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XI JINPING, CHINA AND THE GLOBAL ORDER: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHINA’S 2018 CENTRAL FOREIGN POLICY WORK CONFERENCE THE HON. KEVIN RUDD 26™ PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA PRESIDENT OF THE ASIA SOCIETY POLICY INSTITUTE, NEW YORK AN ADDRESS TO THE LEE KUAN YEW SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE TUESDAY 26 JUNE, 2018 On 22-23 June 2018, the Chinese Communist Party concluded its Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, the second since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission in November 2012. The last one was held in November 2014. These are not everyday affairs in the party’s deliberations on the great questions of China’s unfolding global engagement. These conferences are major, authoritative gatherings of the entire leadership, designed to synthesise China’s official analysis of international trends, and assess how China should anticipate and respond to them in the prosecution of its own national interests. This one, like the last one, was presided over by Xi Jinping and attended by all seven members of the politburo standing committee, plus ex-officio member Vice President Wang Qishan, together with all other eighteen members of the regular politburo, in addition to everybody who is anybody in the entire Chinese foreign, security, military, economic, trade, finance, cyber and intelligence community, as well as the central think tank community. It’s a meeting that’s meant to be noticed by the entire Chinese international policy establishment, because if there is to be any new directive concerning China’s place in the world, it’s likely to be found somewhere in Xi Jinping’s 3,000 character report to this conference. Of course, the entire deliberations of the conference are not made public. Three-and-a-half years ago, only a selected part of it was broadcast and reported in the central media. The same this time as well. And unlike in Washington, the Chinese system doesn't leak every twelve hours. There is, therefore, an often hazardous reading of the tea leaves in interpreting what it all means, discerning what is new, what is new-ish, and what is not. WHAT IS NEW? How does the 2018 Work Conference compare with the one in 2014? The 2014 iteration represented the formal, official funeral of Deng Xiaoping’s international policy dictum of the 1 of 10 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_026856