China’s annual national political gatherings, known as the two sessions (‘lianghui’ (两会)), held earlier this month in Beijing, have drawn attention across the international community, in part due to China’s growing military and technological power.

Lianghui consists of two committees: the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC). Under the Chinese constitution, NPC members at all levels are elected from within the Chinese Communist Party and are responsible for policymaking. The CPPCC is composed of members from within and outside the CCP and is responsible for submitting policy proposals but not policymaking. The process is highly formalised and the NPC is commonly described as a rubber-stamping body by media outside China.

Key policies made by the NPC this year included a decision that further strengthened Beijing’s control over Hong Kong by constraining people’s participation in politics. ‘One country, two systems’ is no longer applicable to the region.

The NPC also delivered the outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan, which lays out the Chinese political agenda for the period from 2021 to 2025 and gives a brief overview of Beijing’s long-range objectives through to 2035. Government news agency Xinhua reported that under the plan, ‘high-quality development’ (高质量发展) is now the theme of China’s socioeconomic growth. Advancing and being independent on technology, for instance, will be the centre of China’s national development strategy. Responding to climate change is also a lynchpin of the plan as China strives to dominate the global renewable energy industry.

The meetings also included the announcement of a 6.8% increase in the national defence budget compared to the previous year, bringing total spending to US$209 billion. To reflect President Xi Jinping’s guideline to the People’s Liberation Army to ‘ensure the political loyalty of the armed forces’, ‘strengthen them through reform, science and technology’ and ‘run them in accordance with law’, the budget increase is to accelerate the pace of modernising the PLA as well as reform military training by establishing a new system for personnel.

The budget increase also indicates that China’s regional security concerns are growing, including cross-strait issues with Taiwan, disputes in the South and East China Seas, and escalating competition with the United States.

It’s important to note that official Chinese figures never reveal total defence spending, so the actual amount is probably considerably higher than US$209 billion. Estimates made by think tanks SIPRI and IISS have significantly exceeded the Chinese government’s published figures in past years.

CSIS analysis highlights that China’s increase in defence spending ‘continues to enable the buildup of its military capabilities that pose a threat to the interests of the US and its allies’, and ‘has shifted the military balance in the region in its favor’.

A key part of this trend is the rapid transformation of the PLA Navy from a brown-water coastal fleet into a blue-water global navy. China is ‘going global’ and seeks to establish a Chinese-led, post-US international order. Having a blue-water navy is seen as vital in this endeavour, and China’s 2015 defence white paper makes this clear.

Sometime in the past five years, the PLAN exceeded the US Navy in its numbers of battle force ships, according to leading China naval analyst Andrew Erickson, with the PLAN deploying 360 ships and expected to reach 400 by 2025. The US Navy, by contrast, has around 300 battle force ships and is aiming for a fleet of 355, though there are no actual timelines for achieving that goal and funding remains uncertain.

Add to this China’s maritime militia—which operates as an effective naval auxiliary force—and the China Coast Guard, and the fleet size doubles. The coastguard includes many former PLAN vessels that have been reallocated to roles parallel to navy operations. China’s new law enabling the coastguard to take a more aggressive posture within the first island chain has increased the military’s capacity for naval and maritime security operations in the near seas.

China’s main strategic areas of interest, centred around Taiwan, are relatively close to the coast and allow support from the PLA Air Force and PLA Rocket Force, giving China some distinct military advantages in this region. These advantages will continue to grow if the United States and its allies don’t act quickly to address the growing quantitative naval gap.

This year’s boost to defence spending means that the Chinese government can continue the rapid build-up of naval capability and also invest in closing remaining qualitative gaps with the US. There are also concerns that China could surge shipbuilding in the lead-up to a crisis, perhaps in the next few years over Taiwan. Erickson argues, ‘In conflict, excess PRC industrial capacity, including additional commercial shipyards, could be quickly turned toward military production and repair, further increasing China’s ability to generate new military forces.’

