China’s Whole-of-Region Diplomacy Revisited: Past Experience and Future Prospects

Targeting a group of developing nations in a specific region, whole-of-region diplomacy as a relatively new practice of China’s diplomacy has caught much attention across the world. Since the 1990s, China’s whole-of-region diplomacy has achieved remarkable breakthroughs in terms of its geographical coverage, extending from Southeast and Central Asia to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and even Central and Eastern Europe. Through whole-of-region diplomacy, China has not only fulfilled its political commitment and strategic reassurance toward developing nations, but also enhanced the collective identity of various developing regions. Despite the great achievements, China’s whole-of-region diplomacy is far from fully developed and needs further upgrading so as to lay a solid foundation for the country’s sustainable rise. In the future, China’s whole-of-region diplomacy can be advanced by clarifying its strategic position, renovating its institutional framework and scaling up its capacity-building efforts. In the long run, whole-of-region diplomacy, as a key component of the “Xi Jinping thought on diplomacy” and “major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics,” is expected to help China tackle challenges of interest, identity and influence in the developing world and to ultimately achieve its peaceful rise.