How China Loses
The Pushback against Chinese
Global Ambitions
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© Luke Patey 2021
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Patey, Luke A., author.
Title: How China loses : the pushback against Chinese global ambitions / Luke Patey.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020023555 (print) | LCCN 2020023556 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190061081 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190061104 (epub) | ISBN 9780190061111
Subjects: LCSH: China—Foreign relations—21st century. | China—Foreign economic relations—21st century. | China—Military policy. | World politics—21st century.
Classification: LCC JZ1734 .P37 2021 (print) | LCC JZ1734 (ebook) | DDC 303.48/251—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023555
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023556
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To Lilian Mattar Patey, for showing her sons what courage looks like.
“Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.”
Robert Green Ingersoll, American writer and orator, 1883
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: There Was a Moment 1
1. Waiting for Peace 17
2. Evils under the Ground 41
3. Nobody Hates Money 63
4. The Chinese Way 89
5. Few Illusions Left 129
6. What Is Best for Europe? 159
7. Behave Accordingly 197
8. A Distant Part of Asia 227 Conclusion: Big or Small 251
Notes 271 Index 365
For the five years that I spent intermittently traveling and doing research for this book, I was met with openness and generosity from a host of researchers, government officials, civil society activists, and business managers and executives around the world. Undoubtedly some will disagree with my arguments and conclusions, but their willingness to meet, debate, and share their insight and experiences was essential in helping me carry out this work. This dialogue between friends and colleagues on what were generally sensitive issues in their respective countries provides me with confidence that we can overcome the current tensions and troubles that stand between China and the world. In the years ahead, it is necessary to remain open to arguments that may unsettle our established perspectives if we are to avoid escalation of present-day hostilities.
Research for this book took me to East Africa, South America, East Asia, and around Western Europe. This lengthy travel demanded time and financial support. I was lucky to have both and much more from the Danish Institute for International Studies. I know of no better place in the world to carry out such independent work. For over a decade, I’ve benefited from working at an institute that maintains a rare combination of academic scholars and policy thinkers across foreign policy, defense and security, and development issues. Since the importance of China to all of these research areas is now clear, despite few working specifically on China, I gained much from discussions, support, and feedback from my current and former colleagues. These included Peter Alexander Albrecht, Louise Riis Andersen, Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, Rasmus Alenius Boserup, Adam Moe Fejerskov, Kristian Fischer, Stefano
Guzzini, Matthew Fallon Hinds, Johannes Lang, Jessica Larsen, Lars Kristian Mathiesen, Mikkel Runge Olesen, Jairo Munive Rincon, Frederik Rosén, Peer Schouten, Ida Marie Vammen, and Lars Vissing. I also appreciate the research and translation assistance I received from Boukje Boerstra, Kirstine Lund Christiansen, Nina Theodora Heuser, and Cynthia Murillo. Each went above and beyond in diving into specific research queries and sharpening up my work.
Sara Gro Vagtholm Sørensen deserves special thanks for designing the illustrative maps for each chapter. The book spans much of the world. Mapping it was meticulous work. For each illustration the focus is on the countries and areas covered in the book. These should not be considered official in any way. Rather they are meant to present readers with a basic geographical visual to situate themselves within the content of each chapter. Countries, cities, disputed borders, and other important distinctions that may not be relevant to the book’s focus have been left out in many places.
This book started where my last one left off. My visit to South Sudan came shortly before political tensions boiled over into a long and devastating civil war. With hope that the worst is now behind the world’s youngest country, I’m thankful to Elizabeth James Bol, Nick Champion, Brian D’Silva, Tut Gatwech, Ilya Gridneff, Francois Henepin, Peter Justin, Francis Mila, Leben Moro, James Ninrew, Henry Odwar, Qian Fengzhang, John Ryle, Kathelijne Schkenel, Egbert Wesselink, Philip Winter, Zhang Hui, and Zhang Yi.
