"Period of Strategic Opportunities": the Chinese Foresight Experience and Beijing’s Foreign Policy Perspectives

Abstract

This article examines one of the established ideologemes of the post-Deng era, the "period of important strategic opportunities." It is concluded that this concept is at the center of contemporary Chinese strategic culture, as it is related to the PRC leadership’s medium- and long-term goal-setting. The concept is analyzed in the historical retrospective from the moment of its introduction in 2002 to the present day, and the factors determining the evolution of this concept under Xi Jinping are scrutinized. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were two sources of China’s confidence that the coming twenty years would pass without turmoil for China – first, the state of its own economy, whose growth would be ensured by the dynamism of reforms and deeper integration into the global economy, and second, the long-term stability of its external environment, postponing for a long period the need for China to "come out of the shadows." Under Xi Jinping, the "period of strategic opportunities" is closely aligned with the core idea – "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." Created in the traditional abstract manner of Chinese "highest instructions," the concept acquires the features of a scenario approach, where the worst-case scenario for the nation is not excluded and is definitely taken into account. Today’s China faces incomparably greater pressure from its competitors, and the number of uncertainties affecting China’s rise has grown immeasurably. This determines the shift in the strategic thinking of the Chinese elite, which, along with a greater emphasis on ideology, will shape Chinese foreign policy.