Xi’s plan makes world nervous
The most-watched film in China this week, about daring officials who save Chinese citizens trapped overseas by war, neatly matches a central theme of President Xi Jinping’s agenda at the twice-a-decade Chinese Communist Party meeting in Beijing – that the world is a dangerous place, and China needs to protect itself.
Home Coming, the latest in a string of Chinese movies to ride nationalist themes to box office success, follows a street-smart diplomat who will stop at nothing to complete his mission. Border officials are bribed. Hostages are freed. The day is saved.
While set in a fictional North African country, the plot is based on real events and reflects Xi’s obsession with what he sees as mounting security risks that could undermine the safety of China and the rule of the party.
During the 20th national party congress, which ends today, Xi has emphasised that the party’s ambition to assume global leadership as the head of a socialist superpower depends on absolute security as much as economic growth.
But the goal of building a world safe for autocracy is putting China on a collision course with other nations.
Central to Xi’s newly expounded idea of ‘‘Chinese-style modernisation’’ – which excludes multiparty democracy, direct leadership elections or legal guarantees of individual freedoms – is an effort to guard against risks at home and abroad that could disrupt the country’s rise.
In a congress report released this past week, the word ‘‘security’’ appears 91 times, up from 55 mentions in 2017, and 36 in 2012. Xi’s ‘‘comprehensive national security concept’’ – a slogan urging the active detection and management of threats in all areas of policymaking – has its own section. A ‘‘global security initiative’’ he announced in April was also included.
As China extends its reach through projects like the Belt and Road initiatives, its international security presence continues to expand. A recent policing agreement with the
Solomon Islands, for example, was defended as necessary to protect its interests.
But human rights groups fear that repression will reach far beyond China’s borders.
Xi’s global security initiative, while still in its infancy, is likely to become a test for the country’s willingness to compromise with the existing global security order.
‘‘This is Beijing going from a negative agenda – ‘We don’t like the current order, which is Western-dominated and imposed on us’ – to China actually launching something like an
alternative vision,’’ said Helena Legarda, lead analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
The concept covers 16 areas, including polar, space and deepsea security. It pops up throughout Chinese policymaking. Strict adherence to a ‘‘zero Covid’’ policy, for instance, is all about ensuring people’s security.
The darker outlook of the world in Xi’s report stemmed largely from accelerated competition with the United States under the Biden administration, said Amanda
Hsiao, senior China analyst at the Crisis Group think tank in Brussels.
From the party’s perspective, the shift in the international balance of power as US influence wanes is a critical moment.
China’s security presence is increasingly visible across the globe – and as its focus on security grows, so too have democratic concerns.
A pugnacious pivot in
Chinese diplomacy has undermined its constant promises of peace. Formerly restrained Chinese diplomats have earned themselves the nickname ‘‘wolf warriors’’ – a nod to another patriotic action blockbuster – for their new habit of coming out swinging both figuratively and literally in response to criticism.
This year, China’s ambassador to Sweden said that while Beijing rewards friends, ‘‘for our enemies, we have shotguns’’. This week, Chinese Consul General Zheng Xiyuan and other consular staff in Manchester confronted demonstrators on the street outside their office, kicked down posters, and dragged a protester through the gates to beat him up.
China’s more aggressive foreign policy under Xi can actually look like he is mismanaging this supposedly critical moment. The reputational costs of not condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seem counterproductive considering the Chinese economy’s continued reliance on Western technology and trade.
Yet given Xi’s main focus of ensuring regime security, good relations with liberal democracies are expendable.