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hina's New Dictatorship Diplomacy
By Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008

China is often accused of supporting a string of despots, nuclear proliferators, and genocidal regimes, shielding them from international pressure and thus reversing progress on human rights and humanitarian principles. But over the last two years, Beijing has been quietly overhauling its policies toward pariah states. It strongly denounced North Korea's nuclear test in October 2006 and took the lead, with the United States, in drafting a sweeping United Nations sanctions resolution against Pyongyang. Over the past year, it has voted to impose and then tighten sanctions on Iran, it has supported the deployment of a United Nations-African Union (UN-AU) force in Darfur, and it has condemned a brutal government crackdown in Burma (which the ruling junta renamed Myanmar in 1989). China is now willing to condition its diplomatic protection of pariah countries, forcing them to become more acceptable to the international community. And it is supporting -- in some cases even helping to create -- processes that chart a path to legitimacy for these states, such as the six-party talks on North Korea, thereby minimizing their exposure to coercive measures.

China's changing calculation of its economic and political interests has partly driven this shift. With its increased investments in pariah countries over the past decade, China has had to devise a more sophisticated approach to protecting its assets and its citizens abroad. It no longer sees providing uncritical and unconditional support to unpopular, and in some cases fragile, regimes as the most effective strategy. An even more important motivator has been the West's heightened expectations for China's global role. Faced with the 17th Party Congress last October, the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and presidential elections in Taiwan also later this year, Chinese officials would have preferred to think about avoiding trouble at home rather than about developing a new foreign policy. But the nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran and international outcry over developments in Darfur and Burma have forced their hand: Beijing has no choice but to worry about its international image. China's fears about a backlash and the potential damage to its strategic and economic relationships with the United States and Europe have prompted Beijing to put great effort into demonstrating that it is a responsible power.

Beijing's relationships with pariah states vary greatly, but the government is beginning to handle them more consistently. It would be premature to call this a new Chinese foreign policy doctrine, but a new Chinese foreign policy practice is emerging. With this change also comes a chance for greater cooperation with the United States. China's leverage over some difficult regimes, as well as the apparent willingness of Beijing's top leadership to use it, has already created the possibility of progress on a number of previously deadlocked issues, such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and political repression in Burma. And the debates in Beijing have moved on from how to defend the principle of noninterference to the conditions under which intervention is justified.

But there are important limitations. China has not undergone an underlying
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