If China’s now all-supreme leader Xi Jinping succeeds, the United States will have a problem. If he fails, America’s headache could be even worse.
Xi’s elevation to a tradition-busting third term makes him the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. He dominates not only power in Beijing but personifies Communist Party doctrine. His prestige is now inseparable from the state’s and his aggressive, nationalist world view is more dominant than ever.
Xi’s unveiling of a new leadership line-up in his hardline image at last week's Communist Party Congress cements a reality that has been building for years. China and the United States are now open adversaries in the Pacific — an especially dangerous new paradigm given that diplomatic contacts between the two sides have increasingly broken down as they narrow on a dangerous collision course over Taiwan.
Xi did not mention the United States directly in his report to the congress, but America's ears were burning as he lashed out at “interference” over Taiwan and “hegemonism and power politics in all their forms," warned of “drastic changes in the international landscape” and claimed China was facing “external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade and exert maximum pressure.”
Former Australian Prime Minister and China expert Kevin Rudd said in a policy analysis paper that he found most disturbing Xi's view of China’s external security environment. Rudd, now president and CEO of the Asia Society, warned that the hardening of the Chinese leader’s rhetoric shows that the party “no longer rules out the possibility of major war in the future” and that its security agenda now rivals or perhaps surpasses its previously central priority over 40 years, the economy.
Washington has been enshrining a toughened attitude towards China in its own policy documents. In his new National Security Strategy released this month, President Joe Biden made clear that while restraining Russia was a priority, the most consequential geopolitical challenge came from Beijing.
China “is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective,” Biden wrote. “Beijing has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power,” he added, stating the current US view that China’s goal is now not just to compete with the US but to replace it.
These stark statements augur a period of tense international competition, in which both sides will have to be careful not to allow their adversarial relationship to spill into open conflict. Xi and Biden are said to be working towards a summit in Bali in November, but nothing has been confirmed.
For Washington, the extent of Xi’s power brings particular issues. If the Chinese leader is able to triumph over the pandemic despite his failing zero-Covid strategy, reignite the Chinese economy, and ride the increasing power, size and sophistication of the military to a greater global role, Xi's ambition is only likely to grow. But if Chinese domestic crises deepen, and the repression he is using to tighten Communist Party control backfires, he could become even more militant on issues like Taiwan — given his near absolute power, there’s no where for the buck to stop but with him. Thus the possibility of clashes with the US that ignite a war only grows.
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