Does China’s Foreign Ministry Matter?

In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Dylan Loh Ming Hui, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. They discuss his book “China’s Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy (chinarisingmofa.com/) ” (Stanford University Press, April 2024.)

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In the sense of policy implementation: absolutely! In the sense of policy formation: much less so than the U.S. Department of State. That is, we can sometimes see US DoS form and then convince the elected officials to take up various policies. That is much less the case in China, though we may have trouble perceiving that because of the fact most diplomats are also CCP Members and participate in forming policy through that institution.