There seems to be little evidence of a ‘guns or butter’ debate emerging in China. The CCP is determined to pursue prosperity and military power—a ‘rich country with a strong army’—to realise the ‘China dream’. Naval modernisation and expansion are part of this effort, but equally important is the pursuit of advanced technologies that could then lend themselves to new military capabilities and ‘intelligentised warfare’. With the incorporation of such technologies, the PLAN of 2035 is likely to be larger, more powerful and able to exploit new approaches to warfare.

After months of planning, the World Health Organization team charged with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic finally arrived in China on 14 January. The international scientists are in the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected just over a year ago, and hope to ‘engage in and review scientific research with their Chinese counterparts on the origins of the virus’.

The WHO considers this investigation to be a ‘priority mission’ in global efforts to prevent future infectious disease outbreaks. However, the WHO research team faces serious challenges in seeking ‘truth from facts’ because the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping’s leadership forcefully guards official narratives against critical commentary, especially when it comes from the international community.

A study conducted by the European Union shows that China has used state-owned media outlets and social media to spread disinformation on Covid-19 in an attempt to discredit Western nations and to bolster its own reputation. Chinese diplomats have used official social media accounts to promote alternative theories on Covid-19’s origin and to deny that Beijing initially tried to cover up the outbreak in China. As a way to deflect attention from the origins of Covid-19 and its overall lack of transparency on the pandemic, China has showcased its own domestic efforts to curtail the virus’s outbreak and focused on ‘face mask and vaccine diplomacy’ in sending much-needed medical supplies to countries in dire need.

The party-state’s use of the media and state institutions to obfuscate and misdirect isn’t new and isn’t confined to Covid-19. The recent announcement of the EU–China investment deal is widely seen as an attempt to draw attention away from issues such as China’s egregious human rights record, including the use of prison labour to produce commercial goods, and the brute force Beijing has used against the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

China’s sensitivity about any domestic criticism that it could have done more in the early stages of the pandemic is reflected in the recent trial of citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan, who was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ by posting early reports that alerted people to the seriousness of the emerging health crisis and criticised Chinese authorities’ initial handling of the outbreak.

Beijing’s attempts to reshape the narrative of where the disease originated by using its court and penal systems demonstrate the lengths it will go to to protect the CCP’s image. Xi’s CCP security and legal apparatus is primed to intervene whenever a matter is deemed ‘politically sensitive’. In this context, there’s virtually no reasonable prospect of a Chinese court not upholding the party’s official narratives—such as on the origins of Covid-19 or in relation to ideology.

Under the cover of the pandemic, Beijing exercised direct control over political dissent through its security organs and courts. Citizens are further disciplined through the social credit system, a hyperextended version of Foucault’s panoptic gaze that promotes ‘self-censorship’. The CCP’s 2014 ‘Decision on some major issues in the comprehensive promotion of ruling the country according to law’ allows the party to penetrate all aspects of the country’s governance, and under Xi’s supreme command, the CCP no longer ignores any challenge to official narratives.

Control of political dissent using the legal system is not new; what is new in the Xi era is the pursuit of total compliance—including the eradication all dissent—using the state’s security organs and courts as instruments of the party to legitimise its narratives.

Even so, can the CCP effectively protect its political narratives to prevent the WHO, on behalf of the international community and China’s own citizens, from determining what really happened in Wuhan? And will the WHO, and the international community, allow themselves to be cowed by the CCP? This is a fundamental issue that must be urgently addressed.

China’s obfuscation campaigns—on Covid, on its human rights record and on its elimination of internal dissent—present a formidable diplomatic test for the new US administration. President Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have already determined that establishing formal dialogues about China with American allies is among the administration’s foremost priorities in the coming months.

However, it’s not yet clear whether the Biden administration understands the full extent of China’s willingness to protect and defend CCP narratives. Part of the administration’s learning curve will be to comprehend the magnitude of and counter China’s disinformation campaigns on all fronts.

Against this highly charged political backdrop, the WHO investigation into the origins of Covid-19 is likely to find truth to be elusive. Yet Chinese citizen journalists and doctors dedicated to protecting public health have shown that their determination to reveal what they do know hasn’t been totally eliminated, even though the CCP commands the gun. In spite of the risk of severe punishment, citizens of China remain willing to go to great lengths to counter official narratives they do not believe in. The WHO investigation team, and the international community more broadly, must be willing to counter any narrative that obscures the origins of Covid-19.

