China’s Way to Global Power
Le leadership américain remis en cause par la Chine de Xi Jinping.
Xi Jinping has been serving as general secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2012 and as the president of China since 2013. Born in Beijing in 1953, he is the son of revolutionary veteran Xi Zhongxun, one of the Communist Party’s founding fathers. In 2018, China approved the removal of the two-term limit on the presidency, effectively allowing Xi Jinping to remain in power for life.
Depuis l’arrivée au pouvoir de Xi Jinping en 2013, la Chine s’est lancée dans de vastes projets visant à étendre son influence dans le monde, renforçant ses liens économiques et financiers avec des pays aux quatre coins du globe – notamment grâce à sa fameuse initiative « Ceinture et Route ». Le géant chinois pourrait-il voler la vedette aux États-Unis et redéfinir les règles du commerce international ?
Under a merciless sun, a dozen Chinese construction workers survey an empty expanse of desert, preparing to transform it into the heart of a new Egyptian capital. The workers are employed by China’s largest construction conglomerate through a $3 billion contract from an Egyptian company, with financing from Chinese banks. They are erecting a thicket of 21 skyscrapers, one as tall as the Empire State Building.
SECURING VITAL ASSETS
2. The presence of Chinese labor and largesse on the sands of Egypt is a testament to China’s global aspirations. After centuries of weakness and isolation, China is reclaiming what its leaders regard as its natural destiny — supremacy in Asia, and respect around the planet. Through the ventures in Egypt and elsewhere, China is exploiting its formidable economic clout to expand its geopolitical influence, directing investment to woo governments that control vital assets.
3. A traditional ally of the United States, Egypt controls the Suez Canal, a vital shipping passage where a threat to access could impede China’s movement around the globe. In constructing a central piece of the futuristic capital, China is ingratiating itself with the canal’s ultimate gatekeeper, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, while rendering his grandest visions dependent on friendly relations with Beijing.
4. China’s reach for commercial expansion along with diplomatic influence guides an array of Chinese undertakings, from rail
networks and highways taking shape across Africa and Latin America to ports and power stations being constructed in Eastern Europe and South Asia. In Southeast Asia, Chinese entrepreneurs are engineering a crop of web companies just as China projects growing military power in the South China Sea.
5. Little more than a decade ago, China’s forays beyond its borders were mainly about bringing home energy, minerals and other resources, often from countries forsaken by the West as pariah states like Iran, Sudan and Myanmar. In foreign policy, China pursued a sole obsession — peeling off diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory. Even as China skirmished with neighbors over contested islands, it accepted the dominance of the U.S. Navy. Those days are over.
CHINA’S “RIGHTFUL PLACE”
6. Under the muscular leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has cast off previous restraints, rejecting deference to a U.S.dominated global order as an impediment to national revival. In matters of commerce and national security, China is competing with the United States, even in traditional American spheres of influence. From a Chinese perspective, this reordering is merely an overdue reversion to historical reality as Beijing demands consideration commensurate with its stature.
7. In the telling of the ruling Communist Party, China’s modern history is the story of Chinese mastery degraded by colonial depravity. China is the land that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing, amassing stupendous wealth while Europe was still backward. Then came centuries of humiliation — Britain’s profiting from forcing opium on the populace, Japanese brutality, demeaning lectures about human rights from hypocritical Americans. Now, China is intent on securing its own fate.
8. “China wants to be a great power in the world,” said Paul Heer, a former chief national intelligence officer in East Asia for the United States, who now teaches at George Washington University. “They think the rest of the world owes them recognition, and a return to what the Chinese see as their rightful place.”
9. Nowhere are China’s designs clearer than in Asia. China has overtaken the United States as the leading trading partner with Asian nations while pushing back against American naval primacy in the South China Sea. China is disrupting American alliances in the region, from Japan to Singapore to Australia. Beyond its backyard, China’s ambitions are boundless. It celebrates its Belt and