In Argentina, I discovered new research pastures. My warm reception there began with meeting University of Rosario professor Eduardo Oviedo at the Café de los Angelitos in central Buenos Aires. With framed black-andwhite photos of Carlos Gardel, Osvaldo Pugliese, and other famous Argentine singers and performers looking down on us, Oviedo not only went through the history of Argentina’s relations with China, but also exemplified the hospitality I received in the country. Everyone I met was not only willing to sacrifice their time and speak at length but also connected me with their respective networks. Particular thanks go to Gustavo Cardozo, Sergio Cesarin, Gustavo Alejandro Girado, Andres Lopez, Grete Sillasen, Monica Ynakiew, and Yung Lin.
In Japan, I benefited greatly from wisdom and guidance availed on me by Miwa Hirono, Tetsuo Kotani, Masayuki Masuda, Jane Nakano, Yoshiji Nogami, Iwao Okamoto, Tomohiko Satake, Kiyoyuki Seguchi, Akio Takahara, Aki Tonami, Michito Tsuruoko, Noboru Yamaguchi, and Anthony Yazaki. In Western Europe, I am grateful to Thorsten Benner, Ana Luisa Brito, Mikko Huotari, Ellen Margrethe Løj, Angela Stanzel, Luis Villalobos, and Zhang Jiyu. In China, I learned much from discussions with Guo Cunhai,
x Acknowledgments
Lucy Hornby, Jin Ling, Wang Suolao, Wu Hongying, and Xu Weizhong. There have also been many people, particularly in business and diplomatic circles, who while asking to remain unnamed, made invaluable contributions to this book.
There are a number of friends and colleagues outside my home institution, and several helpful reviewers to the book, who took the time to read over selected draft chapters. Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira were sounding boards for early ideas and offered excellent advice throughout. I also owe much gratitude to Adnan Aamir, Akiko Fukushima, Jonathan Hillman, Fermín Koop, Rohan Mukherjee, Juan Uriburu Quintana, Shutaro Sano, and Harry Verhoeven. They each saved me from mistakes, pointed out weaknesses, and encouraged me to push on. In times when research on China is all too quickly politicized, they renewed my faith in academic community.
I’m grateful to my literary agent Andrew Stuart for his confidence in the book’s early sprouts and his advice moving forward. At Oxford University Press, thanks to David McBride for guiding the book from start to finish and Holly Mitchell for all her help along the way. Despite all the insight and assistance I received from others in the research, writing, and production for this book, I remain solely responsible for any mistakes, shortcomings, and the arguments and perspectives put forward.
My greatest debt is to Thea, Victor, and Gregory. We made many of the trips for this book together as a family and I could not be more fortunate to have their unwavering love and support.
This book is dedicated to my mother, Lilian Mattar Patey. At a young age, political unrest and conflict upended her life. Rather than embrace anger and revenge, she dedicated her time to spreading hope and helping others, and never shied away from questioning unjust power.
Luke Patey Copenhagen July 2020
How China Loses
Introduction: There Was
Something new was happening. Xi Jinping was in Davos. Once a year, the small Swiss alpine town plays host to the World Economic Forum, a gathering of political leaders, business executives, celebrities, academics, and activists to discuss globalization, free trade, and current global issues from climate change to artificial intelligence. The Davos crowd is an affluent one. Often associated with liberal ideals of limited government, free markets, and democracy, it is not a place where one expects to find the man who holds the titles of the general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and head of the People’s Republic of China. It is not where one anticipates hearing a keynote speech from the leader of a one-party state known for its brand of political authoritarianism and state capitalism.
But in January 2017, China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, headlined Davos. Along with him was the largest delegation China had ever sent to the annual meeting. It included the likes of Jack Ma, founder of China’s largest ecommerce company, Alibaba, among other Chinese corporate executives and high-level government officials. Xi’s presence marked the changing current in global affairs. The Chinese leader had arrived to assuage the anxieties of the global elite. Just two months earlier, Donald J. Trump had won the 2016 American presidential elections. On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to shake up America’s long-standing trade and security partnerships in Western Europe and East Asia. His victory, paired with Britain’s yes vote in a 2016 referendum to leave the European Union, confirmed to many that the West was in disarray.
