China spends $12bn more to extend its international influence

China is massively boosting its diplomatic resources as it seeks to become a leading power.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Premier Li Keqiang at the opening session of the National People's Congress. Picture: AFP

China is massively boosting its diplomatic resources as it seeks to become a leading power, announcing in its draft 2018 budget a 15.6 per cent surge in spending on foreign affairs, to $12 billion.

Premier Li Keqiang said in his state-of-the-nation address on Monday that “China’s diplomatic agenda has further advanced on every front”.

In the four previous years, China almost doubled its foreign-affairs spending — while last year, the White House cut US spending on international programs by 30 per cent over 2016.

Bloomberg reported last month that the Chinese government is enhancing the authority of its Foreign Ministry, including giving ambassadors more direct control over the appointment and operations of all embassy staff.

Underlining President Xi Jinping’s priority for China “going global”, the country’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, was appointed in October to the Politburo, the first foreign-affairs chief to attain such seniority in 20 years.

Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove told The Australian yesterday that China had added 10 posts to its diplomatic network in two years. “This is happening at a time when most countries’ investment in diplomacy is either growing modestly or flatlining,” Dr Fullilove said.

“China’s expanding diplomatic network and military capabilities would, if plotted on a chart, produce a growth curve that is just as impressive as its economic performance. It wants a regional order focused on China rather than the US.

“Of course, a larger diplomatic budget doesn’t necessarily produce more skilful diplomacy. Sometimes China’s new assertiveness — its behaviour in the South China Sea or its conduct of influence operations in other countries — pushes its neighbours closer together, and closer to the US.”

Michael Wesley, the dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, said: “The Philippines aside, it must be disconcerting for Beijing that regional neighbours are still willing to resist its claims and blandishments — hence the new investment.”

And more envoys may be thought necessary to firm up deals around the international infrastructure drive known as the Belt and Road Initiative. But he said Beijing’s diplomacy was often “ineffective”.

“Most Chinese envoys seem disconnected from and often fearful of contact with broader society, he said. “One has the impression that they don’t spend much time actually getting to know the societies to which they’ve been posted. Perhaps this is part of the reason that China seems often to misinterpret the way its actions and messages will be received by its neighbours.”

Richard Rigby, executive director of the ANU’s China Institute and a former diplomat, said “we should be seeking to emulate China’s example”.

“Might this be the stimulus we need, at last, to support our excellent but under-staffed and underfunded Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade?” he asked.

The funding boost could indicate that the “deliverables” sought from diplomacy have yet to be achieved, said Zha Daojiong, professor of international studies at Peking University.

“Viewed from abroad, China’s foreign policy is nearly perfect — vision, strategy, plan, execution — just about anything that is viewed deficient in their own systems,” he said. But he said many in China see the reverse, including young graduates leaving Foreign Ministry jobs due to low pay.

Andrew O’Neil, research dean at Griffith University’s business school, said “the trajectory of spending on the foreign ministry says something about how increasingly central Beijing sees diplomacy in China’s quest for a wider global footprint”.

“The prominence of the People’s Liberation Army in China’s power projection has unsettled a number of states, so ‘rebalancing’ this with more emphasis on diplomacy makes sense,” he said.

Beijing “sees a major opportunity to outflank the US diplomatically in the Asia-Pacific in particular, even if it’s not yet able to achieve this militarily”.

Malcolm Cook, senior fellow at Singapore’s Institute of South East Asian Studies, said: “Chinese officials and interlocutors have long complained that China is not getting the credit it deserves for the benefits of its own growth and increasing engagement with the world. Diplomacy is one way of addressing this perceived gap.”