Originally published 12 September 2020.

What is China trying to achieve by its sudden lurch to a bullying, ‘wolf warrior’ global stance? For all the billions of dollars of intelligence hardware and software pointed at Beijing right now, the reality is that Xi Jinping’s strategic thinking is a black box.

The leadership intent of the Chinese Communist Party must be glimpsed through opaque speeches, the coded signals of coercive behaviour and the increasingly unhinged statements of China’s diplomats and party-controlled media.

Whatever Xi thinks he’s doing, the outcome is, on the face of it, disastrous for China’s long-term strategic interests. China has never had many, or indeed any, close friends internationally, but in less than a year the wolf warriors have irretrievably trashed whatever trust Beijing may have had as a trading, investment and research partner around the world.

This is a remarkable achievement. In a divided America, opposition to China is the one policy uniting Republicans and Democrats. Beijing’s bad behaviour has produced a consensus in the European Union and Britain to push back, has given ASEAN a stronger common purpose and has ignited in Australia a determination to ‘step up’ in the Pacific and spend more on defence.

Here’s one measure of how quickly and dramatically things have changed: on 20 January this year, John Howard chaired the ‘sixth annual Australia–China High Level Dialogue’ sponsored by the Foreign Affairs Department, whose press release claimed that ‘the Dialogue will help strengthen partnerships and friendships, maintain trust, and develop deeper understanding between Australia and China’.

Eight months later, not one word of that sentence could be applied to our relationship with China. Even China’s rusted-on Australian cheer squad is losing vigour in claiming that it’s Canberra’s lack of pragmatic wordsmithing that is causing the rift.

Had China continued down the Deng Xiaoping–mandated path of ‘Hide your capacities, bide your time’, I’m no longer sure that Australia would have been able to muster the collective willpower to prevent the wholesale compromising of our economy, political system, critical infrastructure, universities and business community—such was the attraction of Chinese money.

In reality, Covid-19 and wolf-warrior coercion were the wake-up call we needed, but that still leaves the essential puzzle about why it is that Beijing abandoned a strategy that was delivering its objectives and replaced it with an approach that is damaging its position.

I suggest that three broad factors are shaping Xi’s strategic thinking. Understanding these factors will help us define our policy responses and anticipate what happens next.

The first factor is that CCP policymaking is increasingly centred on one person—Xi Jinping. Through regular purges of the party and the People’s Liberation Army since 2012, Xi has removed political opponents, made himself the commander-in-chief of the military and the central driver of policy in every area from the South China Sea to the Belt and Road Initiative to the pandemic response.

If there is a centre of coordinated opposition to Xi’s policy inside the party, it is not readily visible. What is known as the ‘recentralisation’ of authority within the CCP is turning into a cult of personality around Xi.

There are clear dangers in such an approach. What senior party figure would or could approach Xi to tell him that the wolf-warrior tactic is damaging the party’s global interests? The most likely result would be that an internal critic would be purged from any position of influence.

Xi’s political instincts have been honed by his own experience of seeing his father, Xi Zhongxun, a heroic figure in the early history of the CCP, persecuted and jailed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Xi was himself exiled to a rural province at that time.

It is tempting to think that Xi’s authoritarian style is partly motivated by a determination not to be purged like his father. His leadership is also informed by deep ideological schooling in Marxist–Leninist ideology—a reality too easily dismissed in the West.

Xi has, in effect, brought Leninist authoritarianism into the 21st-century world of artificial intelligence and all-seeing surveillance. Having embarked on a path to consolidate all power to himself, it is difficult to see how Xi can break from his current course of action. In effect, that means China’s more assertive and uncompromising approach in the world will be here for as long as Xi remains in power.

The second factor shaping Xi’s approach is that, overwhelmingly, what matters to him is strengthening the position of the CCP inside China. How the wider world reacts to Beijing’s actions is vastly less important.

