Diplomatic Decision-making Model Analysis, The Decision On The New South Africa And China Established Diplomatic Relations

This article uses three models of foreign policy decision-making to analyze South Africa's decision-making process on establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to point out the characters and the factors influencing foreign policy-making of new South Africa. It is a first difficult problem for new South Africa government in foreign policy and South African people pay much attention to it .The new South Africa government faces arduous task of internal governance which includes economic reconstruction and stabilization of social order. Economic interest ranks highest on government's agenda. Therefore, at the beginning, new South Africa hopes to maintain the diplomatic relations with Taiwan to get short-term economic interest. Along with rapid development and advancing international position of China, new South Africa hopes to realize double recognition, that is to say, maintaining the relations with Taiwan while establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to maximize its national interests. Chinese government certainly doesn't accept this position. When the date of Hong Kong returning to China draws near, new South Africa government realizes that establishing diplomatic relations with China tally with South Africa's political and economic interests most.New South Africa's government makes rational choices according to South Africa's political and economic interests and internal politics and Mandela factor also exert impact on decision-making process. That is to say, model of rational choice, model of internal politics and model of leaders factor are intertwined with each other in foreign policy analysis and usually several models should be used together to know better the whole decision-making process.