For China, this was a golden opportunity. After the 2008 financial crisis weakened liberal markets in the United States and Europe, the rise of populism was now shaking political stability in Western democracies. From Beijing’s vantage point, a new power vacuum had opened to advance China’s interests, norms, and values on the world stage. Unlike the incoming American president, Xi wanted to show the over 3,000 influential delegates in attendance at Davos that he was a rational and responsible statesman, and that China was ready to seize the mantle of globalization and free trade.
“
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ ” Xi said in his speech, quoting the opening line of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. “Today, we also live in a world of contradictions,” Xi continued. “Many people feel bewildered and wonder: What has gone wrong with the world?”1 The Dickens classic is set in the late eighteenth century during the First Industrial Revolution and French Revolution. But Xi refused to blame economic globalization, and the merger of digital technologies with physical systems of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, for political and social turmoil in the world. He rejected Trump’s calls for protectionism in response to unfair trade practices by America’s largest trading partners. “China will keep its doors wide open,” Xi said. “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air.”
There was skepticism about Xi’s promise of keeping China’s domestic economy open. Foreign trade and investment in China have long faced considerable restrictions and controls. But the Chinese leader’s speech was nonetheless met with praise from the global political and corporate elite. It was a step in the right direction. Xi told the champions of global commerce what they wanted to hear. That the walls of protectionism were not closing in around them, that there would still be room to expand their trade, investment, and finance, that China would show the way forward. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, summed up the mood in his introduction of the Chinese president. “In a world marked by great uncertainty and volatility,” he said, “the international community is looking to China.”2
The world’s discontent towards the United States under President Trump, combined with China’s elevated internaitonal standing, animated sentiments that one superpower will replace the other. But this perspective misses the bigger picture. China wields considerable global power, but its rise to the commanding heights of the global economy and world affairs is not preordained. If America remains deeply politically fractured and continues to look on multilateralism with disdain, this will open opportunities for China to extend its influence overseas. The COVID-19 pandemic may also reshape
the global economy and geopolitics in the coming years. But we will not be entering a future with China in charge anytime soon. China will not wield ubiquitous and overwhelming global power simply by the inertia of the sheer size of its home market and economic engagement abroad. Its potential evolution into a global superpower, with a deep presence and strong influence over economic, political, military, and culture abroad, will rather be conditioned by how China behaves toward the rest of the world, and how the world responds.
The outside world wrestles with a paradox when it comes to China. While many countries hold conflicting political values and security positions with China, they are still eager to derive economic benefits from the relationship.3 It is hard to miss the immediate economic attraction of China. Responsible for some 30 percent of global economic growth for much of the past decade,4 China has the largest economy in the world by purchasing power measures. While its growth is slowing, China’s economic size alone, particularly its burgeoning middle class, will still draw high levels of foreign trade and investment for the foreseeable future. China is also the largest trading partner for well over 125 countries, a major foreign investor across a variety of industries, and a leading provider of overseas finance for developing countries.
For decades, many countries around the world avoided confronting these political differences with China. In the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia, the assumption was made that trade and investment would lead to economic and political liberalization in China.5 But the resolve of China’s political authoritarianism and state capitalism is now clear. Engagement has integrated China into the global economy and world affairs, but at the same time, it brought on new challenges as Beijing’s authoritarian politics and state-led capitalism stretched out into the world.
This book shows that the political differences and security tensions between many countries around the world and China are still present, and in some cases larger than before. But for developed and developing countries alike, there is also recognition that engagement with China can produce strategic vulnerabilities to their own competitiveness and foreign policy and defense autonomy. Despite the drawing power of China’s economic edifice of market size and consumer buying power, what were once latent concerns with how China restricts and controls its economy at home have grown considerably and expanded to how China engages in trade, investment, technology, politics, and security beyond its borders.