This helps to explain why China really has no interest in negative international responses to the militarisation and de facto annexation of the South China Sea; the trashing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong; or the egregious human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and elsewhere.

What matters most to the party is how its actions are perceived by the Chinese people. Asserting control over these areas plays well to a highly nationalistic domestic audience.

Beijing’s increasingly inflammatory rhetoric about defeating ‘separatism’ in Taiwan, by use of military force if necessary, may be seen by the wider world to be destabilising Asian security, but inside China it rallies popular support around the party.

At a time when the CCP is being criticised domestically for its mismanagement of the early stages of Covid-19 and is failing to deliver economic growth to achieve better living standards, stoking nationalist sentiment helps consolidate party control.

To China’s leaders, a second-order player like Australia should, ideally, just shut up. As foreign minister Yang Jiechi dismissively told his Singaporean counterpart in 2010: ‘China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.’

This combination of an overwhelming priority on domestic affairs and a barely disguised contempt for the opinions of ‘small countries’ leaves Beijing angry and frustrated at the audacity of other nations wanting to pursue their own interests.

One example of this mindset in operation is Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ claim that Australia engaged in ‘blatant obstruction and interference in China’s normal law enforcement’, by bringing journalists Bill Birtles and Mike Smith home last week.

Let’s be clear: Birtles and Smith weren’t smuggled out of the country; they left on a commercial flight after being questioned by local police. But how dare a small country question the CCP’s right to snatch people off the streets, hold them indefinitely without charge and put them before a legal system thoroughly beholden to party priorities.

The point for Australia is simply that, short of complete capitulation of our interests and values, there is nothing Canberra can do or say that will avoid China’s criticism.

This needs to be understood by elements of the Australian business and university sectors that persist in thinking Beijing’s behaviour is somehow the result of our actions—like the claim by one commentator in The Australian last week that China is ‘ruthlessly exploited’ because we are forcing them ‘to pay exorbitant prices for iron ore’. Seriously? So much for supply and demand.

There is one exception to the claim that no external power is more important to China than Beijing’s domestic priorities and that is, of course, the United States. What America does matters profoundly to China, not least because for perhaps the next five to 10 years the US retains the military balance of power.

Much of China’s international behaviour is shaped by judgements of how America will react. In the case of the South China Sea, once it became clear to Beijing that the Obama administration wasn’t going to actively oppose its island building, the opposition of Southeast Asia, Australia and other countries was immaterial.

In that context, the most important potential flashpoint to watch in coming months is Taiwan, and specifically whether Washington has any appetite to prevent China’s efforts to isolate and predate Taipei.

The third factor shaping China’s switch to the wolf-warrior approach is that Xi has concluded that coercion works. Research published by ASPI last week identified 152 cases of Chinese coercive diplomacy over the past decade applied to 27 countries and many businesses.

The actions China was seeking to punish or deter included engaging with Taiwan in ways not approved by Beijing, holding meetings with the Dalai Lama, blocking Huawei’s 5G technology and seeking investigations into the Chinese origins of Covid-19.

In many cases, and particularly in instances when Beijing was threatening businesses, the reality is that the coercion worked.

The lesson for Beijing is that access to its economy is a powerful lever for countries and businesses alike and threats to constrain access to the Chinese market can indeed force changes to behaviour that benefit China.

The lesson for Australia and all democracies is that making concessions to Beijing’s wolf-warrior behaviours will only encourage more coercion.

In my assessment, this undermines the argument that Australia should somehow try to plot a ‘middle course’ between the US and China. Beijing’s current approach doesn’t leave room for the possibility that countries can shape a course that is in any way different from China’s definition of what the right behaviour should be.

Based on this assessment of Chinese strategic motivations, it is highly likely that Beijing’s more assertive approach will continue if Xi stays in office. That is going to hurt Australia, but the only mitigation is to reduce our economic dependence on China.

It is desperately important for Australian interests that whoever is the American president after November, the US sets down a set of clear red lines on Chinese behaviour on Taiwan and Asian security more widely.

