Tag Archive for: Xi Jinping

Whatever the CCP says, regimes don’t have the rights of nations

All nation states have a right to defend themselves. But do regimes enjoy an equal right to self-defence? Is the security of a particular party-in-power a fundamental right of nations? The Chinese government is asking us to answer in the affirmative. Australians need to say no.

As a governing regime, the Chinese Communist Party claims many of the prerogatives of a nation state. This includes a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force—Max Weber’s classic definition of a state.

As the world adjusts to the rise of China, its leaders want us to make way for the CCP’s triumphal arrival as the regime that made it all possible. This includes recognition of the party’s right to self-preservation on par with the rights of nations.

The United Nations Charter affirms the sovereign equality of member states, including their right to preserve their territorial integrity and political independence, free from force or coercion, and to resist external interference in their domestic jurisdictions.

Nothing in the UN Charter or associated documents, however, commits member nations to recognising the same rights for regimes. This places authoritarian regimes such as the CCP at a geopolitical disadvantage in seeking international recognition commensurate with their wealth, power and prestige.

Regime competition runs on a different track to international geopolitical competition, Yale scholar Nicholas Bequelin recently observed in Foreign Policy. The liberal rules-based order of the postwar period lends greater legitimacy to democratic states than to autocratic ones. This hampers the CCP’s search for recognition as a particularistic regime with security interests that serve not only the country but the party and its desire for self-preservation. The motives driving China’s adversarial relationship with the United States, Bequelin concludes, ‘are to be found in the imperatives of regime competition rather than in pure geopolitical calculations.’

The quest for regime security does not end with a geopolitical victory here or there. No authoritarian regime can rest easy until the world beyond itself is rendered safe for the pre-emptive defence of regime security. So current great-power competition is not just a matter of ideological competition within a stable geopolitical system; it involves reframing the system to treat regime security and national security with equal legitimacy.

CCP leaders are moving to reduce their relative disadvantage by altering the terms of international engagement. One of Beijing’s goals in its commitment to new international groupings is to insert commitments to the equal rights of regimes into public declarations. For example, the BRICS security agenda is taking shape around CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative (GSI), which equates regime security with national security. The 16th BRICS summit concluded on 24 October last year with the release of its Kazan Declaration a security document that had strong similarities the GSI, which was first spelled out by Xi at the 2022 Boao Forum.

Key phrases in the Kazan Declaration clearly align with the principles of the GSI. One of these is the acknowledgement of the equality of the ‘legitimate and reasonable security concerns’ of all countries. The phrase appears anodyne, but it is lifted directly from Xi’s GSI, where its significance is clear from context.

Beijing initially deployed this phrase to justify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, based on the allegedly ‘legitimate and reasonable security concern’ that an independent Ukraine posed a security threat to Russia. China could offer similar justifications for its claims over Taiwan and adjacent Japanese territories or its contested maritime claims in the South China Sea.

That’s just the start. In current Chinese usage, the term ‘legitimate and reasonable security concerns’ refers not only to conventional security issues to do with territory and sovereignty, nor even to non-traditional security concerns around climate, energy, water, pandemics and the like. It also includes the CCP’s concerns around its own security, which it equates with the national and international security interests of China. What is to be preserved here is the power and standing of the party.

Concern for regime security has long featured in CCP foreign policy thinking, but the international implications of this concern have only fully emerged under Xi. This began with a heightened focus on regime security at home. Starting in 2014, Xi transformed Beijing’s approach to internal security by drafting a National Security Framework which, as analyst Sheena Chestnut Greitens points out, is China’s first-ever national security strategy.

The Xi administration also introduced tough new security laws, systematically purging and restructuring the national security system and working to perfect a massive ‘sentinel state’ apparatus capable of preserving the power and status of the party indefinitely. Now, Greitens argues, Xi is applying China’s domestic security framework to foreign policy with a view to reshaping the regional and global security order, ensuring the party’s domestic grip remains as secure abroad as it is on home soil.

It follows that ‘legitimate and reasonable security concerns’ refers, among other things, to the security interests of the CCP regime and the overlapping cluster of security initiatives that flow from party concerns. These initiatives include silencing dissent outside its borders through transnational repression and forcing national governments into line through economic coercion.

This security setting led the party’s official representatives to issue guidelines to Australia’s federal government—the Fourteen Grievances—about what can and cannot be said about the CCP in Australian media and by think tanks and government. Even after relations stabilised, party authorities tracked individuals and communities in Australia by activating surveillance systems initially designed to secure the party’s grip on China.

Recognising regime security as a right of nations would essentially legitimise economic coercion, transnational repression, censorship and covert interference of this kind.

As rights of authoritarian parties are unrecognised in international norms and institutions, elevating the security concerns of a Leninist political party to the level of nation states is no easy matter. But, as Xi reminds us, prevailing norms and institutions are up for grabs in times of ‘great changes unseen in a century.’ Democratic states need to preserve the equal sovereignty of nations, as distinct from regimes.

No, it’s not new. Russia and China have been best buddies for decades

Maybe people are only just beginning to notice the close alignment of Russia and China. It’s discussed as a sudden new phenomenon in world affairs, but in fact it’s not new at all.

The two countries have been each other’s most important diplomatic partner since no later than 2002, according to my research. Throughout this period, Russia has been central to China’s building of an alternative world order.

Based on the structured way the Chinese foreign ministry publishes incoming and outgoing diplomatic visits, I built a database that covers the presidential periods of Hu Jintao (2002–2012) and Xi Jinping (2012–present). My clearest finding was the dominance of Sino-Russian exchanges. The graph below shows the trend in Russia-China visits.

Russia-China visits (ministerial or higher) listed by the Chinese foreign ministry. Source: author.

This decades-old habit of intense interactions remained stable after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Beijing and Moscow’s similarly bleak view of the international order cannot be undone by a few trips of some eager European ministers to China or a few ill-thought-out US concessions to Russia.

