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WALL
STREET JOURNAL
Xi Jinping’s Superpower Plans
As the U.S. retreats, Beijing is talking more boldly about how
it wants to change the global order and assert its own values and
interests.
Elizabeth Economy
As a regular visitor to China, I was surprised earlier this year when I
heard for the first time a Chinese official refer to his country as a
superpower (chaoji daguo). But China’s view of its place in the
international order is changing quickly. In a little-noticed speech last
month, before a packed house of China’s senior foreign policy officials
and scholars, President Xi Jinping put the world on notice:
China has its own ideas about how the world should be run and is
prepared, as he put it, to “lead in the reform of global governance.”
Gone is the era of Deng Xiaoping, who called China “a large developing
country” and insisted that the country maintain a low profile in foreign
policy. These days one seldom even hears officials mention the motto of
Mr. Xi’s immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, who described China as
“peacefully rising.” Mr. Xi has made clear that he aims to create a new
geostrategic landscape.
His ambition is most evident close to home. Where previous Chinese
leaders were content to stake claims based on Chinese sovereignty, he
has moved to realize them. Through coercion, co-optation and simple
brute force, he is making significant strides toward achieving his
declared objective of “unifying China” by 2049, the centenary of the
founding of the People’s Republic.
In the South China Sea, Mr. Xi has
destabilized the region by developing and militarizing seven artificial
features, ignoring the competing claims of five other nations and a 2016
ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague that rejected
China’s claims there. In Hong Kong, Beijing has moved to silence
contrarian political voices and has worked to disqualify democracy
activists from holding office. China is also placing Taiwan in a
political chokehold, pressuring other countries to drop their diplomatic
recognition of the island nation and forcing multinational corporations
to acknowledge Taiwan as part of China.
But Mr. Xi’s vision of Chinese leadership extends far beyond the
country’s own backyard. In 2013 and 2014, he outlined a grand-scale
trade and investment plan to revitalize the ancient Silk Road and
maritime spice routes, linking China to countries throughout Asia, the
Middle East, Europe and Africa. The Belt and Road Initiative, as it is
called, has the potential to help meet the $3 trillion annual deficit in
global infrastructure spending: Railroads, ports, pipelines and highways
built by Chinese workers and funded by Chinese loans are already
connecting countries across six global corridors. The plan now includes
a digital component (fiber-optic cables, satellite systems and
e-commerce) and a “Polar Silk Road” through the Arctic to connect China
to Europe more directly.
China’s development of economic infrastructure has also been accompanied
by an expanding Chinese security presence. Beijing established its first
military logistics base in Djibouti in 2017, and more bases are likely
to follow in other countries. Chinese state-owned companies have assumed
control or a controlling stake in at least 76 ports in 35 countries. And
despite Beijing’s claims that such ports are only for commercial
purposes, Chinese naval ships and submarines have paid visits to several
of them.
Nor has Mr. Xi shied away from exporting elements of China’s political
model. In at least eight African countries, as well as some in Southeast
Asia and Latin America, Chinese officials are training their
counterparts in how to manage political stability through propaganda and
how to control media and the internet. Reflecting a degree of confidence
rare among recent Chinese leaders, Mr. Xi has even proposed that the
China model provides a “new option for other countries who want to speed
up their development while preserving their independence.”
Less obvious but just as important are Xi
Jinping’s efforts to reform global norms and institutions to reflect
Chinese values and priorities. In some cases, these efforts are
generally supportive of current practices. The China-led Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, for example, models its governance
standards on those of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
In other instances, however, China uses international institutions to
legitimate its own interests. Over the past several years, for example,
China has successfully maneuvered to include the Belt and Road
Initiative as a formal part of the United Nations’ efforts to achieve
its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This comes despite
widespread protests in BRI recipient countries in response to China’s
weak environmental, labor and governance standards, as well as the
crippling debt that many countries are assuming when they undertake such
projects.
Finally, Beijing is making significant headway in upending international
norms on political and human rights. At the United Nations Human Rights
Council, it has worked to diminish the ability of outside actors to
criticize a country for human-rights violations. It also promotes a
strong vision of internet sovereignty, rejecting data privacy and the
free flow of information.
Xi Jinping has proclaimed that China has both the intent and the
capability to reshape the international order. Yet much of what passes
for Chinese global leadership to date is simply the pursuit of China’s
own narrow interests. He has yet to demonstrate the key attributes of
true global leadership: the willingness to align and in some cases
subordinate Beijing’s immediate interests to the greater global good,
and the ability to forge a significant agreement around a global
challenge. Where Mr. Xi has claimed leadership—on climate change and
globalization, for example—the reality of what China has delivered has
fallen far short of the promise.
There is little indication that the rest of the world desires a
Chinese-led global order. Polls in countries throughout China’s Asia
Pacific neighborhood indicate little confidence in Mr. Xi’s leadership.
And fault lines are emerging within China over the appropriate role for
the country on the global stage. Though Mr. Xi has used ever more
ambitious rhetoric during his tenure, noting last October at the 19th
Party Congress, for example, that China has “stood up, grown rich, and
become strong,” others resist such language. As an attendee last week at
a major foreign policy conference in Beijing, I heard some Chinese
officials call for more assertive Chinese leadership, but others suggest
that the country has been too ambitious and aggressive and is losing
international support as a result.
Yet this emerging debate within China may have little impact. As
President Donald Trump raises doubts about the U.S. commitment to global
leadership—withdrawing from an ever-increasing number of international
agreements and multilateral arrangements—there may be no other choice.
Only Xi Jinping appears willing and able to grab the mantle of
leadership from a retreating United States. In President Trump’s
cultivation of an “America First” agenda, he may well be planting the
seeds for a “China First” world.
—Ms. Economy is the director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations. Her new book is “The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New
Chinese State,” published by Oxford University Press. |