Two years after Xi Jinping’s Davos speech and Trump’s presidential inauguration, I was in Berlin. It was here where the last titanic shift in global politics began, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, when revolution across Soviet Europe cascaded into East Germany and brought down the concrete barrier dividing Berlin and the geopolitical barriers of the Cold War with it. The reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union heralded the beginning of a period of triumph for Western democracy, with the United States standing tall as the sole global superpower.
In the former East Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, I met a German official close to a park where the Berlin Wall once stood. During the Cold War, Mauerpark was the site of the so-called Death Strip, where armed guards on watchtowers gunned down eastern Germans seeking to escape to the west. Today, some thirty years later, it is quite a different setting. The attack dogs and barbed wire are long gone. In a united and free Berlin, the park is better known as a weekend spot for picnicking locals and crowds of tourists to watch street performers and stroll through flea market stalls.
In light of America’s foreign policy under Donald Trump and the promises of Xi Jinping that China would defend globalization, I asked the German official how his government was coping with the changing state of world affairs. “There was a moment when the United States turned inward that led China to become our most preferred partner,” he told me. “When it came to open trade and climate change, China was saying all the right things. But it quickly turned out to be more difficult than we thought. The conflicting issues, like on human rights, remained the same, but the complementary ones became less and less evident. Germany had its own political and business problems with China.”
America’s longtime allies were confounded by Trump’s victory over frontrunner Democratic leader Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 US elections. Days after Xi spoke in Davos, Trump gave his inaugural address from outside the Capitol in Washington, DC, and decried America’s military partnerships and free trade agreements. “From this moment on,” he promised, “it’s going to be America First.” Trump sought to tear down long-standing structures of multilateralism that American leaders had worked hard to build following World War II. The new president pushed forward with a more abrasive, instable, and transactional American foreign policy. The world’s leaders were on edge. Portugal’s prime minister António Costa saw Xi’s “pro-globalization” speech at Davos and Trump’s “America First” inaugural address as a turning point.6 “I was quite surprised to see the Chinese president make the speech that was supposed to be made by the American president, and the American president make a speech that the Chinese president was supposed to make.”
On his first day, President Trump began to follow through on his campaign promises. He pulled the United States out of the recently signed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which was set to cover over a third of the global economy. Months later he withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and later the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to roll back Iran’s nuclear program. Under Trump the United States then went on to not only designate China as a strategic competitor and launch a trade war with Beijing in 2018, but also instigate trade disputes with Japan, the European Union, Canada, and Mexico, as well as question the usefulness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and America’s other security alliances.
Trump’s arrival to the White House gave new life to debates on America’s decline as a global superpower, the end of an American-led global order, and the rise of China.7 But in dismissing the rules, norms, and niceties of international affairs, the Trump presidency brought on fears in the United States, and among its longtime allies, that American global power was now not in a slow and steady decline, but in complete free fall. Prominent American thinkers view Trump’s foreign policy as an abdication of America’s global leadership in setting the international rules, building security alliances and free trade deals, and advocating democracy and human rights.8 Without America at the helm, they argue, the world will sink deeper into disorder. Since many see the Trump presidency as a symptom rather than the cause of divisive and inward-looking American politics, even in Trump’s absence, American multilateralism may remain limited.
And where one finds American angst, Chinese triumphalism follows closely after. For well over a decade, some experts have argued that China has been on a clear ascent to rule the world thanks to its unparalleled economic rise at home.9 Today, America’s decline is seen as opening new space for China’s international presence to grow, and for Beijing to rival, and in time surpass, the United States as the world’s perennial superpower.10
Leading Chinese thinkers have called on the international community to recognize China’s growing global power and understand and respect its strategic thinking and visions for the world.11 They are now debating how China will shape the future international order, to put an end to ideas of global political integration, universal rights and values, and advance its own interests in the world. Just as Trump’s “America First” has rejected ideals of multilateral cooperation and international rules, the hierarchical global order that China envisions unsurprisingly deems Chinese interests as second to none.
