| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 中國大陸研究所碩士在職專班 === 95 === China is fully aware that a nation’s image is critical to its status and credibility in the world. The creation of a positive image depends almost entirely upon soft power. After taking over the helm in 2002, China’s fourth generation leaders put forward successively the concepts of “peaceful rising”, “peaceful development”, and “harmonic world view” to guide its foreign policy, aiming at countering “China threat” argument brought up by the West.
In China’s political culture, theories usually take higher precedence than practices. Contrasting the foreign policy theories by Mao, Jiang, and Hu, I discovered that they all center on the notion of “peace, development and cooperation.” In other words, the “harmonic world view” by Hu shares the same origin as the theories by Hu’s predecessors.
With the introduction of “harmonic world view,” China began to make use of its traditional culture－“HE” as the basis of foreign policy and actively promoted the peaceful thoughts in the whole world to show its intention to become a benign power. In order to ease suspicions, it proposed that the U.N. could serve as a platform from which to launch the campaign to build a harmonic world.
It is apparent that China has managed the promotion of its new foreign policy agenda in a systematic way and it is highly likely that the “harmonic world view” will be formally declared as the guiding principle of China’s foreign policy during the 17th National People’s Congress.
China has also applied the theory of “harmonic world view” to its engagement with regional multilateral organizations, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, ASEAN Plus One and ASEAN Plus Three. In a relatively short period of time, China solved most of its land border dispute with peripheral countries, diminishing the threats posed by neighbors. China’s maritime security has been strengthened too through cooperation and interaction with regional countries. All these provided necessary conditions for China to construct a well-off society.
In the future, the political and security relationship between Asian countries will be closer as a result of a deeper economic integration and frequent cultural exchanges, paving the way for China to promote its view of “harmonic east Asia” and “harmonic region”.
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