The intimate nature of president-to-president ties is clear. Beyond the period covered by the database, there has been a state visit in one direction or the other every year since 1999. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, a Russian president went on a state visit to China every even year, and every uneven year a Chinese president went to Russia. The exceptions are Xi’s extra visit to Moscow in 2015, officially called mere ‘attendance’, for the World War II victory parade. And there were no visits either way during the Covid-19 pandemic. Both Hu and Xi made their first foreign visit as president to Moscow.

There is no other country that has a diplomatic relationship with China like this. Russia is the top outgoing destination during Hu Jintao’s and Xi Jinping’s presidential terms. Russia was the top source of incoming visits for Hu’s two terms; it ranked second or third for Xi’s first two terms and, so far, for his third term, too. Few foreign officials have led delegations to China as often as Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

My data shows that Russia has been China’s most important diplomatic partner throughout the governments of Hu and Xi. Observers are right to point to the personal relationship Xi and Putin have developed—one that includes birthday phone calls. However, the empirical data shows that interaction was equally intense when Dmitry Medvedev was president of Russia and under the supposedly less assertively nationalist Hu.

Beyond diplomatic visits, Russia is fundamental to Beijing’s alternative world order. It has always been an important member of international groupings that Beijing began constructing from the 1990s onwards, including the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

China’s views on international order have developed a more global perspective over the years. Starting with the East Asia Summit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nearer to home, China now reaches the entire developing world through groupings such as BRICS+. Russia was always there—often to back up Beijing’s camp.

Now this expanding horizon is reaching Europe.

China’s long-term solution for what it still stubbornly calls ‘the Ukraine crisis’ overlaps with elements of Russia’s view of regional order. Within days of 24 February 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi presented a ‘Five-Point Position’ that called for the formation of a ‘balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism’.

Wang linked the conflict’s ‘complex historical context’ to the ‘principle of indivisible security’. This Cold War-era idea evolved into a phrase first used by the Soviet Union and now by Russia to claim that NATO expansion infringes on its sovereignty. Chinese officials, too, have since 2022 repeatedly described US Indo-Pacific policy as a ‘NATO of the Asia-Pacific’ that risks triggering the same ‘disaster’ as NATO supposedly did in Europe.

At his press conference following the parliament meeting in Beijing, Wang said no third party could influence the friendly ties between China and Russia. The data backs him up. The relationship has been at the core of Chinese efforts to strike out in the world.

Despite massive historical differences between the Sino-Soviet split and today, the data shows that the practical situation on the ground is durable and sustainable. China’s diplomatic ties with Russia have not quantitatively increased or decreased significantly since February 2022. In contrast, my data shows that after 2014 diplomatic interactions between China and Ukraine declined.

Xi—who has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky only once—told Putin during his most recent state visit in 2023 that Russia and China were driving ‘changes unseen in a hundred years’, which he links to his Chinese Dream.

In Xi and Putin’s world, there may be room for Donald Trump. But there is no place for the rules-based international order that many countries depend on. Western capitals and Washington pundits need to realise this is not a whim; Russia has consistently been China’s most important diplomatic partner.

Why the China model is failing

The authoritarian China model under President Xi Jinping’s leadership is facing increasing failure. Its most critical flaw lies in the unconstrained power of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), arbitrarily intervening in market and social activities for the interest of itself or its leaders without robust mechanisms for accountability and self-correction.

The China model is thought to have contributed to the country’s ‘economic miracle’ in more than four decades to the early 2010s. From 1978 to 2012, the Chinese economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.4 percent, rising from low-income status to become the world’s second largest. For many developing countries, this growth symbolises the success of the CCP’s authoritarianism, which they seek to emulate.

The China model, in effect, is an institutional system that combines extensive state control and ownership of resources with limited free-market activity, all led by the authoritarian CCP. A main characteristic is the CCP’s ability to mobilise organisational resources efficiently and take the actions needed to reach a specific single goal. As Xi said at a 2022 CCP Central Committee meeting, it is about ‘leveraging the notable strength of China’s socialist system in pooling resources and efforts for major undertakings’.

Believing that the China model is superior to what the capitalist West has to offer and that the Chinese path to modernisation is the way to build a stronger nation, the CCP has enhanced its control at home and its influence abroad. Economically, Xi has applied measures to enhance the strength, size and performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) while imposing stricter regulation on the once-thriving private sector, especially tech businesses and finance. More than a dozen pieces of national security legislation have been passed or amended by Beijing since 2014, including anti-espionage, counterterrorism and data security laws.

Internationally, the China model is more combative, aggressive and expansionist than before. The CCP aims to reshape the world order. It presses on with the Belt and Road Initiative for involvement in foreign economies, establishes its own multilateral organisations and gets involved in geopolitical issues, including the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict.

And yet, despite the CCP’s belief in the China model, the Chinese market is losing its dynamism. The combined market value of private companies, which peaked at US$4.745 trillion in 2021, had fallen below US$2 trillion by the end of 2023. Foreign direct investment was a mere US$33 billion in 2023, less than 10 percent of the $344 billion reached in 2021 and the lowest level since 1993. Due to the decline in domestic consumption and investment, the youth unemployment rate  has exceeded a critical 15 percent since 2022, and the International Monetary Fund forecasts China’s annual GDP growth will be just 4.6 percent in 2024 and fall to around 3.5 percent by 2028. The West’s efforts to de-risk their economies, reducing exposure to China in manufacturing and strategic technologies, are exacerbating China’s prospects. China’s rise is losing momentum.

It is clear that the key to China’s rise was not the China model. In fact, the China model disrupts normal social behaviour, sows uncertainty for investment, consumption and governance and undermines collective confidence in its systems. This affects domestic and international perceptions of the Chinese market and its long-term stability.

