Chinese Foreign Policy

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This graduate level course will examine the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It will identify the major trends in the PRC’s foreign relations during the past sixty years. The course is divided into four sections. The first section explores issues of interest and identity in order to understand how geography, demography, history, and culture continue to shape China’s foreign policy. What drives PRC foreign policy? Who runs it? How does the process of foreign policy making function and what are the key bureaucratic actors? The second section analyzes the PRC’s security challenges and the strategies adopted to address them in China’s immediate neighborhood, the wider Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Special attention is given to PRC policy toward the United States. The third part considers issues of territorial integrity and problems of ‘stateness’ including Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Macao. The fourth part scrutinizes the different instruments of power wielded by the PRC: hard (i.e. economic and military) and soft (i.e. ideas and culture).