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Editor's Note: China Daily reporters stationed at home and abroad interview senior experts in economics, politics and international studies across the world, casting light on the top challenges the nation faces in its diplomacy and the solutions in 2012.
BEIJING / BRUSSEL - The Year of the Rabbit in 2011 has not been an easy one in China's foreign affairs, with the country experiencing its largest evacuation of citizens from a foreign country as Libya was embattled in war.
It also faced more regional intensity with a high-profile strategic re-engagement of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region, which is partly the reason behind Asian neighbors stepping up maritime disputes with China. Meanwhile, the West's bleak economic situation but robust military and diplomatic posture compels China to make a gesture in response.
Yet with continuous unrest in the Middle East that could raise oil prices as well as pose strategic challenges, the emergence of new political faces after elections in several major countries, and a luckluster world economy that might lead to negative economic and political consequences, the diplomatic atmosphere might be even more demanding for China in the Year of the Dragon.
More intensive ties
Though the US has denied its widely perceived counterbalancing of China's rising regional clout by relaunching its Asia-Pacific policy, the world is now focusing on how the two largest economies coordinate their interests in the region, which sustains world economic growth and strategic balance.
Donald Nuechterlein, a political scientist in the United States and specialist on US foreign policy, put the US Asia-Pacific strategy as follows in commentary posted on the Daily Progress website: China is probably the most important US national interest today, and the US president, as well as the secretary of state and defense secretary are "building a coalition of Asian states" to prevent China from "extending it's sphere of influence into Northeast and Southeast Asia". He said that the strategy includes US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's well-publicized visit to Myanmar and the recent agreement with Australia to base US troops at Darwin on its north coast.
According to Peng Guang-qian, a strategist in Beijing, the biggest diplomatic test for China next year stems from the changing regional geopolitical landscape triggered by the US strategic re-engagement in the Asia-Pacific rim.
"The new US Asia-Pacific strategy is the severest challenge to the current world order, and it will totally restructure the global strategic landscape and bring unprecedented pressure on China's national security," Peng said.
China's biggest diplomatic task in 2012 is to work out how to use its economic and political strength to deal with the US containment, he said.
The United States' new Asia-Pacific policy is also partly the reason behind recent aggressive moves by some countries in the region to pressure China about maritime disputes. The claims made to parts of the South China Sea, which was not a regional issue until it was discovered to be rich in oil in 1970s, grew in the past two years, turning the region into a diplomatic hotspot.
The Lianhe Zaobao newspaper of Singapore published a commentary in October that said the "US is putting together an alliance in the region and playing ideological diplomacy to isolate China ... sowing discord between China and other regional countries to drag it into endless disputes with its neighbors".
The commentary advised China to keep in mind the nature of strategic containment by the US while trying to avoid direct confrontation.
It also urged China to make the most of its robust economic strength and enhance ties with other world players to counterbalance the US, disentangle itself from the current disputes.
Wang Yizhou, associate dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, said China should creatively harness and maximize its resources and become more actively engaged.
Wang added that such initiative can be applied in dealing with the South China Sea issue, US re-engagement in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East leadership reshuffle.