Over the next two years or so, Beijing's diplomacy will play a vital role in international cooperation for the following reasons.
First, China will maintain a major fast-growing economy during this period, and its ongoing comprehensive reform requires more integration with the rest of the world.
Second, faced with Washington's weakening global leadership and the struggling US-led alliances such as the TPP, US President Barack Obama is likely to seek further cooperation with Beijing as his political legacy.
Moreover, Russia, another regional power across the Eurasian area, is also likely to turn to China and Germany in a bid to break its diplomatic isolation, triggered by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
Thus to fully exploit its diplomatic significance, Beijing will make more proactive moves in 2015.
With regards to its economic diplomacy, China should further expand its global FTA network. Besides the already signed FTAs with Australia, the Republic of Korea, and Gulf Cooperation Council, it should push for a trilateral free-trade agreement between Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul based on the four-point agreement reached between China and Japan in November.
Negotiations on a China-US Bilateral Investment Treaty, in which senior leaders have showed increasing interest, is also likely to be a focus of China's diplomacy next year.
In addition, China's maritime cooperation with coastal countries such as Greece and the US, which will be the rotating chairman of the Arctic Council, is likely to spawn a number of diplomatic breakthroughs.
2015 will also be 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, whose legitimacy could be further consolidated if Beijing continues helping restore the world order. China is becoming more confident and effective in the world's financial and maritime rule-making, and this will be further demonstrated in 2015.
The author is a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China.
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