At his speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday and in an article in the Australian Financial Review in September, former prime minister Paul Keating gave the strong impression of being a sleepwalker who has simply not caught up with today’s geopolitical reality.

Keating proclaims that China is not out to attack other countries, that it’s not a threat to Australia and that Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. He also states that China’s recent behaviour is merely typical of any major power ‘in the adolescent phase of their diplomacy’. Like all big states, he says, it has just become ruder as it has got bigger. He rejects any accusations that Beijing is exporting its ideology, is territorially expansionist or is a military aggressor.

Keating believes we are wasting our time seeing China as a potential military threat and that acquiring nuclear-powered attack submarines will have no strategic relevance whatsoever in deterring Beijing. Moreover, he asserts that Australia is at odds with its own geography when, for the first time since the late 1980s, the government has instructed defence planning to focus on our immediate region, which consists of the north-eastern Indian Ocean, maritime and mainland Southeast Asia, and the southwest Pacific. This is the region where we must be able to hold a potential adversary’s forces and infrastructure at risk at a greater distance from our shores.

As to China not exporting a universal ideology, Keating is plainly out of touch with the realities of the new era in China. President Xi Jinping sees what he terms Marxism–Leninism with Chinese characteristics as a potential model for other countries, claiming the international community should view China’s methods as ‘unthreatening and constructive’. Beijing is offering its authoritarian state-capitalist Leninist system as a superior model for developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to follow.

In the leadership’s view, liberalism and the Chinese Communist Party cannot coexist within China, and liberalism’s conception of its values as universal makes active ideological warfare a necessity for Beijing. The CCP expressed this view most directly in a 2013 document called the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere—better known as Document 9—which warned of seven perils subverting the party’s grip on power. Among these threats were notions of Western freedom, democracy and human rights. Xi has consistently reinforced this viewpoint in his public remarks, warning the party that ‘struggles in the ideological field are extraordinarily fierce’ and ‘although they are invisible, they are a matter of life and death’. He has spoken of a ‘treacherous international situation’ and ‘an intensifying contest of two ideologies’.

Thus, Beijing already considers itself locked in an ideological contest with the West. Xi proclaims that Western hostile forces are speeding up their ‘peaceful evolution’ and ‘colour revolution’ in China as a strategy of ‘Westernising and splitting up China overtly and covertly’. Beijing, therefore, sees itself as engaged in a long-running ideological competition with Western liberalism as championed by the US. Nathan Levine of the Asia Society Policy Institute warns those in the West who—like Keating—do not accept the idea of a prolonged Cold War – style ideological confrontation, must recognise ideological competition with China is inescapable.

I find it deeply disturbing that not once does Keating mention China’s continuing terrible human rights record and the fact that the CCP has been responsible for the deaths of 50 million of its own people. Xi is using artificial intelligence and modern intrusive surveillance technologies to ensure absolute obedience of its citizens with the party’s every directive.

As for China not being territorially expansionist, try telling that to Tibet, Xinjiang, India and Taiwan, as well as countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia that border the South China Sea, which Beijing claims in its entirety. Xi lied in 2015 when he told US President Barack Obama that China would not militarise the South China Sea. Recently, Beijing has threatened Taiwan with more than 150 jet fighters and nuclear-capable bombers flying into its air defence zone over four days. And the Global Times, which is a mouthpiece of the CCP, has threatened Australia with ballistic missile strikes with ‘conventional warheads’ if we participate in a war over Taiwan, and with nuclear attack because we are going to buy nuclear-powered submarines.

Keating asserts that Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. But it is a vibrant democracy of 24 million people on an island. That should be a familiar geopolitical challenge for Australia. Japan sees a military threat to Taiwan as being an existential threat to its own survival, not least because of its proximity. If America fails to defend Taiwan, Japan might well consider acquiring nuclear weapons. Would that not be a matter of vital Australian interest?

Keating also claims that China is remote—12 flying hours—from the Australian coast. That is not correct. The nearest Chinese military base on Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea is barely 3,000 kilometres from Darwin. It has a 3,125-metre runway that could be used by China’s H-6N bombers to reach Australia’s north coast in less than four hours. In the last couple of years there have also been strong rumours about Beijing’s interest in establishing a military base in Vanuatu or Papua New Guinea. Defence policy advice for many years to successive Australian governments has been that the establishment of a military base by a potential adversary in the archipelago to our near north or east would be a matter of serious strategic concern that must be dealt with.