Finally, Australia needs to keep accelerating the pace of our own military plans, especially adding to our deterrent capacity with sufficient hitting power to raise the costs and challenges for any potential aggressor that might wish to do us harm.

What is China trying to achieve by its sudden lurch to a bullying, ‘wolf warrior’ global stance? For all the billions of dollars of intelligence hardware and software pointed at Beijing right now, the reality is that Xi Jinping’s strategic thinking is a black box.

The leadership intent of the Chinese Communist Party must be glimpsed through opaque speeches, the coded signals of coercive behaviour and the increasingly unhinged statements of China’s diplomats and party-controlled media.

Whatever Xi thinks he’s doing, the outcome is, on the face of it, disastrous for China’s long-term strategic interests. China has never had many, or indeed any, close friends internationally, but in less than a year the wolf warriors have irretrievably trashed whatever trust Beijing may have had as a trading, investment and research partner around the world.

This is a remarkable achievement. In a divided America, opposition to China is the one policy uniting Republicans and Democrats. Beijing’s bad behaviour has produced a consensus in the European Union and Britain to push back, has given ASEAN a stronger common purpose and has ignited in Australia a determination to ‘step up’ in the Pacific and spend more on defence.

Here’s one measure of how quickly and dramatically things have changed: on 20 January this year, John Howard chaired the ‘sixth annual Australia–China High Level Dialogue’ sponsored by the Foreign Affairs Department, whose press release claimed that ‘the Dialogue will help strengthen partnerships and friendships, maintain trust, and develop deeper understanding between Australia and China’.

Eight months later, not one word of that sentence could be applied to our relationship with China. Even China’s rusted-on Australian cheer squad is losing vigour in claiming that it’s Canberra’s lack of pragmatic wordsmithing that is causing the rift.

Had China continued down the Deng Xiaoping–mandated path of ‘Hide your capacities, bide your time’, I’m no longer sure that Australia would have been able to muster the collective willpower to prevent the wholesale compromising of our economy, political system, critical infrastructure, universities and business community—such was the attraction of Chinese money.

In reality, Covid-19 and wolf-warrior coercion were the wake-up call we needed, but that still leaves the essential puzzle about why it is that Beijing abandoned a strategy that was delivering its objectives and replaced it with an approach that is damaging its position.

I suggest that three broad factors are shaping Xi’s strategic thinking. Understanding these factors will help us define our policy responses and anticipate what happens next.

The first factor is that CCP policymaking is increasingly centred on one person—Xi Jinping. Through regular purges of the party and the People’s Liberation Army since 2012, Xi has removed political opponents, made himself the commander-in-chief of the military and the central driver of policy in every area from the South China Sea to the Belt and Road Initiative to the pandemic response.

If there is a centre of coordinated opposition to Xi’s policy inside the party, it is not readily visible. What is known as the ‘recentralisation’ of authority within the CCP is turning into a cult of personality around Xi.

There are clear dangers in such an approach. What senior party figure would or could approach Xi to tell him that the wolf-warrior tactic is damaging the party’s global interests? The most likely result would be that an internal critic would be purged from any position of influence.

Xi’s political instincts have been honed by his own experience of seeing his father, Xi Zhongxun, a heroic figure in the early history of the CCP, persecuted and jailed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Xi was himself exiled to a rural province at that time.

It is tempting to think that Xi’s authoritarian style is partly motivated by a determination not to be purged like his father. His leadership is also informed by deep ideological schooling in Marxist–Leninist ideology—a reality too easily dismissed in the West.

Xi has, in effect, brought Leninist authoritarianism into the 21st-century world of artificial intelligence and all-seeing surveillance. Having embarked on a path to consolidate all power to himself, it is difficult to see how Xi can break from his current course of action. In effect, that means China’s more assertive and uncompromising approach in the world will be here for as long as Xi remains in power.

The second factor shaping Xi’s approach is that, overwhelmingly, what matters to him is strengthening the position of the CCP inside China. How the wider world reacts to Beijing’s actions is vastly less important.

This helps to explain why China really has no interest in negative international responses to the militarisation and de facto annexation of the South China Sea; the trashing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong; or the egregious human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and elsewhere.