The IMF’s forecasts suggest that China has fallen into the middle-income trap, a phenomenon in which economies rise to a certain level of development below that of advanced nations and become stuck there. At its heart, it’s failure of governance, an inability to drive institutional transitions needed to adapt to rapidly changing social and economic structures. It is not necessarily inevitable; rather, it comes from a flawed development strategy. Several economies, most notably those of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and the formerly semi-autonomous Chinese city Hong Kong, have reached a developed level.

China’s formerly fast growth and increasing innovation since 1978 was in fact based on limited liberalisation in five areas where the China model will give no more ground: marketisation of resource allocation, social freedom, individualisation of rights, some political liberalisation (at times) and exposure to international trade.

To restore confidence in the future of China, Xi needs to reduce government intervention in the market and create a level playing field in which SOEs and private businesses can compete and foreign capital can flow. The CCP needs to apply the rule of law and relax repression on civil society, thereby freeing the creativity and dynamism of the people. It should abandon ideological antagonism towards Western democracies and re-engage with the outside world. These actions will not undermine the CCP’s legitimacy to govern, which is Xi’s biggest concern. On the contrary, they will strengthen the foundation of its rule, which has been economic success.

From the bookshelf: ‘The Political Thought of Xi Jinping’

At the Chinese Communist Party congress in October 2017, ‘Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’ was formally incorporated in the party constitution—alongside Mao Zedong thought, Deng Xiaoping theory, Jiang Zemin’s ‘important thought on the three represents’ and Hu Jintao’s ‘scientific outlook on development’.

In the CCP ideological hierarchy, ‘thought’ is at the top, followed by ‘theory’, while Jiang’s ‘three represents’ and Hu’s ‘scientific outlook’ are considered to be action manuals, lower on the scale. Labelling Xi’s input to CCP ideology as ‘thought’ puts him on a par with Mao and ahead of Deng Xiaoping, at least in principle. But the length and clunkiness of the name of Xi’s dogma, contrasting with the punchy title ‘Mao Zedong thought’, is generally seen to indicate that Xi is not yet in the same class as the great helmsman.

Is this significant? To the casual reader, Xi Jinping’s written works and speeches might simply seem like disjointed pronouncements presented in the heavy jargon of the CCP. But do they in fact form a coherent body of work intended to guide Chinese decision makers, party cadres and the population at large? And can they serve as a guide for outsiders wishing to understand and predict the actions of China’s leaders?

In the book The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung think they do. The authors ambitiously tackle the task of making Xi Jinping’s thought accessible to the general reader. Tsang has published widely on Chinese politics and is director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, where Cheung is a research fellow. Together they have reviewed the vast body of work that has emerged in Xi’s name during his decade in power.

At the centre of Xi’s thought lies the CCP, which in his view has been weakened over the years by factionalism, corruption and the separation of party from state instigated by Deng Xiaoping. Xi sees the state as subservient to the party, as simply the executor of party policies, and has systematically reversed Deng’s political reforms and brought state organs firmly under party control.

Xi’s ideological mission is to reinvigorate the CCP and consolidate China as a party-state. He wants to make the party great again. Pursuing this theme, the authors devote an entire chapter to ‘The party leads everything’, detailing how Xi has shifted control of all major policy processes to the CCP and, ultimately, himself.

The authors review policy decisions and specific actions in the context of Xi’s concern to maintain control, from economic policy, diplomacy and fighting corruption to reining in the rival youth league faction led by his predecessor Hu Jintao and the late Li Keqiang. Even the central bank’s recent monetary policy decisions appear to be driven by Xi Jinping thought.

When the tennis star Peng Shuai in 2021 went on the social media platform Weibo to accuse former deputy premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault, many expected disciplinary action against Zhang. But censors quickly took down Peng’s post, and she disappeared from view and later retracted the allegations and announced her early retirement. Zhang remained unscathed. The message was clear: the CCP could initiate disciplinary action against its members but would not entertain outside complaints.

A fascinating chapter on the ‘socialist market economy’ should set off alarm bells in corporate boardrooms. Xi favours state-owned enterprises, is wary of the private sector and has implemented a raft of measures to extend party control into the decision-making bodies of private companies, local and foreign. According to the authors, Xi will support private enterprises ‘only if they prove themselves totally loyal to the Party and willing to serve China’s interests as defined by the Party or himself.’ The star pupil in this regard is the technology giant Huawei, a cutting-edge but steadfastly loyal business.

The chapter on a ‘common destiny for humankind’, again, bears careful reading by diplomats and defence specialists. As the authors see it, Xi’s ultimate ambition is to restore the system of tianxia (all under heaven), with China as the central power, surrounded by vassal states and operating in a global environment that poses no threat to authoritarianism. Under this Sinocentric world view, divide-and-rule politics, wolf-warrior diplomacy and assertive efforts to undermine the liberal rules-based order can be expected to continue, while peaceful resolution of China’s claims on Taiwan seems unlikely.

At the same time, the authors flag elements of hypocrisy. Xi’s moves to stamp out corruption and factionalism were presented to the public as designed to reinvigorate the party. But equally clearly, they were intended to eliminate Xi’s adversaries and rivals.

Will Xi Jinping’s dogma eventually shed its awkward title, be renamed ‘Xi Jinping thought’ and be proclaimed the state ideology? Since this would put the ambitious Xi unequivocally on a par with chairman Mao, the authors consider it likely. But so far party elders have kept Xi waiting. The issue will be high on China watchers’ agenda during the 2027 party congress.

The Political thought of Xi Jinping is one of the first serious efforts to analyse Xi’s political doctrine. As such, it is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the underpinnings of Xi’s actions, or to make an informed guess at his next moves.

From the bookshelf: ‘Party of One’

Held on 5-11 March, China’s National People’s Congress, the most important event in the country’s annual political calendar, was remarkable mainly for how unremarkable it was this year.