Finally, when it comes to nuclear submarines, the US leads the world while China’s submarines are noisy and its ability to detect enemy submarines is poor, especially in deep waters. When Australia eventually acquires eight nuclear-powered attack submarines, the navy would be capable of denying the narrow straits of Southeast Asia to any potential adversary. As to criticism that the AUKUS deal for the submarines compromises Australian sovereignty, we already depend upon cutting-edge US technology—the Collins-class boats operate the US Virginia-class nuclear submarines’ combat system, which requires frequent highly classified updates. Australia is the only other country in the world to have access to this US technology.

Amid global uncertainties, strengthening like-minded nations’ bonds to deal with those challenges is vital. In the Indo-Pacific region, cooperation between Australia and Japan has been where the action is. There are three defining challenges—the so-called three Cs—that these key US allies are facing: climate change, China and Covid-19.

In recent decades, the relationship between Australia and Japan has been built on economic ties, but more recently the two countries have been layering cooperation channels to collectively respond to an increasingly Balkanised politico-economic landscape. Importantly, this trend has been fairly linear despite their respective leadership merry-go-rounds over the past decade or so. Why has Australia–Japan cooperation been so critical? And, given Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s abrupt resignation, how can new PM Fumio Kishida drive a joint response to these challenges with Australia?

The first concern is climate change. The decades-long economic partnership in the energy sector is a critical platform of the complementary relationship. Despite the rapidly growing energy demands in the region, Australia has served as the biggest and most stable supplier of energy and key minerals to Japan. Japan is the largest energy export destination from the Northern Territory, with 10% of its imported gas coming from the Port of Darwin.

Both Australia and Japan must now meet a new challenge of a swiftly decarbonising world. While Australia’s latest greenhouse gas emissions marked the lowest level yet, it is still ‘lagging at the back of the pack among developed countries’. Australia has only just joined other nations in pledging to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Japan did so in October 2020. The two countries’ shifts to carbon neutrality will have stark implications for their trade pattern.

In this context, Japan and Australia are determined to map out how they can collaborate and mutually benefit from the low-carbon energy transition. Under their partnership on decarbonisation through technology, the two countries identified hydrogen and ammonia as potentially large opportunities and led the launch of a regional platform to establish a standard for carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies.

The second challenge is their complex relationships with China. After surpassing Japan as the world’s second-largest economy in 2010, China has become the world’s dominant trading partner, swiftly taking the top trading position with more than 130 countries. For Australia and Japan, China’s share of their exports is around 40% and 20%, respectively.

While deepening economic interdependence with China has brought economic growth, it has not led to political stability. China’s trade and investment network has intensified interdependence in Asia and beyond, but this has also raised big uncertainties and made geoeconomic tools more influential. Japan struggled with China’s ban on exports of rare-earth elements a decade ago (and settled the case at the World Trade Organization) and, more recently, Australia has been suffering from economic coercion (which it is taking to the WTO) and foreign interference.

Australia and Japan have shown considerable commitment to the WTO-supported international trade regime and the broader post-war global order. The two countries have also worked together to sustain a credible rules-based multilateral trading system and share the view that some reforms to the WTO are necessary to maintain that system.

At the regional level, despite the deteriorating Sino-Australian bilateral relationship, they managed to conclude the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement in November 2020, which sets, among other things, new provisions for data governance. Although the significance of those rules is practically limited, it could at least lay the common ground for controlling trans-border data flows. The formation of a digital trade order is an emerging front in standard-setting for cutting-edge technologies, and China’s recent application to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement between Singapore, Chile and New Zealand would boost the competition to set rules.

In this context, China’s proposed accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (which Japan salvaged with the help of Australia and other members after the US withdrew under former president Donald Trump) will also be a test case for Australia and Japan in securing a high-standard trading order.

On the security front, tensions are more glaring. Faced with China’s assertive pressure in the region, Japan has called on Australia to help lead resistance both directly and as part of the Quad with the US and India. Australia and Japan have also come to share similar stances and have taken a series of domestic countermeasures under the name of national security.

Both countries have excluded Chinese telecommunication firms from their 5G networks. Japan’s newly enacted land restriction law and Australia’s tightening investment screening are in the same line. Australia’s experience over the NT government’s 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese firm which is now under review provides a useful lesson. While a similar situation is unlikely to happen in Japan, Tokyo can usefully draw upon its lessons.

