Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

A dazzling number of foreign policy initiatives have emerged since the new Chinese leadership assumed the office less than two years ago. Arguably, this has led to one of the most dynamic periods in PRC's history of foreign relations. Is another diplomatic revolution taking place?

We have witnessed at least three diplomatic revolutions after the PRC was established in 1949. In the earlier years of the new China, Beijing chose to ally with the Soviet Union against the Western countries. Then the second revolution took place in 1972, when China and the US achieved rapprochement in order to contain the Soviet Union. Finally, with the launching of reform and opening-up policy, China fundamentally shifted its central foreign policy priority from preparing for the third world war to supporting domestic development. This third diplomatic revolution took full shape in 1982, when China declared to pursue an independent and nonaligned foreign policy.

There are four aspects we can consider to judge whether or not a diplomatic revolution is taking shape in a country: its central foreign policy objectives, its alliance policy, its stance on sovereignty principle and its way of using power. Any fundamental change of these four aspects may constitute a diplomatic revolution.

A closer examination of China's new diplomacy, however, does not find fundamental changes in any of the four aspects. Hence, it is premature to claim the arrival of China's fourth diplomatic revolution, at least for now.

To start with, the new major-country diplomacy, or great power diplomacy, proclaimed by the new leadership, continues to prioritize its central objective of supporting China's domestic development.

Meanwhile, developing a major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics means China's diplomacy will be more proactive. China will continue to enhance its influence in shaping external environment. Special efforts have been made to cultivate closer relations with neighboring countries, including the initiatives of the Silk RoadEconomic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

To avoid great power rivalry, China is seeking to develop a new type of major-country relationship with the US and other major powers around the world. China also has taken greater responsibilities in assisting the development aspirations of other developing countries, and is playing a greater role in maintaining and reforming the existing international institutions.

But the new Chinese leadership has kept its nonaligned foreign policy unchanged. Nonalignment was established as a fundamental foreign policy principle from the beginning of the 1980s. From the mid-1990s, China developed a partnership strategy, seeking to enhance cooperative relationship with countries around the world without entering security alliances, a strategy from which China has benefited a great deal since then.

Based on a dense network of established partnerships built over the past 20 years, China is now energetically working to consolidate and advance friendly relations with neighboring countries, other developing countries as well as great powers.

Nevertheless, China's new partnership diplomacy might not seek partnership unconditionally, but more see it as a mutual endeavor. If a country wants to have a closer partnership with China, China will make efforts to consolidate it. If a country intends to create problems in its relations with China, China can afford to keep those countries at a distance. However, this does not mean forming alliances or making enemies.

Although China has become the world's second largest economy, China still adheres to the basic principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. This does not imply a dogmatic adherence to these principles.

With the rising expectation that China should undertake more international responsibilities, as well as the growth and extension of its overseas interests, China is bound to be more engaged in interstate and intrastate conflict resolutions.

This requires China to come up with more innovative ideas and methods for our foreign policy, to pursue a constructive engagement diplomacy while respecting the sovereignty principle.

Moreover, when it comes to the way of using power, the new diplomacy calls for a smarter use of hard and soft power. Compared with past Chinese diplomacy which mostly relied on the attractive or soft use of power, the new Chinese diplomacy will combine an even softer use of power with a stronger determination to use hard power when necessary.

This requires China to support the use of legitimate coercive power in the Security Council according to the Charter of the United Nations and in defending China's own lawful interests.

At the same time, this new diplomacy will not replace the diplomacy of attraction with the diplomacy of coercion. In principle, China continues to advocate that international disputes should be settled by peaceful means, and strictly limit the use of sanctions and military force in its external relations.

Overall, China's new diplomacy has not changed the basic elements of China's foreign policy of the reform era, and neither do we need such a revolutionary change. What Chinese foreign policy needs is innovation, but not a new revolution.

The author is dean of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University. [email protected]