Premier Li Qiang’s report on the work of the government echoed most of the priorities presented a year earlier by his predecessor, the late Li Keqiang. No major policy initiatives were announced. And even China’s economic targets remained largely unchanged.

The most noteworthy event during the People’s Congress was a non-event, the cancellation of the premier’s press conference usually held after the close. The press conference has been a staple of the People’s Congress since 1991, offering local and international media a unique chance to pose questions to China’s second-in-command.

The cancellation was seen by some as a sign of Li’s unwillingness to open himself up for questioning. But the real message was that from now on China has only one spokesperson, party general secretary and national president Xi Jinping.

Since being appointed premier in March last year, Li has been at pains to show deference to his boss. He flies in chartered aeroplanes rather than the Chinese equivalent of Air Force One, to which he is entitled. And he has reduced the frequency of meetings of the State Council, which he chairs. The council, somewhat like a national cabinet, is a part of the state, not the Chinese Communist Party. So downgrading it is a significant nod to the priority given by Xi to the party over the state apparatus. Also, Li’s portraits appear on neither the cabinet website nor major news portals. Headlines about Xi dominated news of the People’s Congress, which has traditionally been the premier’s show.

Since rising to power in 2012, Xi has dismantled the system of checks and balances carefully crafted by Deng Xiaoping to prevent one-man rule, and there is now no question that he is China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. With a Politburo Standing Committee filled with elderly acolytes, Xi has no heir apparent, and it is now also clear that he doesn’t have a second-in-command.

In Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China’s Superpower Future, Chun Han Wong analyses Xi’s ascent to power, and the challenge that his one-man rule poses for China. Wong has written widely about Chinese politics and has covered China for the Wall Street Journal since 2014 from Beijing and, since he was expelled in 2019, from Hong Kong.

Wong traces Xi’s unshakeable belief in the Chinese Communist Party back to childhood and youth. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, a high party official, was purged by Mao, and Xi himself was sent to work in a village for seven years during the Cultural Revolution—but these experiences seem only to have reinforced his faith in the party. As a leaked US diplomatic cable put it, Xi chose ‘to survive by becoming redder than red’.

In retrospect, it seems clear that Xi set his sights on the top job early in his career, carefully masking his intentions, forging alliances and moving ever closer to the pinnacle of power. He gained valuable work experience from rural provinces, once confiding to a friend that this was the ‘only path to central power’, and he carefully built up his support network.

Wong walks the reader through the gradually intensifying measures introduced by Xi once he was in charge. These include his anti-corruption campaign, the establishment of China’s surveillance state, the rewriting of history to minimise the roles of his predecessors, and building up China’s assertive wolf-warrior diplomacy. Wong’s book is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand exactly how Xi consolidated his position.

The author concludes with a chapter on the future. Political succession in the People’s Republic has almost never been smooth. Under Mao, two anointed successors died: Liu Shaoqi after being purged and then detained by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and Lin Biao in a 1971 plane crash that has never been fully explained.

After Mao died in 1976, Deng took only two years to sideline his chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. Deng subsequently ousted two heirs apparent, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, before handing the reins of power to Jiang Zemin in 1989. To secure his own rise to power, Xi orchestrated the purge of a rival, the charismatic Bo Xilai, in 2012. And he ensured that Li Keqiang, another rival, was not designated in the 2017 party congress as the future number one.

China faces myriad challenges, from a sluggish economy, a huge property bubble and a demographic time bomb to deeply indebted local governments. But the fact that it is run by one man who is unwilling either to share power or to designate a successor may yet prove to be its biggest problem.

Xi Jinping’s idea of world order

By all accounts, Chinese President Xi Jinping has had a successful few weeks. Hot on the heels of the Chinese-brokered restoration of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, he used his recent visit to Moscow not only to shore up relations with his close (junior) partner Vladimir Putin, but also to present a ‘peace plan’ for the war in Ukraine. As The Economist put it, these events have opened a window onto the ‘world according to Xi’. Meanwhile, Xi’s travels have incited much Sturm und Drang across the West, which itself may be heading towards a strategic dead end.

After all, the emerging consensus among Western policymakers follows from several assumptions that may lead them to act in counterproductive ways. Specifically, Western leaders believe that they are defending the rules-based order from revisionist powers such as Russia and China; that the world is polarising between rule-bound democracies and aggressive autocracies, with swing states in the middle; and that we need better narratives to convince others that Russia’s attack on Ukraine has significant implications for them. But each of these claims is problematic and speaks to a misunderstanding of the challenge China represents.

First, the idea that Western governments are preserving the rules-based order is not persuasive to many around the world, considering that Western governments themselves have already abandoned it on many fronts. While Russia and China obviously have been challenging the post-1945 international order, many across the so-called global south would say that Westerners, too, have routinely revised international rules and institutions to suit their own interests.

These observers would point out that the first hammer blows came with the Western-led intervention in Kosovo and invasion of Iraq, not with the subsequent Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. The West may not be using military force today, but it hasn’t held back from using economic instruments to its advantage—from sanctioning anyone who trades with Iran and Russia to proposing taxes on developing countries through carbon border adjustment mechanisms.

In some areas, Western countries have moved from revising global institutions to abandoning them altogether in favour of what is often portrayed as a new ‘rich man’s club’ built on novel concepts like ‘friend-shoring’. Many leaders around the world enjoy highlighting such hypocrisy, compounding the West’s legitimacy crisis.

The second assumption is even more problematic. US President Joe Biden has committed himself to the narrative that the world is divided between democracies and autocracies, implying that those in the middle should be persuaded or pressured to choose sides. But most countries reject that idea and instead see the world moving towards deeper fragmentation and multipolarity. Countries like India, Turkey, South Africa and Brazil see themselves as sovereign powers with the right to build their own relationships, not as swing states obliged to placate other powers.