What matters most to the party is how its actions are perceived by the Chinese people. Asserting control over these areas plays well to a highly nationalistic domestic audience.

Beijing’s increasingly inflammatory rhetoric about defeating ‘separatism’ in Taiwan, by use of military force if necessary, may be seen by the wider world to be destabilising Asian security, but inside China it rallies popular support around the party.

At a time when the CCP is being criticised domestically for its mismanagement of the early stages of Covid-19 and is failing to deliver economic growth to achieve better living standards, stoking nationalist sentiment helps consolidate party control.

To China’s leaders, a second-order player like Australia should, ideally, just shut up. As foreign minister Yang Jiechi dismissively told his Singaporean counterpart in 2010: ‘China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.’

This combination of an overwhelming priority on domestic affairs and a barely disguised contempt for the opinions of ‘small countries’ leaves Beijing angry and frustrated at the audacity of other nations wanting to pursue their own interests.

One example of this mindset in operation is Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ claim that Australia engaged in ‘blatant obstruction and interference in China’s normal law enforcement’, by bringing journalists Bill Birtles and Mike Smith home last week.

Let’s be clear: Birtles and Smith weren’t smuggled out of the country; they left on a commercial flight after being questioned by local police. But how dare a small country question the CCP’s right to snatch people off the streets, hold them indefinitely without charge and put them before a legal system thoroughly beholden to party priorities.

The point for Australia is simply that, short of complete capitulation of our interests and values, there is nothing Canberra can do or say that will avoid China’s criticism.

This needs to be understood by elements of the Australian business and university sectors that persist in thinking Beijing’s behaviour is somehow the result of our actions—like the claim by one commentator in The Australian last week that China is ‘ruthlessly exploited’ because we are forcing them ‘to pay exorbitant prices for iron ore’. Seriously? So much for supply and demand.

There is one exception to the claim that no external power is more important to China than Beijing’s domestic priorities and that is, of course, the United States. What America does matters profoundly to China, not least because for perhaps the next five to 10 years the US retains the military balance of power.

Much of China’s international behaviour is shaped by judgements of how America will react. In the case of the South China Sea, once it became clear to Beijing that the Obama administration wasn’t going to actively oppose its island building, the opposition of Southeast Asia, Australia and other countries was immaterial.

In that context, the most important potential flashpoint to watch in coming months is Taiwan, and specifically whether Washington has any appetite to prevent China’s efforts to isolate and predate Taipei.

The third factor shaping China’s switch to the wolf-warrior approach is that Xi has concluded that coercion works. Research published by ASPI last week identified 152 cases of Chinese coercive diplomacy over the past decade applied to 27 countries and many businesses.

The actions China was seeking to punish or deter included engaging with Taiwan in ways not approved by Beijing, holding meetings with the Dalai Lama, blocking Huawei’s 5G technology and seeking investigations into the Chinese origins of Covid-19.

In many cases, and particularly in instances when Beijing was threatening businesses, the reality is that the coercion worked.

The lesson for Beijing is that access to its economy is a powerful lever for countries and businesses alike and threats to constrain access to the Chinese market can indeed force changes to behaviour that benefit China.

The lesson for Australia and all democracies is that making concessions to Beijing’s wolf-warrior behaviours will only encourage more coercion.

In my assessment, this undermines the argument that Australia should somehow try to plot a ‘middle course’ between the US and China. Beijing’s current approach doesn’t leave room for the possibility that countries can shape a course that is in any way different from China’s definition of what the right behaviour should be.

Based on this assessment of Chinese strategic motivations, it is highly likely that Beijing’s more assertive approach will continue if Xi stays in office. That is going to hurt Australia, but the only mitigation is to reduce our economic dependence on China.

It is desperately important for Australian interests that whoever is the American president after November, the US sets down a set of clear red lines on Chinese behaviour on Taiwan and Asian security more widely.

Finally, Australia needs to keep accelerating the pace of our own military plans, especially adding to our deterrent capacity with sufficient hitting power to raise the costs and challenges for any potential aggressor that might wish to do us harm.