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this is a call to greater international policy activism, rather than retrenchment in response to the rise of Trump. In other words, the conclusion is that the great trends of history, or to use an old Soviet term, the ‘correlation of forces’, are moving China’s way.

TOWARDS A SHARPER CHINESE DIPLOMACY

A third element of the 2018 Work Conference is its injunction to the country’s international policy institutions and personnel to get with the Xi Jinping project. Xi seems to have the Foreign Ministry in his sights when he says that “the reform of the institutions and mechanisms concerning foreign affairs is the internal demand of advancing modernisation in the state governance system and governance capabilities.” It will be recalled from above that “party-building” within the country’s foreign policy institutions will be a core part of that.

On personnel, Xi Jinping reminds the nation’s diplomats that they are first and foremost “party cadres.” This has a certain ideological retro to it all. Indeed it’s been a long time since I’ve heard Chinese diplomats refer to their seniors as cadres. In fact I’m not sure that over the last 35 years that I can. To quote the Xinhua report: “Stressing that cadres are the decisive factor after setting the political course, Xi called for a strong contingent of foreign affairs personnel that are loyal to the CPC, the country and the people and are politically solid, professionally competent and strongly disciplined in their conduct. He called on foreign affairs cadres to enhance their ideals and their training so as to upgrade their competency and overall quality...”

Does this presage a new type of Chinese foreign ministry diplomat abroad? Perhaps. It’s long been reported that Xi has been frustrated by the performance of parts of his foreign policy establishment. He sees them proceeding at a glacial pace. Whereas China’s strategic challenges and opportunities are urgent. Once again, this tends to point in the direction of greater foreign policy activism in the future in a system that is struggling to keep up with the political and policy vision of its leader.

CHINA LEADING THE REFORM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Fourth, the sharpest substantive new development to emerge from the 2018 Foreign Policy Work Conference is what is says about global governance.

In the 2014 Work Conference, Xi referred to an impending struggle for the future structure of the international order. He did not elaborate on this back then. But much work has gone on within the Chinese system since on three inter-related concepts: the international order (guoji zhixu); the international system (guoji xitong), and global governance (quanqiu zhili).

Of course, these mean different but overlapping things in English too. Broadly speaking, in Chinese, the term “international” or “global” order refers to a combination of the UN, the Bretton Woods Institutions, the G20 and other global plurilateral or multilateral institutions on the one hand; and the US system of global alliances to enforce the US definition of international security on the other. The term “international system” tends to refer to the first

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