The third assumption therefore is also flawed. It is not because of narratives that we can’t persuade others that the Russian invasion is wrong; other countries just have different interests. Most developing countries and emerging economies don’t regard Russia’s war on Ukraine as an existential threat, whatever the West may say. If you live in Mali, the dominant external power with which you are most familiar is France; if anything, Russia’s entry into the mix will give you a greater sense of sovereignty, not less. Similarly, India is much more fearful of domination by China; if anything, its relationship with Russia represents a strategic opportunity.

The problem with the account promoted by Western governments is that it has allowed China to steal a march on them. From China’s perspective, the real battle for supremacy today is not between democracies and autocracies, but between different accounts of what ‘democracy’ means.

For Biden and other Western leaders who fear that China’s rise will overturn the Western-dominated global order, the best response is for democracies to come together to counter China and maintain their own edge. The Biden administration thus aims to create a club of democracies that trade together, share technology and stand up for each other’s security.

By contrast, China—whose only treaty ally is North Korea—realises that it can’t win a contest between competing alliances. Xi’s strategy therefore is to appeal to the non-Western world’s general preference for optionality and non-alignment. Presenting himself as the champion of these principles, he has developed a different notion of ‘democracy’ based on the ability of all countries to emancipate themselves from Western dominance. This concept featured heavily in his rhetoric when he met with Putin in Moscow.

The contest between these two visions is deliberately asymmetrical. While the United States is betting on a polarised world, China is doing everything it can to advance a more fragmented one. Rather than trying to replace the US, it wants to be seen as a friend and ally to developing countries that want to have a greater say.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt that China can pull off this strategy. In those parts of the world where Chinese influence has grown the most—namely, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa—it has often triggered a backlash. And, looking ahead, China will be competing with India for leadership within the global south. Nonetheless, Chinese leaders are probably right to suspect that sovereignty—rather than obeisance to more powerful allies—will be the defining theme in 21st-century global politics.

Given China’s strategy, Western policymakers should adjust their approach. Instead of lecturing (or hectoring) non-Western countries, they ought to acknowledge that everyone has their own interests, which will not always align perfectly with Western interests. Heterogeneity must be accepted as a structural fact, rather than being framed as a problem to fix.

By being less preachy about how other countries run their affairs, and by treating them as sovereign actors with their own priorities, the West can still effect constructive change on specific global issues—and maybe even pick up some new supporters along the way. To present a compelling alternative to Xi’s vision of world order, the West will have to stop asking others to defend the existing one and start recruiting partners to build on a new vision.

The geopolitical implications of China’s declining population

In January, China officially acknowledged that its population began to decline last year—roughly nine years earlier than Chinese demographers and the United Nations had projected. The implications of this are hard to overstate. It means that all of China’s economic, foreign and defence policies are based on faulty demographic data.

For example, Chinese government economists have predicted that by 2049, China’s per capita GDP will have reached half or even three-quarters that of the United States, while its overall GDP will have grown to twice or even three times that of its rival. But these forecasts assumed that China’s population would be four times that of the US in 2049. The real figures tell a very different story. Assuming that China is lucky enough to stabilise its fertility rate at 1.1 children per woman, its population in 2049 will be just 2.9 times that of the US, and all its key indicators of demographic and economic vitality will be much worse.

These faulty predictions don’t affect only China. They imply a geopolitical butterfly effect that could ultimately destroy the existing global order. Chinese authorities have been acting in accordance with their longstanding belief in a rising East and declining West. Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin believed that as long as Russia maintained stable relations with a rising China, the declining West would be powerless to hold him accountable for his aggression against Ukraine. And in its haste to abandon Afghanistan in order to focus its resources on China, the US may have unwittingly emboldened Putin further.

Population ageing will be a permanent major drag on China’s economy. After all, as Italy’s experience shows, the old-age dependency ratio (the number of people over 64, divided by those aged 15–64) has a strong negative correlation with GDP growth, as does the median age and the proportion of people over 64.

In 1950, Japan’s median age was 21, compared to 29 in the US. As one would expect, Japan benefited from years of faster economic growth. By 1994, however, the prime-age labour force (15–59) began to decline, whereas the US working-age population is not expected to fall until 2048.

By 1992, Japan’s median age was 5.5 years above that of America’s, and its old-age dependency ratio began to exceed that of the US. Not surprisingly, its GDP growth has been lower than America’s ever since. Japan’s per capita GDP rose from 16% of the US level in 1960 to 154% in 1995. But by 2022, that figure had fallen to 46%, and it’s likely to decline below 35% in the future.

Similarly, owing to their young populations, Taiwan and South Korea achieved rapid economic convergence for more than five decades. Per capita GDP soared from 5% of the US level in 1960 to 42% for Taiwan and 53% for South Korea in 2014. But both economies have since stagnated as their workforces have shrunk, putting them on track to fall below 30% of US per capita GDP.

Now consider China. In 1980, its median age was 21, eight years younger than America’s, and from 1979 to 2011, its GDP grew at an average annual rate of 10%. But China’s prime-age labour force (15–59) began to shrink in 2012, and by 2015, GDP growth had decelerated to 7% before slowing further, to 3%, as of 2022. An average of 23.4 million births per year from 1962 to 1990 made China ‘the world’s factory’.

But even China’s own exaggerated official figures put last year’s births at just 9.56 million. Chinese manufacturing will continue to decline as a result, creating new inflationary pressures in the US and elsewhere.

While China’s population was 1.5 times larger than India’s in 1975, even the Chinese government’s exaggerated official figures show that it was smaller last year (1.411 billion compared to 1.417 billion). In reality, India’s population surpassed China’s a decade ago, and it remains on track to be nearly 1.5 times larger than China’s in 2050, with a median age of 39—a full generation younger than the median age in China (57).

