Kanwa news March 11, 1999> In response to the so-called ever increasingly complicated 'struggle against separation' and to the attempt that Japan and the USA have been trying to make to contain China through the cooperative development of the TMD since the Cold War ended, China will thoroughly implement its diplomatic strategy of 'maintaining peace with the north, easing tension with the west, and focusing its effort on the southeast' from now through to the 21st century. According to the explanation of the diplomatic source in Beijing, the so-called maintaining peace with the north' means enhancing the strategic partnership with Russia and establishing an anti-hegemony united front through this partnership in order to finally promote the development of the theory of 'a multipolar world'. 'Easing tension with the west' mainly implies the relaxation of China’s strained relationship with India so as to prevent the possible threat coming from the two strategic directions (Taiwan and India) at the same time and to avoid using the strategic resources to deal with both the east and west lines. By 'focusing its effort on the southeast', China wishes to first resolve the issue of reunification and in the meantime, to deal with its relationships with the USA and Japan, both of which are deeply involved with the Taiwan issue.

Under the guidance of the above foreign policy, China is now trying to both continuously reinforce its bilateral relationships with Russia and Vietnam and to expedite the resumption of its dialog with India so that the overall security environment will be improved to the maximum. Under the guidance of the policy of 'maintaining peace with the north', China and Russia have further enhanced their mutual trust in their bilateral relationship. Russian Prime Minister Premakov has recently expressed Russia’s willingness to transfer the most advanced science and technology to China at an international market price. He has even publicly called for the establishment of an alliance between China and Russia. In the meantime, the system for the regular meetings between the prime ministers and presidents of these two countries has been gradually worked out. India conducted a nuclear test and publicly charged China of threatening it. Owing to the policy of 'easing tension with the west', however, there has been a tendency for a bilateral dialog between China and India this year and this tendency is firstly reflected by the resumption of the dialog on the security issues at an academic level between these two countries. It is generally expected that a high-ranking governmental dialog will be held soon. During the visit of Li Ke Piao , the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in Beijing, both China and Vietnam decided to sign the treaty on the land boundary between the two countries in 1999 and to establish the principles on the delimitation of the boundary in the North Bay waters in 2000.

For China, the touchiest issue is obviously that of Taiwan. The strategic scholars have also emphasized that the possibility of the peaceful reunification depends more and more on the military deterrence. It is easy to see from the above diplomatic movement of China that China hopes to try all it can to extricate itself from the troublesome surrounding strategic environment< Kanwa news Yihong zhang>.

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