China’s weaving of a web of ties makes it a diplomatic superpower

Manuel Galileo is an associate tutor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, a research fellow at SOAS University of London, and a chartered civil engineer.Beijing hosted the presidents of the United States and Russia within days of each other recently. China’s rising diplomatic standing is no accident. It is grounded in a tradition of relational diplomacy stretching back centuries and reflected in the growing recognition across capitals that Beijing is a reliable partner.The clearest articulation of China’s foreign policy ethos comes from academic Qin Yaqing, a former president of China-foreign-affairs-university" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="135191" data-entity-type="organization">China Foreign Affairs University, which has trained more than 600 Chinese ambassadors, the alma mater of Foreign Minister Wang Yi often called the “cradle of Chinese diplomacy”.Qin’s relational theory of world politics organises Chinese foreign policy around the notion of guanxi, a web of relations rooted in Confucian thought and woven through everyday Chinese social life.