By 2030, China’s median age will already be 5.5 years above that of the US, and by 2033, its old-age dependency ratio will begin to exceed America’s. Its GDP growth rate will begin to fall below America’s in 2031–35, at which point its per capita GDP will hardly have reached 30% of its rival’s—let alone the 50–75% predicted by Chinese official economists. If the US is overtaken as the world’s largest economy, it will be by India, not China.

To be sure, China is investing heavily in artificial intelligence and robotics to offset the economic drag of ageing. But those efforts can go only so far, because continuing innovation relies on young minds. Moreover, robot workers don’t consume, and consumption is the major driver of any economy.

China’s decline will be gradual. It will remain the world’s second- or third-largest economy for decades to come. But the huge gap between its waning demographic and economic strength and its expanding political ambitions may make it highly vulnerable to strategic misjudgements. Memories of past glory or fear of lost status could lead it down the same dangerous path that Russia has taken in Ukraine.

So, China’s leaders should heed the lessons of Russia’s botched invasion and wake up from their unrealistic ‘Chinese dream’ of national rejuvenation. The government’s current policy approach is a formula for demographic and civilisational collapse.

The US also has lessons to learn, given its apparent failure to manage a declining Russia. America and its allies—including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan and South Korea—will also be dealing with societal ageing and resulting economic slowdowns. Their combined share of the global economy already fell from 77% in 2002 to 56% in 2021, and that trend will continue.

The geopolitical implications should be obvious. If the major powers are wise, they will cooperate in good faith to forge an enduring global order before they no longer have the power to do so.

From the bookshelf: ‘Rethinking Chinese politics’

As the Chinese Communist Party’s year-end congress approaches, competition among the party factions is heating up. Not only will the five-yearly party congress, set to begin on 16 October, appoint a new Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest decision-making body, but more importantly it is expected to extend General Secretary Xi Jinping for an unprecedented third term.

China watchers are busy reading the tea leaves. Will Xi be satisfied with a third term as general secretary, or has he set his sights on becoming party chairman, a position held by Mao Zedong and abolished four decades ago? Who will replace Premier Li Keqiang? And how have a slowing economy and unpopular Covid-19 lockdowns affected Xi’s standing? These are only a few of the issues that are being debated.

In the run-up to party congresses, pundits have traditionally focused on China’s political institutions—the CCP Central Committee, with some 375 members and alternate members; the 25-member politburo; and the powerful standing committee, which currently has seven members. They will also be looking at key party organs, and the norms that govern political appointments.

In Rethinking Chinese politics, Joseph Fewsmith, professor of international relations and political science at Boston University, takes a different tack. He rejects the notion that Chinese politics is institutionalised, reminding us that institutionalisation only began 45 years ago under Deng Xiaoping. The four post-Mao leaders have all taken different approaches to running the country, with disregard or even disdain for its political institutions, whose roots are shallow.

As Fewsmith sees it, ‘The personalization of power, factionalism, the arbitrary abuse of power, corruption, and the lack of discipline within the party continue to plague the party and stand in the way of institutionalization.’ To understand how politicians like Xi function, we should stop fixating on institutions.

Fewsmith reviews the four post-Mao leaders, how they positioned themselves, consolidated their power, manipulated to get their supporters into key positions, and tried to influence their succession.

Deng succeeded in shunting aside Hua Guofeng, who was Mao’s anointed successor, consolidated his position to become China’s supreme leader, and built up China’s political institutions. He never formally held the top party position, but remained highly influential long into retirement.

Jiang Zemin is frequently referred to as the ‘accidental general secretary’. His appointment following the ouster of Zhou Ziyang after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations was entirely unplanned. It took Jiang several years to establish himself, but during his second term he had a firm grip on power. After retiring, he held on to the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission for two years and continued to manipulate events behind the scenes, looming over much of Hu Jintao’s decade in office. Despite his 95 years, to this day Jiang remains the most influential of the party elders.

What conclusions can one draw from China’s recent history? Most China analysts assess China’s power struggles and leadership transitions in the context of the institutional framework established by Deng. Fewsmith thinks they are barking up the wrong tree and should be analysing power politics, plain and simple.

Each of the post-Mao leaders—Deng, Jiang, Hu and Xi—has promoted people who supported them; ousted those who did not, skilfully balanced factions against each other; and bent, broken or revised the rules to suit their own ends.

In many ways, Chinese politics makes more sense when one discards notions of institutionalisation and inviolable norms. Deng started by staying in power far beyond the rules that he himself established for the top leaders, and Jiang stayed on beyond the established age limits and turned his back on political norms when it suited him.

Xi has gone much further than his predecessors by simply scrapping the framework established by Deng. To get into office, he had to have his arch-rival Bo Xilai jailed, and prior to the November 2012 party congress he negotiated behind the scenes to reduce the size of the Politburo Standing Committee from nine to seven and stack it with his own supporters.

Once in office, he initiated an ‘anticorruption campaign’ which netted many of his enemies and made it clear that he expected loyalty from his supporters. He skilfully suppressed the opposing faction, the Communist Youth League and its representatives, starting with Li.

Xi has discarded the practice of identifying the next generation of leaders five years in advance of a party congress, and effectively reined in or eliminated successor candidates. And he has amended the constitution to allow himself a third term as president (his other two positions, as CCP general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission, are not subject to formal limitations). In a nutshell, Xi has dismantled the norms established by Deng, stripping political institutions of their substance.

Fewsmith provides a fresh and realistic framework for analysing the upcoming party congress. His timely book is essential reading for anyone who wants to look beyond China’s frail political institutions.

Fourteen points on Australia’s icy times with China

Here are 14 points on the longest icy age between Australia and China since diplomatic relations were established nearly 50 years ago.

The 14 points match the number—but not spirit—of the Chinese embassy’s 14 angry charges against Australia.

Australia knows an ‘assertive China is the new constant’. As our top diplomat noted in 2019, the ‘new normal’ of Australia’s dealings with China will be marked by ‘enduring differences’.

