China 2020: A foreign policy characterized by growing resilience, fading responsibility and increasing uncertainty

In 2020 Chinese foreign policy had to contend with the global repercussions of the spread of an unprecedented virus causing a global pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 (com- monly known as COVID-19). Suspicions about the Chinese origin of the virus have strongly weakened the image of a responsible country much promoted by the diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the last decade. Chinese leaders were obliged to recognize that in the West, the number of those objecting to the Chinese political system is on the rise. In spite of China’s aid to Western countries to fight the Coronavirus crisis, initiatives to oppose China’s authoritarian resilience and its growing political relevance in world affairs were also launched or revitalized, such as the International Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and the Quadrilateral Security Alliance (Quad). On top of that, other issues contributed to affect China’s foreign policy in the course of 2020: the growing estrangement between Washing- ton and Beijing; the current uncertainties of China’s relations with Europe and an endless pressure derived from the competition with great powers in the Indo-Pacific region.