Foreign policy decision making in China is no longer the domain of a paramount leader acting through a vertical command channel with a fundamentally unified policy. Foreign policy decisions are now made by several discrete power bases coordinated at the center, with multiple command channels reflecting different interests and policies. Bureaucratic interests, agendas of policy issues, localcentral authority relations, intellectual and think-tank influences, and the domestic political-economic environment differentially affect policy input and output. The change from vertical to horizontal authoritarianism parallels that which occurred in South Korea and Taiwan, but whether it evolves similarly toward democratic pluralism remains to be seen.
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