1. Australia’s choice: In the rolling seminar on China as the phenomenon of the age, the Oz polity has abandoned the hopeful line that ‘there’s no question to answer, no choice necessary’. Hedging became so prickly it wasn’t a strategy. Canberra has drawn lines, said no, and pushed back in a cascade of wake-up moments. The cumulative effect is to deliver a choice. While Southeast Asia argues it mustn’t be forced to choose, Australia goes to a different place. The terms of Australia’s choice evolve and shift. Yet nuances have been stripped away and language becomes blunter: Australia now talks about China as a bully and a potential adversary.

2. Icy age: The latest icy time with China will soon enter its fifth year. Previous cold spells—under the Hawke, Howard and Rudd governments—were short because economic interests quickly rewarmed relations. Today’s iciness delivers frigid diplomacy, chilled strategic perspectives, and frost bite for Oz exporters. Beijing isn’t returning calls. No senior Chinese leader has come to Australia since March 2017. The icy starting point was Malcolm Turnbull’s speech in June 2017 expressing a ‘dark view’ of a ‘coercive China’ seeking domination.

3. Death of ‘strategic partnership’: Australia signed up to strategic partnership during the Gillard Labor government, accepting China’s ‘strategic partnership’ wording ‘in order to get them to give us guaranteed annual leaders’ meetings’. In February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison bid adieu to strategic partnership:

China’s outlook and the nature of China’s external engagement, both in our region and globally, has changed since our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was formed and going further back than that, certainly in the decades that have led up till now. We cannot pretend that things are as they were. The world has changed.

4. China’s trade punishment: The retribution that began last year cut the value of Australian trade with China for almost all industries by 40% (only China’s huge appetite for iron ore sustains the trade figures). Australia’s ambassador to Beijing, Graham Fletcher, says China ‘has been exposed as quite unreliable as a trading partner and even vindictive’.

5. Labor–Liberal tacit consensus: Labor backs the Morrison government in facing China. Labor’s hits are on tactics and competence, not the nature of the choice. All the attack lines in opposition leader Anthony Albanese’s start-of-the-year foreign policy speech were about how badly Morrison had handled Donald Trump. Albanese said Australia should stand with the new Biden administration to both challenge and coexist with China.

6. China’s 14 charges: The rap sheet is classic China: it’s all Australia’s fault. It’s Oz that’s ‘opaque’, ‘doing the bidding of the US’, guilty of ‘politicisation and stigmatisation’, ‘spearheading the crusade against China’, ‘poisoning the atmosphere of bilateral relations’. Brush off the bombast to view a useful list of choices Australia wouldn’t recant on: Huawei and 5G tech; foreign interference legislation; Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

7. Xi Jingping: This is personal. Xi’s 2014 address to the Australian Parliament was a relationship high point; now the leader who visited every Australian state punishes ingratitude. China’s 14 charges listed Australia’s ‘call for an international independent inquiry into the Covid-19 virus’. Australia spoke loud at a moment of crisis for Xi’s leadership; he sends retribution.

8. China’s might: ‘The brutal reality of dealing with China’ (a front cover headline from The Economist). On track to be the top economy, China is the largest trading partner of 64 countries, against 38 countries with the US. ‘[I]f forced to take sides, many countries might choose China over the West,’ The Economist muses. ‘Engagement with China is the only sensible course, but how does it avoid becoming appeasement?’

9. The end of US primacy: The Biden administration understands the game has changed. Now to get America back in the game.

10. The global system shakes: We are at the end of the old international order, a profoundly challenging moment for Australia as a contented status quo power.

11. The Indo-Pacific: A new geographic construct is ‘the cradle of crises or solutions’. In the effort for coexistence, not war, Rory Medcalf describes the Indo-Pacific as ‘both a region and an idea: a metaphor for collective action, self-help combined with mutual help’. The first Quad leaders’ summit polishes the democratic diamond, as one facet of the construct.

12. The pandemic: Covid-19 changed the way we work and live and how we think about health and travel and economics and government (especially competent government). In Huong Le Thu’s apt aphorism: ‘If power corrupts, then crisis reveals.’ And crisis accelerates history.

13. Hot peace: ‘New cold war’ carries so much history it distorts understanding. ‘Hot peace’ is a better label for what’s different this time: ‘technology, cyberconflict and influence operations’. Much heat flows from US–China intimacy, deeply intertwined yet deeply different powers, bound to compete, compel and challenge.

14. Dragon punchers and dragon patters: In recent decades, Canberra’s argument was between dragon slayers and panda huggers (the 2013 Asian century white paper was a big panda cuddle).

Alas, the panda is extinct.

The poles of the debate converged. Dragon punchers now debate dragon patters. Both sides see the same creature.

Even patters are wary: Geoff Raby writes of the ‘dystopian’ times and Australia’s need for ‘a hard-headed’, realist grand strategy.

Still divided on tactics, punchers and patters agree on the size and challenge of the dragon.

Xi Jinping’s conception of socialism

Is Xi Jinping more Hitlerian or Stalinist in his view of Chinese socialism? The answer to that question is important because it bears on the policy choices China’s adversaries will need to make.

George Kennan, the godfather of America’s policy of ‘containment’ of the Soviet Union, made clear in his 1946 ‘long telegram’ that Adolf Hitler’s vision of ‘national socialist’ modernity wasn’t a force that could be contained; the reason was that Hitler had a timetable according to which the Third Reich was to achieve global domination and his strategy could be thwarted only by annihilating Nazism by means of total war. The Soviet Union, in contrast, could be contained through Western domestic resilience and a resolve to counter territorial revanchism. That was because Joseph Stalin had in mind no specific time by which the world would need to reach the communist phase of development.

