China's Beginning to Take on the Diplomacy of its Periphery

CHINA’S dilemma in Asia is how to balance the peaceful rise it says it wants with its desire for more regional influence. In its continuing effort to achieve both, on July 3rd Xi Jinping, the country’s president, arrived in South Korea for a state visit. It came several days after Mr Xi had repeated his call for a new security framework in Asia. He was speaking at a conference in Beijing to mark the 60th anniversary of the excitingly named “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”, the basis of China’s policy of non-interference. The president does not seem to be unduly troubled by any tension between his words and China’s recent actions. “The notion of dominating international affairs belongs to a different age, and such an attempt is doomed to failure,” he said without apparent irony.

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