Evolving Bureaucratic Politics in Chinese Foreign Policy-Making

Growing economically more powerful and confident, China is exerting unprecedented influence on global affairs. But the diverse voices and sometimes inconsistencies in its foreign policy behavior have confused many China watchers. Such phenomena demonstrate some new trends in Chinese foreign policy. In order to unveil such trends, this paper intends to look at Chinese foreign policy practices by employing the theoretical framework of bureaucratic politics. Its conclusion is that the foreign policy-making process of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has progressed from the ideology based in-party factionalism of "line battles" to interest-based government politics of organizational competition. The early stage has distinctive Chinese characteristics, which are different from Western bureaucratic politics. But as Chinese society becomes more diversified, the bureaucratic politics in China begins to share more similarities with those in the Western democracies. Such trends render the application of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to the research of Chinese foreign policymaking both necessary and beneficial to the construction of theories of foreign policy analysis, as well as research on China's foreign policy itself.