Last and most importantly, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the threat landscape across the globe. Australia and Japan have been among the front-runners in managing the health crisis, taking hardline approaches to border control that few other countries have taken. Australia made the most of being an island ‘fortress’ and implemented a series of ad hoc lockdowns, while some crowded parts of Japan were subject to constant strict measures, even during the Tokyo Olympics. Australia is now bracing for the expected rise in cases that reopening its borders to international travellers will bring.

Built on a deep economic relationship, solid people-to-people ties, close political links and a special strategic partnership, Australia and Japan have become mutually indispensable. Despite revolving-door politics in both countries, the relationship will be crucial to maintaining the global rules-based order as it comes under further pressure.

Proudly non-aligned, Indonesia never loses an opportunity to reiterate that it has no intention of choosing sides in the Indo-Pacific’s evolving great-power contest.

But that doesn’t mean it always treats both sides equitably.

Take the question of the regional arms race, about which Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, is evidently ‘deeply concerned’ and of which, it seems, the catalyst was Canberra’s announcement that Australia will acquire eight nuclear-powered submarines through the AUKUS pact with the United Kingdom and the United States over the coming decades.

The Indonesian government revealed its consternation in an official statement. It felt sufficiently disquieted to remind Australia, one of only two countries with which Indonesia has a comprehensive strategic partnership, of its non-proliferation and other international legal obligations and its commitments to preserving peace in line with ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.

Indonesian legislators were quick to pile on, affirming the argument that Australia’s prospective submarines threatened the neighbourhood’s peace and demanding that Indonesia confront Australia over the issue. Indonesian media commentators also tended to jump on this censorious bandwagon.

The issue has now generated enough political energy to drive Indonesia’s foreign ministry (Kemlu) to consider advocating a change to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) presumably aimed at preventing non-nuclear-weapon states, including Australia, from acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, which the NPT currently doesn’t block.

From Jakarta’s perspective, the problem appears not to be that Canberra is intent on breaching the letter of international arms treaties, but rather that it intends not to ‘abide by the spirit’ of them.

One area of concern is presumably the threat of diversion; that is, that the weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) used to fuel British, American and other nuclear submarines might end up in a nuclear weapons program.

Few Indonesians seem to believe that Australia would have such nefarious designs. The fear seems to be more that Australia’s acquisition of submarines of this specification would set a precedent that others less deserving of the benefit of such doubt would follow.

Another concern seems to relate to the implications of Australia’s acquisition for such issues as the proposed fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) if, as looks most likely, Australia builds submarines powered by HEU from the US’s slowly shrinking stockpile.

The impact of eight submarine reactors on US stocks might not be profound but it wouldn’t be negligible. Unless the US shifts to lowly enriched uranium (LEU)—which, ironically, is what France uses in the submarines of which Australia originally sought to build a conventional version—or to non-weapons-grade LEU+ fuel for its future generations of naval vessels, fuelling even eight new boats would accelerate the need for Washington to produce a new stock of HEU.

Such an outcome would not only fly in the face of Indonesia’s efforts to codify an FMCT. It would run counter to the US’s own stated interest in having such an instrument. Australia, too, has been an active player in negotiations on the FMCT, and officially remains committed to developing a viable regime to ‘reduce the amount of fissile material available for nuclear weapons’.

It would be tempting to dismiss Jakarta’s statement and subsequent comments on at least two grounds.

First, no matter how measured it might be, an official public statement implying that Australia needs to be reminded about keeping true to its non-proliferation obligations is excessive if the only prospective violation is in spirit rather than an actual breach.

Indonesia has rightly criticised Australian politicians for megaphone diplomacy in the past. In this case, Indonesia’s message was hardly blared out, but it was no less a performative gesture directed at a domestic constituency primed to hear its call.

The administration could easily have raised its worries through the closed diplomatic channels it normally insists Australia use when it has concerns with Indonesia. Given that Australia’s non-proliferation credentials are impeccable and that it has worked assiduously and in good faith on arms control instruments for decades, it has surely earned enough credit for Jakarta to have broached the matter in this way and spirit.

The second ground is the lack of evenhandedness.

Jakarta’s preoccupations with Australia’s long-term military aspirations evidently don’t equally extend to the actual behaviour of the other country with which Indonesia has a comprehensive strategic partnership: China.

