The growing CCP control over the private sector has contributed to Chinese technology companies’ exclusion from some of these countries’ markets. Moreover, the linkages between Chinese technology companies and the Chinese military or surveillance activities, particularly in Xinjiang, have resulted in US sanctions to deprive these companies of necessary technology. In addition, CCP financial and other support for international scientific talent through its Thousand Talents Plan has triggered concerns over spying and intellectual property (IP) theft, contributing to a significant political backlash in the United States and elsewhere.
Chapter 6 investigates China’s efforts to reform global governance norms, values, and institutions in four policy arenas: the Arctic, human rights, the internet, and development finance. It reveals how Beijing has successfully enforced its own policy preferences through assuming leadership positions in international institutions; a long-term strategy of setting targets and timetables to benchmark accomplishments; mobilizing Chinese government, business, and civil society actors; leveraging its economic power; and reinforcing its priorities in multiple domains. As with the BRI and China’s global technology push, however, the more overtly China’s policies impinge on or undermine established norms and values, the more likely the international community will resist.
The final chapter offers thoughts on how the United States and the rest of the world should respond to China’s strategic ambitions. It argues that neither the traditional US policy of “constructive engagement” nor the more recent Trump administration approach of “compete, counter, and contain,” is adequate to meet the challenge. The US strategy, along with that of its allies and partners, must account for Xi Jinping’s unique policy playbook as well as to assert a positive and proactive vision of the world’s future and their place within it. Given China’s global reach and impact, moreover, the United States and traditional allies and partners must expand the tent to engage the rest of the world in this vision. While there is broad scope for cooperation between China and the United States on global challenges such as climate change, this is unlikely to alter the contest underway between two distinct sets of values and world visions.
Conclusion
The findings from these chapters reveal how Xi Jinping uses the various elements of his unique foreign policy playbook to realize his strategic ambitions. Taken together, they also suggest several broader conclusions.
First, Xi’s overarching strategic priority is to maintain sovereignty and social stability in the near term, and to realize the unification of China over the longer term. Moreover, he is willing to tolerate significant disequilibrium in the international system to achieve a new, more desirable end steady state of a reunified China. Xi’s repressive policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, for example, resulted in international censure, as well as coordinated economic sanctions by the European Union, UK, Canada, and the United States; his retaliatory sanctions then threatened a major trade deal with the EU. The border conflict with India led Prime Minister Modi to strengthen security and other ties with the Quad. In addition, China’s wolf warrior diplomacy – designed to control the international political narrative to avoid a domestic legitimacy crisis – contributed to a steep drop in Xi’s and China’s global standing. Yet this backlash failed to persuade China to change course. Finally, Beijing’s willingness to exclude Taiwan from the WHA briefings during the pandemic further demonstrated its determination to place its sovereignty interests over both the welfare of the Taiwanese people and the larger global good.
Second, while China is not exporting communism, it is exporting elements of its authoritarian political model. In the same way that it controls speech domestically, Beijing seeks to limit the ability of international actors to speak freely about China. Traditionally, Beijing has concentrated on ensuring that other countries acknowledge its sovereignty claims, using the leverage of its market or access to the country to coerce them to do so or to punish them if they do not. Chinese red lines are proliferating, however. China initiated a boycott against Australian exports in response to Canberra’s call for a COVID-19 inquiry; it also expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in response to an article that referred to China as the “sick man of Asia.” Virtually any issue can now be labeled a threat to Chinese sovereignty or social stability. China also exports its model more directly via the BRI. It trains officials in some BRI countries on how to censor the internet, control civil society, and build a robust single-party state. It also transfers its development model through the BRI in the form of debt-induced infrastructure development with weak transparency, labor, environmental, and legal standards. Finally, Chinese officials use their leadership positions within the UN and other international institutions to shape the values and norms of those bodies in ways that align with China’s political interests: for example, by preventing Uyghur Muslim dissidents from speaking before UN bodies and by advancing Chinese technology norms, such as a state-controlled internet in global standard setting bodies.
Third, Xi has made substantial progress in realizing his strategic vision, but continued success is far from inevitable. The very characteristics that have enabled China to achieve its foreign policy objectives in the near term now risk undermining its future progress. Within its own backyard, China has defeated a broad-based push for democracy and cemented CCP control in Hong Kong, prevented Taiwan from gaining voice within the United Nations, and enhanced its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. Efforts to create a more Sinocentric Asia Pacific have also made progress. The Chinese leadership successfully led the negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in November 2020, which stands as the largest trading bloc in the world and serves as an important step forward in asserting China’s leadership within the Asia Pacific. The Chinese military has also significantly enhanced its capabilities in the region. In addition, China has managed impressive gains in shaping the world beyond its backyard. Through the BRI, and particularly the Digital Silk Road, China is increasingly the provider of choice as the world builds out its technological infrastructure for the 21st century. It has won contracts to deploy Huawei 5G technology throughout much of Africa and, increasingly, in Latin America and the Middle East. Its media companies project a more positive China narrative to tens of millions of citizens globally. And in international institutions, China has made headway in advancing its human rights, internet governance, and development norms.
Increasingly, however, China’s state-centered model has limited the credibility and attraction of many of its initiatives. Private Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ByteDance face growing constraints in accessing global markets. Countries are increasingly rejecting Chinese investments over concerns that they are part of a CCP-directed strategy to support its military expansion. Chinese cultural initiatives such as Confucius Institutes (CIs) have also diminished in popularity because they are perceived to be agents of Chinese propaganda. In addition, the predilection of some Chinese officials who serve in UN bodies to act in the interest of China as opposed to the broader mission of the UN has provoked efforts by other countries to push back against Chinese initiatives and support alternative candidates for senior UN positions. China’s future ability to achieve its broader foreign policy objectives is thus increasingly compromised by its insistence that it control both state and non-state actors.
In many developing and middle-income countries, as well, the export of China’s development model through the BRI is incurring significant political and economic costs. There are frequent popular protests around the lack of transparency, weak environmental and labor safeguards, and concerns around debt repayment plans. COVID-19 placed particular stress on BRI deals, with the Chinese government reporting that 60 percent had been adversely affected. Newly elected leaders often seek to reset BRI deal terms, describing them as grossly unfair and the product of their predecessors’ corruption or weak negotiation skills. Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have become disillusioned with the paucity of Chinese investment and are considering withdrawing from the 17+1 framework. The BRI also has not yielded significant political benefits for China more broadly. There is no correlation, for example, between states that receive the most BRI investment and those that support China on thorny political issues such as Xinjiang, Hong Kong,