Precisely where Xi Jinping sits on the spectrum of totalitarianism is a matter of dispute. Elements of Xi’s ideology are notably Hitlerian. His ambition to achieve ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ introduces a nationalist character to the Chinese Communist Party’s understanding of socialism. Unifying China and Taiwan is one revanchist mission driving Xi’s ‘great rejuvenation’, but revanchism is only one part of the nationalism Xi has begun to emphasise in CCP ideology—militarism and capitalism are the others. Writing in the CCP’s premier theoretical journal, Seeking Truth (求是), staff from China’s National Defense University argue that ‘a rich nation and a strong military are two cornerstones of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. Chinese socialism seems not to be driven by the Marxian desire to secure a path to communism, but by the militarist ambition for armed strength and the capitalist will for material prosperity. Xi’s ‘new era’ for Chinese socialism undermines traditional Marxism-Leninism, which views those nationalist forces with contempt.

Does it matter whether Chinese socialism becomes more nationalist than Marxist under Xi? According to Hitler, the distinction between national socialism and Marxian socialism was of paramount importance. ‘Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning’, Hitler declared in a 1923 interview with George Sylvester Viereck. To Hitler, Marxism’s rejection of both the legitimacy of the nation-state and the capitalist forces of production was a fundamental error. ‘Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic’, Hitler said. His embrace of nationalism and of capitalism had important implications for the Third Reich. ‘Our socialism is national’, he argued. ‘We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one.’

Hitler’s distinction between national and Marxian socialism has important implications for the CCP under Xi. The party has allowed China to undergo capitalist industrialisation since Deng Xiaoping, having repudiated Maoist collectivisation, but remained committed to a strong supervisory state. The political economy Xi has inherited is thus similar to the economic structure Hitler presided over in the Third Reich. The problem for the CCP, however, is that China’s state-supervised yet market-oriented economy necessarily repudiates any notion of socialism being driven by Marxism. To a political party that supposedly follows traditional Marxism-Leninism, that contradiction constitutes an existential threat. The way to negate it, for Xi, is to unify ‘state and race’ by integrating nationalist notions of China’s ‘great rejuvenation’ into CCP ideology. China’s economic model has forced Xi to take a leaf out of Hitler’s book.

The CCP can never disclose the national socialist forces behind Xi’s vision for China. Leninism remains crucial to the party’s identity as a revolutionary agent for historical change, while Stalinism remains critical to the CCP’s organisation as a vanguard party securing a path to communism. As Xi said to the party’s 18th National Congress in 2012, ‘To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and … undermines the [CCP’s] organisations on all levels.’ Xi can’t acknowledge the national socialist character that his ideology has taken on, lest he be accused of undermining the legacies of Lenin and Stalin.

Nor can he repudiate the legacies of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Many commentators note that Xi’s response to his family being sent to labour camps during the Cultural Revolution was to become ‘redder than red’. That experience drilled into Xi a deep respect for Mao as the inheritor of Stalin’s legacy and as the father of the CCP. But the unique position Deng occupies in CCP historiography is also relevant. As the cadre who introduced market-oriented reforms at the Third Plenum of 1978, Deng kicked China out of agrarian feudalism and pushed the country closer to the communist phase of development. Xi can repudiate neither Mao nor Deng, lest he be accused of the very ‘historical nihilism’ he says he abhors.

How might Xi interpret his own place in CCP history? Lenin and Stalin may have been the world’s first true socialists, but the early leaders of the CCP believed that socialism had to be indigenised in China. Mao and Deng, being true Marxist-Leninists, saw that process of indigenisation as a necessary by-product of China’s relative lack of social development. For Mao, the nationalisation of socialism was a necessary part of winning a revolution in China’s largely agrarian society. For Deng, nationalising socialism was but the petit bourgeois result of capitalist industrialisation. Xi, however, views leadership in terms of a sacred bloodline and believes nationalism to be essentially ethnic. He probably sees the nationalisation of socialism as his personal mission on behalf of the Chinese nation.

National socialist images of a sacred bloodline have now become a feature of CCP ideology. Su Jingzhuang (苏敬装), from the Central Party School, recently wrote an article on Xi Jinping thought in the Study Times (学习时报), arguing: ‘Red genes are a genetic factor that has taken root in the body of our party and flows through the blood vessels of CCP cadres; they [form] the spiritual lineage of the Chinese races’ coexistence and co-prosperity, and [they are] a core political advantage in realising the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ The national socialist mission of unifying race, party, nation and state seems to have taken on singular import for the CCP, while its Leninist role of securing a path to communism has been subordinated. Nationalism is no longer a necessary step on the road to communism, but the driving force behind Chinese socialism.

Under Xi, the CCP has proven all too willing to incorporate aspects of Hitlerian national socialism into its mode of governance. Carl Schmitt, known as the ‘crown jurist of national socialism’, has been cited by legal advisers to China’s leadership to rationalise the CCP’s imposition of a new national security law on Hong Kong last year. Schmitt’s central argument was that the sovereign, as someone who decides on exceptions to rules, has a necessary power to suspend civil liberties. That the CCP is now incorporating Schmitt’s fascist jurisprudence into its legal regime indicates that China’s ruling elite has been influenced not only by the ideological elements of national socialism but also by Nazism’s governmental aspects.

How long Chinese socialism will continue to nationalise under Xi remains an open question. But one thing has become clear: the CCP’s role in securing China’s path to communism is being subordinated to Xi’s vision for China’s nationalist resurgence. The likeliest result of this phenomenon is a less patient, more erratic and risk-hungry foreign policy. Indeed, the prominence of Beijing’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats and the CCP’s track record of economic coercion are good indicators that Chinese foreign policy is already taking on that distinctly Hitlerian quality. Yet, the CCP itself remains steeped in Marxism-Leninism and retains a deep respect for Joseph Stalin. Ironically, it may be those Stalinist traditions that could save the world from a Xi Jinping who has started to flirt with the Hitlerian ideas that drove Nazi Germany.