Translation Category: Foreign Policy
Xing Guangcheng, a leading scholar on borderlands and Sino-Russian relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argues U.S. strategy towards China has shifted from “engagement plus containment” to comprehensive containment, creating unprecedented challenges for China in its periphery. He urges China to “re-create” its peripheral environment by reshaping rather than merely preserving favorable conditions, with the Belt and Road Initiative as the key platform. Stressing the importance of soft power and people-to-people ties to counter the “China threat” narrative, Xing highlights SCO, ASEAN, and BRICS as “levers” for regional cooperation that can help China resist U.S. encirclement and achieve long-term rejuvenation.
Wang Junsheng of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) highlights China’s achievements in work on periphery affairs since 2012. He credits Chinese president Xi Jinping with elevating leader-to-leader diplomacy and deepening economic integration through trade, multilateral mechanisms, and major projects such as the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed railway and China–Central Asia gas pipeline. Wang underscores China’s security initiatives on the Korean Peninsula, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, alongside expanded cultural and educational exchanges. Contrasting China’s cooperative vision with Western “zero-sum” theories, he warns of U.S. efforts to encircle China and rising hostility from Japan, India, and parts of Southeast Asia.
Writing after Xi Jinping’s April 2025 travel to Southeast Asia, Peking University professor Zhai Kun stresses that China’s periphery is the foundation of its security, survival, and development. He argues that the balance between the “two wheels” of work on periphery affairs—development and security—is mutually reinforcing, citing the Belt and Road as a key platform for promoting Chinese-style modernization in the periphery. Zhai observes the 2025 Central Conference on this topic elevated “periphery diplomacy” into broader “work on periphery affairs,” signaling the Party’s prioritization of China’s periphery across all domains.
Writing after the April 2025 Central Conference on Work Relating to the Periphery, Li Kaisheng of the Shanghai Academy of International Studies credits President Xi Jinping’s leadership with elevating periphery diplomacy and bringing China’s relations with its periphery to their “best period in modern times.” Li underscores the periphery’s importance to China’s development, security, and diplomacy, linking the stability of China’s relations with its periphery to Chinese-style modernization and resistance to U.S. containment. He identifies Xi’s principle of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, and inclusiveness as the foundation of periphery diplomacy, expanded through five new dimensions, and portrays head-of-state diplomacy as essential to fostering trust, managing disputes, and advancing flagship projects.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held a central conference on work relating to the periphery in April 2025, highlighting periphery diplomacy as central to China’s development, security, foreign relations, and the “community of common destiny.” Chinese president Xi Jinping reaffirmed the 2013 guidelines of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, and inclusiveness, stressing that ties with China’s periphery are now at their strongest in modern times but must adapt to shifting dynamics. Priorities include consolidating political trust, deepening economic and supply chain integration, strengthening security cooperation, and expanding exchanges, guided by stronger Party leadership and institutional reform.
In this article, Renmin University scholar Cui Shoujun assesses the drivers of evolving China-Latin America relations and identifies tailwinds and headwinds for this relationship down the road. He identifies 2015 as a transformative year in this relationship, marked by the establishment of the China-CELAC forum and more strategic regional engagement by China in the following years. He suggests that going forward, Beijing will need to appreciate diversity among regional capitals, encourage broader and more even Chinese commercial engagement across Latin American countries, and navigate U.S. intentions and anxieties about PRC presence in Latin America in seeking to develop ties with the region.
Lou Yu, a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), traces opportunities and challenges for continued development of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and broader regional engagement in Latin America. Lou is relatively sober on prospects for bilateral ties, pointing to the geopolitical situation in Latin America (specifically, growing U.S. and European interests in the region), substantial crime rates and associated security challenges to Chinese investment, and political instability in many Latin American countries. Nevertheless, Lou suggests that political trends in the region – including a resurgence of left-leaning governments – may result in greater openness to BRI engagement going forward.
Two scholars from Fudan University analyze the evolving role of the Belt and Road Initiative in cultivating China-Latin America relations. They characterize Latin America as a key partner that China can work with to promote a reorientation of its trading relationships away from the United States and other advanced Western economies, and they trace growing diplomatic, cultural, and economic exchange between the two sides. Nevertheless, the authors also soberly identify complex challenges that could undermine such developments, including U.S. suspicion of China’s engagement in the region and political and social instability in many Latin American countries. They recommend Beijing proactively seek to deepen cooperation with Latin America on supply chains, infrastructure construction, and people-to-people exchanges, and strategically address the development needs of Latin American countries in order to build influence in the region.
A researcher from the China Institute of International Studies analyzes the Biden administration’s diplomacy with African countries in the food and agriculture space. He argues that U.S. aid and new initiatives designed to improve Africa’s food security are motivated by a broader strategy of maintaining American dominance in the region, securing future markets for U.S. agricultural products and secure sources of critical minerals, and curbing China’s growing influence on the continent.
A prominent Russia scholar, Feng Shaolei, analyzes the conflict in Ukraine, arguing that it reflects deep structural changes in the international system. These changes include increasing polarization between Russia and the West and growing relevance of the Global South in international affairs. Feng suggests that following the war, what he terms an “Asian Mediterranean” or Eurasian economic sphere will emerge, attendant with Russia’s pivot to the East and what he sees as China’s strengthening position in the Asia-Pacific.