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Journal of
Current Chinese Affairs
China aktuell
Cabestan, Jean-Pierre (2009),
China’s Foreign- and Security-policy Decision-making Processes under Hu Jintao, in:
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs
, 38, 3, 63-97.
ISSN: 1868-4874 (online), ISSN: 1868-1026 (print)
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Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 3/2009: 63-97
China’s Foreign- and Security-policy
Decision-making Processes under
Hu Jintao
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
Abstract:
Since 1979, foreign- and security-policy-making and imple-
mentation processes have gradually and substantially changed. New
modes of operation that have consolidated under Hu Jintao, actually
took shape under Jiang Zemin in the 1990s, and some, under Deng
Xiaoping. While the military’s role has diminished, that of diplomats,
experts, and bureaucracies dealing with trade, international economic
relations, energy, propaganda and education has increased. Decision
making in this area has remained highly centralized and concentrated in
the supreme leading bodies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
However, China’s globalization and decentralization, as well as the in-
creasing complexity of its international interests, have intensified the
need to better coordinate the activities of the various CCP and state
organs involved in foreign and security policy; hence, the growing impor-
tance of the CCP leading small groups (foreign affairs, national security,
Taiwan, etc.). But the rigidity of the current institutional pattern has so
far foiled repeated attempts to establish a National Security Council.
Manuscript received September 2, 2008; accepted March 2, 2009
Keywords:
China, foreign policy, decision-making, leading small groups,
national security council
Jean-Pierre Cabestan,
professor and head of the Department of Gov-
ernment and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, is also
an associate researcher at the Asia Centre, Paris. Recent publications
include (with Benoît Vermander)
La Chine et ses frontières. La confrontation
Chine-Taiwan,
Paris, Presses des Sciences Po, 2005 (translated into Chi-
nese and published in the Journal
Renlai
(special issue), Taipei: January
2007) and (with Sébastien Colin, Isabelle Facon, and Michal Meidan),
La
Chine et la Russie: entre convergences and méfiance,
Paris, Unicomm, 2008. He
has published numerous articles and contributions in English on China’s
political system, reform, law and foreign policy; Taiwanese politics and
cross-Strait relations.
E-mail: <cabestan@hkbu.edu.hk>
64
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
Introduction
There is no reason to think that under Hu Jintao, China’s foreign and
security policy is made and implemented very differently than under his
predecessor Jiang Zemin.
1
Since Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and Deng
Xiaoping’s retirement in 1993-1994, major changes have taken place in
this realm, resulting from reforms made to the country’s political system
and economic organization: the military’s role has diminished; while that
of diplomats, foreign-policy and security experts, and trade bureaucracies
has increased; focus on international economic relations, energy, propa-
ganda, and education has been accentuated; provinces and major cities
have developed their own external links – and therefore local foreign
policy; and on the whole, foreign- and security-policy decision-making
processes have become less secretive.
Actually, these trends have been perceptible since the beginning of
the reforms, in 1978-1979. For instance, Deng played a crucial role in
initiating a professionalization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) –
gradually decreasing the authority of the generals within the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) leadership – and, simultaneously, revived the
activities of the CCP’s foreign-affairs bureaucracy – the Central Commit-
tee’s International (Liaison) Department (Zhongyang
duiwai lianluo bu)
(Shambaugh 2007a: 26-54). He also sent diplomats and experts more
frequent invitations to important meetings. And the significant decen-
tralization introduced by Deng himself allowed – arguably for the first
time since 1949 – major localities to establish their own international
cooperation networks.
However, there has also been a lot of continuity in foreign- and se-
curity-policy decision-making processes in the People’s Republic of
China (PRC). For one thing, monopolized by a political organization, the
CCP, political power and decision making in this area have consistently
been highly centralized and concentrated in the supreme CCP leading
bodies, such as the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC), the Central
Military Commission (CMC) and various leading groups dealing with
foreign affairs, in particular the Central Committee (CC or CCPCC)’s
Foreign Affairs Work Leading Small Group (Zhonggong
zhongyang waishi
gongzuo lingdao xiaozu,
FAWLSG), all chaired by China’s paramount
leader. True, in the 1980s, the FAWLSG was chaired by Li Xiannian,
PRC president from 1983 to 1988, and later by Yang Shangkun (PRC
1
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable remarks.
