Making the foreign serve China : managing foreigners in the People's Republic of China
Anne-Marie Brady, Geremie Barmé (Degree supervisor), W. J. F. Jenner (Degree supervisor)
This thesis outlines the development of the Chinese Communist Party's foreign affairs system from 1921 to the 1990s. The Chinese term for foreign affairs, waishi, describes the full spectrum of the PRC's attempt to create external policies to influence and at times control foreigners, as well as Chinese citizens' contact and perception of them; and includes China's external relations meaning both official state-to-state and so-called unofficial or "people-to-people" diplomacy. In effect, waishi activities encompass all matters related to foreigners and foreign things, not merely diplomacy. In the thesis I argue that waishi is both a system for managing the foreign presence in China and China's contacts with the outside world, as well as having an implicit role in controlling the Chinese population. As an approach and means to managing both foreigners and the people of China, it has proved to be one of the most effective tools in the repertoire of the Chinese Communist Party for building and then sustaining its hold on power. The thesis draws on a variety of sources ranging from waishi training manuals, restricted access collections of CCP documents, archival material from public and private collections in China, France, the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia, interviews with past and present cadres of China's waishi system, as well as with past and present "friends of China" and others, not so favourably designated, who have spent time living in or visiting the People's Republic
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2000
2000