But the world is bigger than the United States and China. There is a tendency among politicians, businesspeople, analysts, and academics to
focus on the relationship between the United States and China, the declining and the rising power, as dictating the future of global order.12 There is good reason to emphasize the relationship. Together, the United States and China make up roughly 40 percent of the global economy and command the world’s two most powerful militaries. Trade wars, strategic competition over new technologies, and potential war between the United States and China will shape our lives, and that of our children, more than any other relationship in the world. But a fixation on such a global contest is too simplistic. Taking only the vantage point of Washington and Beijing to view the direction of the global economy and world affairs limits our understanding of the importance of on-the-ground changes in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Although many Americans and Chinese may struggle to comprehend such diversity, this broader picture—the other 60 percent of the world economy, the other major militaries, technology leaders, and cultural hubs—will be significant in shaping the future world. The rest of the world is not standing still as great powers rise and fall. Just as countries around the world are re-evaluating their relations with the United States, big and small countries alike are critically assessing their relationship with China too.13
Taking a look back at the past few decades, it is not hyperbole to see China’s rise as one of the most important stories in the global economy and world affairs. In the span of fifty years, China went from being a poor, largely isolated country to an aspiring global superpower today. China’s military strength and technological capabilities have grown tremendously, but it is China’s economic reach around the world that most closely touches all of our lives. From refrigerators to smartphones, we use a growing line of sophisticated Chinese-made products every day. Chinese corporations are exploiting their advantageous competitive positions at home, and searching global markets for new opportunities and acquisitions, to take a commanding position in advanced industries, from telecommunications to artificial intelligence. China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar grand strategy to connect East Asia to Europe through new ports, railways, digital communications, and financial, political, and cultural cooperation, has the potential to reshape entire regions.
Today, China seeks to regain the great status and respect it once held in the world. For hundreds of years, China was the world’s largest economy before what became known as its century of national humiliation began in
How China Loses
the mid-nineteenth century due to internal turmoil and external intervention from colonial powers. Gradual economic reform and opening to the outside world in the late 1970s brought on an economic miracle and decades of fast-paced growth. China’s political authoritarianism and state capitalism strongly limit political rights and maintain state monopolies over key industries, but at the same time, allow for privatization and foreign investment. By the turn of the century, China became the “factory of the world” thanks to its low labor costs and high levels of outside investment and technology. This brought hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, led to large-scale migration from rural areas to cities, and an infrastructure boom of highways, railways, and modern skyscrapers and urban housing.
This economic miracle at home elevated China’s standing in the world. It passed Germany to become the largest exporter in 2009 and then the United States as the world’s largest manufacturer two years later. As of 2014, China could claim the title as the world’s largest economy in buying power. The World Bank projects that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy in nominal terms by 2030.14 But just as the economy is central to China’s global power, it remains a critical weakness going forward. China simultaneously boasts modern and wealthy megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chongqing, and an enlarging middle class, but by Chinese government estimates, China is still struggling to overcome entrenched poverty among tens of millions of its population and ensuring many times more do not slip back into impoverishment. China has the most billionaires in Asia, but also the fastest-growing inequality rates in the world, and a widening economic, educational, and social welfare gap between rural and urban areas.15 The priority of economic growth above all for decades on end has also left China with large-scale environmental degradation of its air, water, and soil. Despite President Xi Jinping’s efforts to root out corruption in a long-running anti-graft probe, according to watchdog Transparency International, China remains the most corrupt large economy in the world, at the same level as Serbia in the former Yugoslavia and West Africa’s Benin.16
To overcome its remaining economic challenges and become a rich nation, China must escape “the middle-income trap.” This is a phenomenon where low labor costs initially fuel a country’s development through manufacturing growth, but later as wages increase, growth stagnates, and income levels remain suppressed and unable to move up further. Most emerging market economies have failed to escape this trap. If China is going to buck the trend, such as South Korea and others have done, it will need to foster a new economy based on innovation and services.17 And since the 2008 global financial crisis,
the Communist Party has stimulated economic growth by taking on higher levels of debt, which with a rapidly aging population, threatens to drag down growth levels. One common refrain is that China will grow old before it gets rich.