Any observer scanning the horizon over Jakarta is more likely to spot a Chinese hypersonic missile than a comment from the Indonesian government that such a weapon system might constitute a clear and all too present danger to its hopes that the region won’t be caught up in an arms race.

Jakarta’s official statements (or lack thereof) instead suggest that it sees hypothetical Australian nuclear-powered submarines intended to carry only conventional weapons as somehow posing a more serious risk to regional peace and the international rules-based order than a new class of missile designed to carry a nuclear warhead out of China.

Indonesia could rightly counter that China, as a nuclear-weapon state under the NPT, has a right to arm itself with nuclear weapons—a prerogative that Australia, an NPT signatory in good standing, neither has nor seeks to achieve illicitly.

It could point to the fact that the US is also working on hypersonic missiles and that Australia is a willing partner in that endeavour.

So, Jakarta may justifiably argue, it would be inappropriate for it to ‘note cautiously’ China’s actions or remind it to adhere to its legal obligations, since its actions breach none of them.

But for a country seemingly so worried about Australia’s compliance with the spirit of arms control regimes, its silence on China’s activities in military technology and modernisation hardly suggests consistency.

This is doubly so in view of Indonesia’s criticism of the NPT nuclear-weapon states for failing to abide by their obligations to move towards disarmament, which historically it has articulated on behalf of the non-aligned movement in UN forums such as the Conference on Disarmament.

It would therefore be well aware that China is the only NPT nuclear-weapon state that is increasing its nuclear arsenal, which is surely an actual in-spirit breach, not just a prospective one.

Nothing reflects this distinction better than the reaction of Indonesia’s coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, Luhut Pandjaitan, to a contemporaneous issue with Kemlu’s AUKUS statement.

Responding to questions as to why Indonesia hadn’t reacted publicly to China’s apparent hydrographic surveying of the sea floor in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone near the Natuna Islands, Luhut stated, ‘We don’t feel we have issues with China.’

‘It’s like with your brothers and sisters,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you have problems but don’t make it into a big problem.’

That Luhut considers China’s continuing flagrant violation of Indonesia’s sovereignty as legitimised under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—another instrument, incidentally, to which Jakarta felt obliged to refer in its statement on Australia’s submarines—so little a problem that it warrants no official public response is noteworthy.

One can only speculate as to why arguably Indonesia’s most powerful person sees things this way.

Indonesia has long repudiated China’s nine-dash-line-based claims in the South China Sea as incongruous with UNCLOS. Spooked by China’s earlier actions near the Natunas, more recently it has cited the 2016 arbitral tribunal’s decision in a note verbale to the UN contradicting China’s claims. It has toiled in ASEAN to resist China’s efforts to bilateralise the South China Sea issue and to promote a just, UNCLOS-based solution.

Moreover, Indonesia’s accelerating efforts to modernise its military, especially its air and sea assets, as well as its defence cooperation with the US, are no less a response to China’s bullying in Indonesia’s northern approaches than Australia’s are.

So, to say that Indonesia hasn’t been balanced in its official response to the most recent Australian and Chinese actions is not to suggest that it has taken an intentional position on China’s side and against the US and its allies.

But by the same token it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that when it comes to comprehensive strategic partners, in Jakarta’s eyes one is more equal than the other; and that, for all the arguments about norms and ‘spirit’, the underlying explanation for the difference is realpolitik.

Jakarta knows it can get away scot-free with casting veiled aspersions about Australia’s behaviour as an international citizen in a way it can’t with its other close strategic partner.

Still, we shouldn’t let these inconsistencies on Jakarta’s part stop us from responding seriously to its concerns, which, while exaggerated and amplified by their transmission, aren’t theoretically invalid.

Indeed, it would be prudent for Canberra to go out of its way to assuage them. It should make a virtue of such a necessity by taking sensible measures (perhaps like those proposed by experts in the field) that would practically reiterate Australia’s commitments to non-proliferation.

And it should do so in as open, cooperative fashion—in the spirit of a close strategic partner.

When US President Bill Clinton backed China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, he suggested that the move would spark profound changes ‘from the inside out’. By joining the WTO, China would not simply be agreeing to import more American products; it would be ‘agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom’. And ‘the more China liberalizes its economy,’ Clinton predicted, ‘the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people.’

Reality has turned out to be far more complicated.

