A Decade of China’s Peripheral Diplomacy
October 2023 marked a decade of China’s foreign policy conference on peripheral diplomacy. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convened a strategic affairs conference focusing on China’s peripheral diplomacy in October 2013. It was an often-overlooked yet significant event attended by high-ranking CCP members, central committee organs, and senior diplomats, underscoring cardinal features and factors of China’s relations with its neighbouring countries. A newly appointed President Xi Jinping emphasised the importance of a stable periphery to ensure China’s broader development goals, including the “Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” In the last ten years, China has become assertive and expansionist, and its ongoing conflict with neighbours on land and maritime speaks volumes about it. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) stands at the heart of what was propounded at the conference in Beijing. In this webinar, the panelists assessed the trajectory of China’s peripheral diplomacy in the last decade, with speakers Dr. Jabin T Jacob (Associate Professor, Shiv Nadar University), Dr. Sriparna Pathak (Associate Professor, O.P Jindal Global University) and Keshav Kelkar (Independent Analyst). The session was moderated by Dr. Rishi Gupta, Assistant Director at ASPI Delhi.