UDC 341.7(510) 327(510)
Biblid: 0543-3657, 75 (2024)
Vol. 75, No 1192, pp. 405-436
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18485/iipe_ria.2024.75.1192.5

Original article
Received: 31 Aug 2024
Accepted: 16 Sep 2024
CC BY-SA 4.0

CHINA’S EMANCIPATORY DIPLOMACY FOR A PEACEFUL, DEMOCRATIC, AND SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL COMMUNITY

STEFANOVIĆ-ŠTAMBUK Jelica (Full Professor of Diplomacy and International Studies, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia), jelica.stefanovic@fpn.bg.ac.rs
POPOVIĆ Slobodan (Research Fellow, Institute of International Politics and Economics, Belgrade, Serbia), slobodan.popovic@diplomacy.bg.ac.rs

This research explores the theoretical formation of the People’s Republic of China’s diplomacy. Despite efforts to relate its theorisation into communicable terms, the West considers them a thin veneer for the ruling Communist Party’s propaganda. China’s diplomatic actions are portrayed as manipulations of a power-greedy state for global might, ready to tear apart the existing arrangements and overtake the United States on the apex of world power. Although a “wolfwarrior” stream in diplomatic practice can sometimes run high, studying China’s theorisation of diplomacy reveals the ideational normativity of willpower for relationships of mutuality. Xi Jinping’s “Thought on Major Country Diplomacy”, formatively shaped in 2014, shows that China’s diplomacy emancipatory crux is frightening to those alarmed by the country’s might. We will test this proposition by conducting a contextual content analysis of relevant sources. The Chinese emancipatory diplomacy conceives the use of the state power for the joint sharing of life, time, and the planet. It is poised to lead to the principled and just consent of all states to achieving an inclusive, equitable, fair, democratic, and peaceful international order of balanced and just autonomous development and global governance through mutually ascertained multilateralism in a human community with a shared future.

Keywords: China; diplomatic theory; Xi Jinping’s Thought on Major Country Diplomacy; Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence; Belt and Road; Global Community of Shared Future; Liberal International Order.