Cao Xin, Secretary-General of the International Public Opinion Research Center of the Chahar Institute; researcher at the Peninsula Peace Research Center and Deputy Director of Southern Newspaper Group Beijing Office, Deputy Chief Editor of Southern Weekend Newspaper Network and current Chief Correspondent in Beijing, published an article recently captioned “Does China’s Diplomacy Need a Big Adjustment?”.  In the article, he said "The challenges to China’s diplomacy are such that a major adjustment is needed. We can see this problem in both the economic and the geopolitical environment especially if you take a long term perspective on China’s diplomacy and not just which fleeting opportunities China could take advantage of here and there". Cao Xin stated that "if China maintains its current internal and external policies, the structural conflict between China and the United States cannot be resolved. The “decoupling” of Sino-US relations is inevitable". He observed that if China can retain the EU, ASEAN and Japanese and Korean markets, the Chinese economy will still be able to manage and grow but, he emphasised that these markets cannot be lost. "If that were to happen, China’s economy would face an economic dilemma comparable to North Korea’s". He said "The current situation does not allow for optimism". He added that the China-EU investment agreement is mired in uncertainty about whether the investment agreement will be signed.  He identified two key points on the ideology that guide Chinese diplomacy. He stressed that "national interest should be the only basis for foreign policy formulation. China’s foreign policies should be weighed according to how they serve China’s national interests and not according to some ideological standard". He added "We should always bear in mind the fruits of China’s “struggle diplomacy” during the Cultural Revolution". He added it needs to be very clear that  "widespread tensions in China’s foreign relations cannot enhance domestic political stability; it can only make it worse. We should not think that the “wolf warrior diplomacy” approach can build prestige at home; the end result is just the opposite as the past few years have shown". He said with the integration of the Chinese economy with the global economy "a significant number of Chinese citizens have become globalized in their own personal interests, in their family interests and in their thinking". Therefore, he said, "if China’s relations with the outside world become generally tense, it is inevitable that Chinese people at home will become pessimistic and discontent will increase. This will make it harder not only to unify everybody’s thinking but will make it harder to maintain political stability as well" and "without that, the political situation cannot be stable". Emphasising the importance of Europe to China, he said China’s diplomacy must continue to focus on Europe and be successful there. Cao Xin described Taiwan and the South China Sea as the "two core hotspots for China’s external affairs" and recommended that "as long as Taiwan does not openly declare independence, the U.S. and Taiwan do not establish formal diplomatic relations, and there is no official deployment of U.S. forces and personnel into Taiwan, it would be inappropriate for China to regularly deploy its naval and air forces to make public demonstrations". He said China has means other than military for constraining Taiwan. Similarly for the South China Sea issue, he advocated that "unless the U.S. deploys military forces into the South China Sea, the Chinese military should not go there frequently". However, if the U.S. military does go in there, then China must not hesitate to enter and monitor and interfere with it, because it is an issue of Chinese sovereignty.

(Comment: The Southern Newspaper group publishes Nanfang Ribao, the official newspaper for the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The Nanfang Ribao group, and especially its national newspaper Nanfang Zhoumo [Southern Weekender] had a reputation for running stories that made the Party centre uncomfortable.)