Perhaps growing tensions around China should push Beijing to consider rethinking its philosophy of foreign affairs. For decades, China was driven by the principle of qiutong cunyi 求同存异,or “seek common ground, and put aside what is different.” This is an important principle that paid huge dividends to Beijing for many years, yet it worked based on the premise that with time there was more in common than not in common between China and the world.
That is, it was grounded on China’s former “ideology czar” Zheng Bijian’s ideas of peaceful development heping fazhan 和平发展 and building common interests gongtong liyi共同利益. But these ideas no longer apply; for the purpose of this essay it doesn’t matter why.
What is important is that with the passage of time, there are more clashes, more differences and less in common between China and the rest of the world.
