Unlocking strategic competition

As the challenges it faces are grave, China needs two hands. The first is to render gradual, persistent efforts toward cultivating a favorable neighboring environment in the long run, and the second is concentrating precious strategic resources on core interests. It is only with the two combined that China will gradually be able to make breakthroughs in its diplomacy.

Innovations are increasingly evident in China's diplomatic strategies: from the Belt and Road Initiatives, or updated versions of the ancient Silk Road, to the speech about Asian people dominating Asia affairs at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia this May, and the forming of the Beijing-based Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, all these moves show China is gaining higher regional even global influence. Even the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings last month and the free trade agreements with Australia and the Republic of Korea can be considered moves of this kind.

Obviously, President Xi Jinping as the nation's new leader no longer conceals China's confidence in greater discourse of power in the Asia-Pacific. That's a sensitive issue, with the possibility of arousing strategic suspicion of the US.

Yet greater influence in the Asia-Pacific is China's strategic goal that will persist in the long, middle and short terms. While strengthening China's "hard influence", the strategic military improvement will curb its "soft influence" and raise the danger of conflicts. China with a huge economic and financial potential will very possibly rely more on strategic economy to rally support, as it did in APEC and other meetings. The signing of security agreements with the US on preventing military aircraft and ship clashes, and consensus with Japan on the Diaoyu Islands disputes, are further testimonies to this potential.

In the future, it is predictable that strategic competition between China and the US and its allies become less intensified but deeper and more profound. That will build a more complicated geographic environment, with more difficult challenges.

In order to ease the US' suspicion, China needs to push on strategic, economic and other measures to curb neighbors' possible antagonism. That is a challenging task and requires political wisdom from the new leadership.

The author is professor of international relations at Renmin University of China.