Foreign- and Security-policy Decision-making Processes
65
president from 1988 to 1993) and Premier Li Peng (1993 to 1998), but
its role was then secondary; at least until it was taken over by Jiang
Zemin in 1998 (Barnett 1985; Lu 2001: 40, 45-46). State institutions,
such as the PRC presidency (held by the CCP General Secretary since
1993), the Foreign Ministry or (more recently) the Ministry of Commerce
(MOC), play a role in foreign- and security-policy decision making hard
to disconnect from that of the CCP and the position their respective
leaders hold in the Party (this is even more so the case of the CCP/ In-
ternational Department (CCP/ ID)).
The reader will have noticed that I have deliberately used the plural
form “processes” since, depending on the nature and importance of an
issue, processes have always varied: apparently decisions have at times
been made collectively, and at others by the country’s “Number One”
the PBSC, the CMC or a specific leading group. A well-known and
rather well-documented case of individual initiative was Deng Xiaoping’s
decision at the end of 1978 to normalize relations with the USA in spite
of an unresolved disagreement about the continuation of US arms sales
to Taiwan. However, many other cases of decisions are based on more
speculative sources (Tyler 1999: 269). Similarly, I have associated foreign
policy and security policy because of a persistent difficulty in differentiat-
ing between the two: internal and external security preoccupations have
consistently influenced foreign-policy making, especially since the early
2000s, when soft-security considerations entered into the Chinese leader-
ship’s global calculus and policies.
It should also be stressed that foreign and security policy-making
processes are still largely opaque and it remains difficult – if not impos-
sible – to propose an accurate description of the power loci where deci-
sions are actually made and approved.
If we are looking for a rupture, a qualitative change in foreign and
security decision-making processes, it probably happened in 1993, when
for the first time, Jiang Zemin, a leader without a military background
nor rich experience in international affairs, appointed CCP Secretary
General in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre (June 1989), finally
took the reins of ultimate power (including in the areas of foreign and
security policy) from Deng Xiaoping. Jiang subsequently became chair-
man – or director (zuzhang) – of the CCPCC Taiwan Affairs Leading
Small Group (Zhonggong
zhongyang Taiwan shiwu lingdao xiaozu
(TALSG)), a
key symbol and attribute of power. Although Jiang succeeded Deng as
CCP CMC Chairman in November 1989, it was only four years later
66
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
(1992), following Deng’s successful purge of the powerful brothers Yang
– both generals – (CMC vice-chairman Yang Shangkun and CMC Secre-
tary General Yang Baibing), and his eventual retirement, due to declining
health, that Jiang became China’s genuine paramount leader. And Jiang’s
power consolidation took some time: still rather weak in 1995-1996, he
managed, only in 1998, to replace Li Peng as the chairman of the
FAWLSG, a leading group that subsequently became a stronger power
locus. Two years later, attempting to better manage international crises
(potentially involving China), he established and chaired a new CCPCC
National Security Work Leading Small Group (Zhonggong
zhongyang guojia
anquan gongzuo lingdao xiaozu
(NSWLSG)) (Miller 2008b: 10).
We will argue, therefore, that China’s foreign- and security-policy
decision-making processes are not fundamentally different under Hu
than under Jiang. It is true that, at one stage, Jiang toyed with the idea of
establishing a national security council (NSC); while Hu tried, apparently
without much more success, to partially attribute this role to the CCP
Central Secretariat between 2004 and 2007. Both leaders, however, had
to fall back on the NSWLSG created in 2000. It is impossible to ignore
the fact that Jiang’s decision to cling to the CMC chairmanship until
2004, after having retired from the position of General Secretary in 2002,
made the Jiang-to-Hu transition anything but smooth. Nevertheless,
elected PRC president in March 2003, Hu was able – as early as May – to
take (the aforementioned) control of the three key CCP leading groups,
and in September 2004 finally became CMC chair. On the whole, Hu
inherited a set of decision-making bodies and chains of command al-
ready consolidated by Jiang in the late 1990s. Most analysts agree that
Jiang was initially a rather weak leader as far as foreign- and security pol-
icy was concerned, in particular, at the time of the Taiwan missile crisis
(1995-1996) but managed to gradually strengthen his hand later, particu-
larly in the years 1998-2002 after he took over at the FAWLSG (Zhao
1999: 8; Swaine 2001: 319-327; Finkelstein 2000; Shirk 2007: 192).
To be sure, under Hu, foreign and security policy continues to be
made, formally, by collective power loci – first by the PBSC or the PB –
who (as a group) take into consideration recommendations from various
bureaucracies, in particular the Foreign Ministry, the MOC and the
CCP/ ID. However, like Jiang (after 1998), Hu has played a crucial role,
both in the leading groups he chairs, and in inviting CMC members and
designated experts to participate in PBSC or PB meetings when he
deems it necessary. In other words, as we will see, the Chinese “General

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