Yet China’s economic model has defied critics in the past. China’s statedriven mandates, including allowing some market forces to take hold, as well as its vast internal, regional diversity, make it difficult to compare its economic approach and trajectory to others.18 Domestic savings and tight capital controls may ward off an economic meltdown from high debt levels. The Chinese government may be able to continue to exert control over state companies, and significant influence over private firms, to manage swings in the economy, and exploit domestic economies of scale to elevate the position of its industries in the global economy.19 Despite lofty predictions, however, extrapolation of China’s future economic size is prone to error and will depend on the success of the Chinese government to further reform the economy and drive forward productivity.20 Whether weak or strong in the future, the health of China’s economy holds widespread geopolitical consequences.
Just as China has not become a full-fledged market economy, it also remains a one-party state. The Communist Party has long been seen as a responsive authoritarian regime—some public criticism is accepted to improve governance standards and its own legitimacy in the process. But these political and economic reforms have been rolled back under President Xi Jinping.21 This includes reinforcing its Great Firewall to regulate the Internet, harsh penalties for those criticizing the Communist Party, pervasive, high-tech surveillance systems, and most strikingly, the forced detention of an estimated 1 million people from the minority Uyghur ethnicity in its Xinjiang region.
The Communist Party’s apprehension and sensitivities toward granting some political rights, and its drive to expand techno-authoritarianism through strict social media control and facial-recognition technologies, have only been reinforced by protracted protests in Hong Kong in recent years. Widespread disapproval of Beijing’s reneging on its international treaty of self-governance to the territory until 2047 by Hong Kongers represents a powerful rejection of the developmental model of political authoritarianism and state capitalism that Party leaders are eager to legitimatize globally. Beijing’s imposition of a new national security law for Hong Kong in the spring of 2020 signaled a determination to not back down from its authoritarian political approach.
China’s economic well-being, particularly the internal threat of a slowing economy from rising debt, productivity challenges, and aging demographics, coupled with the Communist Party’s sensitivities toward maintaining
political power at home, largely defines China’s relations with the outside world today. If China is indeed destined to suffer from a deep economic crisis, its relative power in the world could very well be peaking. This presents a narrowing window of opportunity over the next two decades for Xi Jinping and China’s leadership to transform the global economy and world affairs to suit Chinese interests, norms, and values.22 Alternatively, if China keeps crisis at bay, the Communist Party may be emboldened to advance its global ambitions with more assertiveness. Either way, after decades of amassing considerable economic and military power, China’s leaders are now keen to reshape the world.
What does China want from the world? Xi Jinping gave a lot of important speeches in 2017. But his over three-hour-long, 65-page speech at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party that October holds the most significant consequences for the world. Xi said that by 2035, China should develop into a modern economy and become “a global leader in innovation” with both material and normative power extending beyond its borders. By the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049, Xi predicted that China will achieve “the Chinese Dream,” the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” and become “a global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence.”23 Xi pledged that China would build world-class armed forces and resolve the Taiwan question, reunifying the de facto independent island with the mainland, by force if necessary. The following year, Xi Jinping Thought was enshrined into China’s constitution and presidential term limits abolished so he could potentially rule for life as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China. Pursuit of this agenda demonstrates China’s move from a defensive and inward-looking approach to the world to an offensive and expansionist view.24
While there is a diversity of opinion, interests, and power in Chinese society and in its interactions abroad, the Communist Party remains the most powerful single actor in shaping China’s relations with the outside world. Just as the Communist Party has established its power at home, its leadership now wants China to become the perennial global power. Engaging the outside world presents the Communist Party with opportunities to alleviate China’s economic problems at home and project their political legitimacy and strength in the eyes of the Chinese population. Ultimately, however, China wants to replace the United States at the top of the world hierarchy and
reshape global norms and international institutions to better accommodate and advance its economic, political, and security interests in the long run.
