. He brought the concept to the attention of high-level decision makers because he was aware of its importance to China’s strategic foreign policy after discussion with foreign contacts. “He leveraged his relationships with senior leaders, his knowledge of the Party system and his credibility as a Party theorist to inject Peaceful Rise into the system at the highest levels.” (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007)
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This case demonstrates how an academic brought his policy idea into the limelight and helped it on its way to becoming China’s strategic policy. But that was not the end. Even as soon as a few days after Xinhua’s report that Peaceful Rise had become national strategy, it began to be eschewed by the leadership. It was not long before the term Peaceful Rise was replaced with Peaceful Development (和平发展, heping fazhan) in Party vernacular. The reason for this was that many in the world of academia (including official, semi-official, and civilian units, as well as military academics) began to contest the appropriateness of using the term ‘rise,’ as well as many facets of the concept itself. According to Glaser and Medeiros, the debate within academia shaped policy makers’ decision to modify the term. Academics employed various channels to reach policy makers, including formal and informal direct contact, as well as the publication of articles in journals and the media. What’s more, “university-based scholars and think tank analysts were amongst the most vocal.” (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007) This underlines the growing importance of civilian analysts to policy debate.
In conclusion, the progression of this policy was almost entirely in the hands of academia. Firstly, “Zheng Bijian identified the need for a new policy, solicited scholars to conduct preliminary research, coined a new phrase, publicised it, presented the research findings to China’s top leaders and deftly manoeuvred to have them publicly endorse his term.”(Glaser and Medeiros, 2007) Following this, academic debate was influential enough to bring about a change in the terminology of the concept even after official endorsement – an unheard of outcome in the pre-reform era. This case is thus a comprehensive illustration of the effect of an evolving, influential academic sphere on the formulation – and modification – of China’s foreign policy.
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This chapter has shown that when evaluating the work of an academic, it is important to understand the interplay of various considerations. “An understanding of potential sources of influence is… useful in interpreting the significance of the statements or writings of a particular analyst.” (Glaser and Saunders, 2002: p. 608)Whether policy makers choose to take notice of an academic’s viewpoint will depend on a range of factors, including the policy makers’ own preferences and the timing and relevance of the policy recommendations. As Glaser and Saunders (2002) and Glaser and Medeiros (2007) state, timing, domestic and external events, and general context all matter. But in particular, the likelihood of a decision maker paying heed to an academic will hinge initially on whether the academic in question can be deemed credible and worthy of regard. This assumption will in large part be based on the influence an academic can wield.
When attempting to identify whether the viewpoints of a certain scholar have potential policyinfluence, it is instructive to consider the expert knowledge and personal ties of the scholar, as well as the positional influence of their associated research institute, in order to clarify which levels of influence they are able to draw upon. This in turn uncovers which pathways and models of research utilisation are available to the academic. As Glaser and Saunders explain, some academics have very few available pathways, whereas others can draw upon multiple pathways and sources of influence. “These analysts are more likely to be able to reach policy makers with their opinions, and to have policy makers pay attention.” (p. 614) Once the academic’s potential for influence has been evaluated, it is much easier to assess the likelihood that their work will be conveyed to and noticed by policy makers. It is possible to ‘work backwards’ to comprehend how a particular academic was able to influence decisions
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already made. But more importantly, discussions and viewpoints of influential academics can act as a window into China’s policy debates and give analysts a chance to better understand opaque internal deliberations over current policy choices.
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Chapter 5
Academic Influence and China’s Policy towards the European Union
China’s foreign policy decision making was discussed in Chapter Two, elaborating not only the formal structures and informal channels of policy practitioners, but also the growing influence of external actors, including the world of academia. Chapter Three then moved on to outline the evolution, structure, and classification of foreign policy-related academia in China. Finally, Chapter Four gave a detailed elucidation of the many factors at play in Chinese academia’s influence over foreign policy decision making. It was argued that by following a model of mechanisms of academic influence, it is possible to recognise which academics hold the most sway amongst policy makers by identifying which levels, sources, and pathways of influence are available to them; this narrows down the vast field of academia to those with the most influence. The work of these academics in particular is the best window into the policy debates and deliberations occurring in China today. Outside analysts of a particular subject field can use this model to narrow down which academics’ work is most worthy of note, and begin to draw links between academic research output and actual policy decisions.
Chapter Five will now illustrate precisely that, by considering the example of the European Union. Although by no means comprehensive, this chapter offers a preliminary, exploratory case study of the influence of the Chinese European Studies field over China’s EU foreign policy in order to demonstrate the insights of Chapters Two, Three, and Four in action. The European Union has been selected in particular for preliminary exploration not only due to the significance of Sino-EU relations in terms of
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economics and global political importance, but also due to the weight attached to the European Union by China itself, which in 2003 released its EU policy paper – the only foreign policy paper published by China to date. Despite this unique demonstration of China’s estimation of the importance of Europe, China’s relations with the United States have long received far greater attention by analysts the world over.In spite of the clear magnitude of the Sino-EU relationship, it has been somewhat overlooked and under-explored in research circles. Nevertheless, the European Studies field in China is growing andthis, combined with the significance of the Sino-EU relationship, presents a suitable case for preliminary exploration.
The chapter begins by briefly outlining China’s current policy towards the EU, as laid out in China’s European Union policy paper of 2003. As subsequent analysis of Chinese scholars’ arguments will demonstrate, much of the policy paper’s content is reflected in academic research.Next, this chapter will employ the framework of mechanisms of influenceshown in Chapter Four by establishing which academics possess the most influence according to the pathways, levels, and sources identified.
This section will first describe the overall conditions of the European Studies field, then move onto identifying the most influential research institutes and individual academics in turn. The section concludes with a brief outline of the major publications of the European Studies field in China, as this is where the most influential research work will be published.
This chapter will then outline the research conclusions of European Studies scholars, particularly those identified as most influential. The analysed scholarly discourse is limited in scope to only the three most significant potentially policy-relevant issue areas within the field, and should therefore not be seen as a fully
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comprehensive analysis of all research output relating to Europe in some way.The first issue area concerns Europe and China on the world stage; the second discusses the problems in China-EU relations; and the third section considers China’s opportunities to learn from the European Union. Although this final section admittedly does not demonstrate the influence of academics on foreign policy formulation, it does illustrate how foreign affairs scholars can convert their insights from abroad into domestic policy decisions. What’s more, this is one of the most important and commonly raised issue areas debated by academics with regard to the European Union, and as such, is worthy of inclusion in this analysis.