It’s difficult to think of a more famous piece of off-the-mark but still common wisdom about China than the idea that China’s government thinks and plans in generations, decades, or centuries, acting in its long-term interest. Today, especially in foreign affairs, China often lacks a long-term vision, while its short-term actions are sabotaging its long-term interests. But the West refuses to let go of this misunderstanding. This myth is the result of snowballing Western misconceptions over the decades, summed up in one misunderstanding during a meeting between Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger.

In 1972, Zhou Enlai, the premier of China under Mao Zedong, was asked the question: “What was the impact of the French Revolution?” His answer: “Too early to say.” The French Revolution took place almost 200 years before Zhou gave this response to Henry Kissinger. Thus Zhou cemented China’s reputation, in the eyes of West, as the country that thinks in centuries. Unfortunately, the French revolution that Zhou was talking about wasn’t the well-known one in 1789, but the student uprising in Paris, in 1968, an event that had taken place only four years before, not 200 years. While after too many years, the translator of that conversation set the record straight and confirmed that Zhou was indeed talking about the 1968 “French revolution,” this misunderstanding had already become a norm.

That is why the myth about China thinking and planning its foreign policy in generations must be debunked. Although we can talk about Chinese domestic long-term planning, like the “one child policy,” “Made in China 2025,” “one country, two systems,” or even the ubiquitous five-year plans, we should take into account that many of these examples are medium-term policies. More importantly, they are internal policies stemming from China’s paramount need to keep the country functional. At the same time, many long-term “plans” and “goals” are just tools of Communist propaganda.

On the international level, China has proven over the last decade that it doesn’t have a long-term strategy and it even acts on impulse on many occasions. A good place to start is with the ultimate purported long-term strategy: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Belt and Road Initiative: An Idea, Not a Strategy

Although the BRI is perceived by the West as China’s long-term strategy to take the control of the world, by amassing economic influence and geopolitical power and replacing the United States at the top of the international order, in fact the concept was originally just a fancy name proposed (and changed after a few years) by Xi Jinping in 2013, largely because it sounded good. In the good company of other Chinese slogans such as “peaceful rise,” “new type of great power relations,” “community of common destiny,” and “Chinese dream,” the aim was to create a positive and catchy story around China – but also to paint the image of a Chinese leader with innovative ideas for the world stage. And time proved that it was just an idea, not a coherent long-term strategy thought out in advance and carefully executed over the years.

This is reinforced by the fact that China took almost two years to try to define the BRI. Even today the government hasn’t succeeded in completely defining it or putting into practice the goals of the initiative as stipulated in the 2015 White Paper. Soon after the White Paper, the name in foreign languages was changed from “One Belt, One Road” to the “Belt and Road Initiative” because China realized the old name created a flawed picture.

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This article has been published by Andreea Brînză, Vice President of RISAP, in the The Diplomat. You can read the full article in The Diplomat.