Xi’s assertive political moves at home reflect where he intends to take China on the world stage. But they are not new for China’s leadership. And while they may evolve in the future in the face of domestic economic and political challenges, just as America’s political disorder and nationalist foreign policy may outlive Trump’s presidency, China’s assertiveness may very well continue even in the absence of Xi as leader. In the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War and after its brief international isolation after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s popular instruction was for China to keep a low profile in global politics and “hide capabilities and bide time.” But Deng never expected China to fully integrate into an American-led international rules-based order. Instead he believed China should avoid confrontation with the United States and its allies until it was certain it could win.25 The modesty attached to the strategic guideline of “hide and bide,” in the meantime, reduced the risk of China’s estrangement and containment and allowed room for China to develop its economic and military power.
As China’s power grew at home, it moved to extend its influence abroad. There was a gradual ramping up of China’s outward confidence under President Jiang Zemin in the 1990s and early 2000s, and China’s assertiveness began to clearly show its face in the final years of President Hu Jintao’s leadership era until 2012. In the wake of the global financial crisis, Hu advanced China’s military capabilities, laid the groundwork for China’s assertive stance in territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, as well as the idea for what would become Xi Jinping’s foreign policy signature, the Belt and Road Initiative.26 Ambitious and outwardly self-assured, Xi is now attempting to bring these long-standing goals of the Communist Party to fruition.
China has gained much from the current international rules-based order, but in contradiction, its history has also taught it to view the outside world as threatening to its domestic political stability and economic welfare. To ensure that the global economy and world affairs are better suited to China’s interests, its leaders believe they should “take an active part in leading the reform of the global governance system,” as President Xi stated in June 2018.27 In realizing the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation and promoting the building of a “community of common destiny” for humankind, Xi plans for China to displace the United States as the world’s superpower and play a leading role in reshaping global governance.28 The success of China’s leadership in achieving its global political, ideological, economic, and security ambitions, but also their aggressive behavior abroad in response to domestic instability, can both hold significant consequences for the world.
This book examines whether China will realize its global ambitions: resolving overseas conflicts to expand its economic and security agenda, attaining far-reaching global influence through its Belt and Road Initiative, quelling criticism and cementing the political legitimacy of the Communist Party and its model of authoritarian capitalism overseas, advancing China’s economic growth and modernization at home through interactions with the outside world, and establishing hegemony over Asia through its military and economic power. To begin with, as Chinese economic interests expand overseas, Beijing is determined to demonstrate that it can protect Chinese workers and investments around the world. This is particularly the case in conflict-prone and unstable developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, which are sites of key Chinese investments in energy, mining, and transportation.
At the inaugural forum for the Belt and Road in 2017, Xi Jinping said that the initiative “requires a peaceful and stable environment.”29 China will “always be a builder of world peace, contributor of global development and keeper of international order,” he later pledged in a New Year address.30 China aspires to the role as a global peacemaker in order to protect its national and economic interests abroad, lifting up the political legitimacy for the Communist Party in the eyes of the Chinese populace, and to shape global norms by advancing its own approach to establishing peace and security abroad.
Legitimizing China’s developmental model of political authoritarianism and state capitalism in the world is another global ambition. For decades, American and Western officials, non-governmental organizations, and media have both criticized and attempted to influence China, with a goal of guiding the one-party state toward liberalism and democracy. Today, it is the United States, Western Europe, Japan, India, and other democracies around the world that face the challenge of resisting China’s authoritarian influence. For Xi, there is fierce competition in the ideological sphere with the West, but also in keeping regional challengers, such as India, firmly subdued.31 As a globally engaged and economically powerful one-party state, China seeks to challenge the core values of the world’s liberal democracies: individual liberty, freedom of speech, and rule of law.32 This begins with buttressing the Communist Party’s international image and quelling critique of the Party and China at an international scale.
Xi Jinping sees China’s model as worthy of admiration and emulation, a replacement for the instability and decline of Western liberal democracies. In the “community of common destiny” that Xi promotes as his vision of the world, China provides an authoritarian counter to democracy as the guiding