The notion that free trade leads inexorably to democracy didn’t begin with Clinton. His predecessor, George H.W. Bush, operated under the same assumption: ‘No nation on Earth has discovered a way to import the world’s goods and services while stopping foreign ideas at the border.’

Two decades after China’s WTO accession in 2001, its economy has reached the expected milestones. But it is nowhere near becoming a democracy, and American leaders have not only lost confidence in the presumed relationship between economic and political freedom, but now fear that Western democracy is vulnerable to Chinese influence.

As US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned last year, the free world should ‘change China, or China will change us’. Likewise, following last summer’s G7 summit, US President Joe Biden defined the struggle between Western democracies, led by the US, and China as ‘a contest with autocratic governments around the world’. In an echo of Cold War logic, the assumption now seems to be that there’s room for only one political system in town.

To some extent, China seems to subscribe to a similar worldview. It sees Western efforts to uphold human rights as a direct threat to its domestic political stability. China’s national sovereignty and ‘national dignity’ come first.

In any case, the US should be careful what it wishes for. China is a global power, with an economy that has fuelled growth and prosperity worldwide. If it were to experience a profound political transformation, the process might not be particularly peaceful, in which case the consequences would reverberate globally.

Of course, such a transformation will never come if the Chinese Communist Party can help it. The CCP has obliterated all such efforts, including the New Citizens’ Movement, headed by figures like the late intellectual Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison for promoting a pro-democracy charter. In 1989, Liu famously kept vigil to protect protesters at Tiananmen Square from another CCP action aimed at crushing a pro-democracy movement.

As uncomfortable as it may be for Westerners to admit, the CCP has successfully led China through one crisis after another: the 2002–03 SARS epidemic, the 2008 global financial meltdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, other Asian states that are not authoritarian also managed these crises well. Still, given China’s size and economic weight, these episodes could have been far more destabilising than they were.

This is not to say that no changes to China’s political system would be positive. Nor is it to suggest that the CCP will always manage to prevent change, or manage a crisis well (as its mishandling of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic suggests). Still, political systems are inherently dynamic and open to evolution. China’s economic success—which belies Max Weber’s assessment that Confucian cultures were incompatible with capitalism—is proof of that.

So far, the CPC has managed to build a version of capitalism that aligns with—and advances—its priorities, including the persistence of its political monopoly. Economic growth and development have given the one-party regime what the late political scientist Samuel Huntington called ‘performance legitimacy’. But this could turn out to be the CCP’s downfall, if China faces a sharp enough economic slump.

Even continued economic success could prove problematic for the CCP. Clinton and Bush were not totally off base in their belief that economic liberalisation can weaken a dictatorship: that’s what happened to Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain. Increased prosperity and exposure to the outside world can breed resentment in authoritarian countries.

That is why the CCP continues to resist full liberalisation and protect the state sector, despite high costs. It’s also a major reason why the party has ramped up its investment in internal security, with annual spending more than tripling since 2007. In 2017, China’s spending on internal security stood at ¥1.24 trillion (US$196 billion), higher by about ¥20 billion than its spending on military defence.

All this investment makes a revolution highly unlikely. Even dictatorships without such resources—think of Cuba or Iran—have often proved highly resilient. And even if, say, an internal coup occurred in China, there’s little reason to think that it would bring anything close to Western-style democracy.

Russia didn’t become such a democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union; on the contrary, President Vladimir Putin’s tenure has proven that authoritarian forces can easily survive ‘democratic transitions’. Russia’s experience (and enduring imperial ambitions) also puts the lie to the notion that regime change would spur China to stop challenging the US and its allies.

That challenge must be taken seriously. By advancing his imperial designs in East Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping has virtually abandoned China’s long-touted promise of a ‘peaceful rise’. He has also established a personality-driven neo-Maoist dictatorship. Attempts to force Xi’s regime to fulfill its human rights obligations could probably spur even more dangerous antagonism.

What the US doesn’t do to mitigate the security threat posed by China is as important as what it does. The Biden administration should continue building on recent progress in creating collective security arrangements, such as the AUKUS pact with the United Kingdom and Australia and the so-called Quad with Australia, India and Japan. What it should not do is perpetuate a Cold War–style zero-sum game aimed at forcing regime change in China.

The careful selection by Chinese leader Xi Jinping of military officers for rapid promotion to key positions in the People’s Liberation Army may signal both a wish to consolidate the military behind him and a concern about emerging security challenges in China’s far western regions.

