What is driving China’s aggression?
excerpts from Xi’s speeches over the years, underscoring the centrality of the CPP.
In it, Xi exhorts cadres to “maintain a high degree of ideological consciousness, political consciousness, and action consciousness”. This intensification of ideological consciousness bleeds into perceptions of and narratives about competition between systems and models. Long before we stood at the cusp of what now appears to be a Cold War-like contest between China and the US, Beijing was talking about the challenges of a Cold War mentality. The now infamous Document No 9, which was reportedly put out one month after Xi took over as president in 2013, had warned against the threat of infiltration by foreign ideas and universal values, calling for greater commitment to work in the ideological sphere. This, under Xi, has further been blended with a nationalistic narrative of historic humiliation at the hands of external powers and the meteoric rise under the Party’s command. Irrespective of China’s economic achievements, as ideological convictions deepen, they breed a sense of siege, constraining the scope for pragmatic compromise.
Finally, Beijing views itself as a major power. It must, therefore, also act in accordance with that self-perception. This has meant the need for greater engagement with the world at large, as evident by repeated affirmations of sticking to the path of reform and opening up. Xi has publicly expressed the desire to actively engage in new forms of multilateralism and participate in global governance reform. This has meant setting up new institutions and structures while also expanding China’s stake in the existing system. Beijing clearly sees value in sustaining the global institutional architecture.
Yet it understands that in geopolitics, power is the currency that matters. In multilateralism, this has resulted in Beijing’s efforts to assume leadership of United Nations agencies or establishing forums like the 17+1 model with Central and Eastern European countries and The Forum on China-africa Cooperation with African states, or even China’s normative contestation to legitimise a particularistic conception of human rights. In bilateral relations, there’s greater transactionalism and coercion. After all, what worth is power that cannot be exercised? And is one truly powerful if one cannot shape favourable political outcomes?
The answer to the first of these two questions is obvious. How Beijing responds to the logic of strategy following its recent assertion will help answer the second.