While the global focus in recent weeks has been on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and then the announcement of the AUKUS pact, the PLA’s personnel dynamics are an important indicator of China’s geostrategic priorities and Xi’s political status that should not be ignored.

As chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi has aimed to build what he’s called a ‘patron–client relationship’ by rapidly promoting young generals and putting them in important positions to win their loyalty, which can further strengthen his control of the military.

In July, Xi promoted four senior officers to general, the highest rank for officers in active service. It’s notable that Southern Theatre commander Wang Xiubin, Western Theatre commander Xu Qiling, Army commander Liu Zhenli and Strategic Support Force commander Ju Qiansheng are all from the army.

In September, Xi promoted five more generals, Western Theatre commander Wang Haijiang, Central Theatre commander Lin Xiangyang, PLA Navy commander Dong Jun, PLA Air Force commander Chang Dingqiu and National Defence University president Xu Xueqiang.

Despite the common view that China’s navy is the primary service being modernised, the Eastern and Southern Theatre Commands are the PLA’s strategic focus, and most of the recently promoted generals are from the army. Since 2016, when Xi began reforming the military, he has promoted 39 generals, 20 from the army, 10 from the air force, and only four from the navy.

There may be more vacancies in the army and air force because they assist other services such as the People’s Armed Police (PAP) and the Strategic Support Force (PLASSF). Most PAP generals come from the army, and PLASSF generals tend to have an air force background (see figure 1).

Figure 1: PLA promotions to general by service, 2016 to 2021

Generals from China’s western regions have been the most likely to be promoted. Since 2016, Xi has promoted 15 theatre commanders and theatre political commissars. Five generals were from the Western Command, three were from each of the Southern and Central Commands, and two were from the Eastern and Northern Commands (see figure 2).

Figure 2: PLA promotions to general by theatre command, 2016 to 2021

Six of the nine generals promoted in July and September rose from the rank of lieutenant general within two years. Seven were born after 1962, so they’ll be under 60 in 2022 after the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th national congress.

The selection of these officers is relevant to the military and regional security but also to the party.

The army still plays an important part in military modernisation due to its external strategic focus, its role in maintaining internal stability, and historical factors.

With its vast land borders, China has faced more disputes and threats on its northwestern frontier than from its southeastern maritime approaches since the imperial period.

These geostrategic and historical factors led imperial China to emphasise defending its western regions, and the PLA has had a traditional focus on land defence rather than coastal defence. Even as China has gradually expanded its maritime activities beyond the so-called first island chain, it still sees ensuring internal stability as a priority to keep the CCP in power.

Since the armed police were moved fully under the Central Military Commission’s control in 2018, there’s been deeper cooperation between the PLA and the PAP aimed at ensuring internal stability. This underscores the army’s importance in land defence during wartime and in strengthening the PAP in times of peace.

China’s Southern Theatre Command faces the possibility of disputes and conflict with regional countries in the South China Sea, but the Western Command is responsible for dealing with any possible external threat, such as from India, and internal instability in regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet.

That both Western Theatre commanders and political commissars are being selected for promotion suggests Beijing is focusing on emerging security challenges in its far western regions.

Media reporting notes that General Li Fengbiao is political commissar of the Western Command. That places a general in an important party position and strengthens the political commissar’s influence in the command.

For the CCP, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’ (槍桿子出政權) is the iron rule left by Mao Zedong, and ‘The party commands the gun’ (黨指揮槍) has become a benchmark since then. Although Xi has successfully removed the previous power structure by cleaning up the ‘four big tigers’ with his military reforms, controlling the military is still the most important issue for him to ensure his political status in his third term.

If Xi can continue to dish out rapid promotions to generals he selects, beyond the PLA’s practice, that can help keep his political power and status relatively stable.

These developments, especially Xi’s focus on the Western Theatre Command, may mean he is placing a greater emphasis on meeting internal security threats than on any external conflict.

But Xi has pledged to resolve the Taiwan issue in his term as leader. If the instability in western China continues or escalates, he may respond to a more contested security outlook in East Asia by promoting rising nationalism to ease domestic pressure.

On the other hand, if China stabilises both relations with the West and the situation in Central Asia, Xi may be confident that he can fully focus on unifying Taiwan by 2027, which is the PLA’s 100th anniversary and the year of the 21st party congress.