SCMP - Alejandro Reyes Opinion | Why world should focus on what China needs, not what it wants - Published: 8:30pm, 28 Aug 2025

 SCMP

Alejandro Reyes

Opinion | Why world should focus on what China needs, not what it wants

A needs-first lens will not end the US-China rivalry, but it could prevent the bilateral relationship from becoming more dangerous

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Alejandro Reyes

Published: 8:30pm, 28 Aug 2025

China’s most recent national security white paper opens with a striking hierarchy, putting people’s security first, political security second and economic security third. That ordering is deliberate.

For years, Western observers have asked what China wants. Does Beijing aim to dominate Asia, displace the United States or rewrite the international order? Entire books and essays have been devoted to the question. However, the more revealing question is different: what does China need?

Wants are preferences. Needs are constraints. If needs are unmet, they threaten the Communist Party’s legitimacy. Diplomacy is always a two-level game: leaders negotiate abroad but must deliver stability at home. In democracies, that means persuading voters; in China, it means sustaining growth, food and energy security and social order.

Seen through this lens, China’s actions abroad look less like unbounded ambition and more like risk management for regime survival. Recognising this logic does not excuse coercion, but it does highlight where China is most vulnerable and where policy leverage lies.

For four decades, economic growth has been the party’s social contract. President Xi Jinping has rebranded it as the “Chinese dream” and the “dual circulation” strategy, stressing resilience at home while diversifying abroad. Even so, economic growth is slowing. Export controls on semiconductors are seen not as routine competition but as existential threats. That explains Beijing’s push for indigenous innovation and reduced dependence on the West.

Energy reliance deepens the pressure, with China importing about 70 per cent of its oil. A supply shock could choke growth and legitimacy with it. Hence the hedges such as pipelines from Russia and Myanmar, long-term natural gas deals with Qatar and vast investments in renewable energy. To outsiders, these might look mercantilist. To Beijing, they are life insurance.

Food security is etched into the national psyche. Mao-era famines scarred a generation, and China today holds to a “red line” of grain self-sufficiency. Price supports, stockpiles and agricultural technology might distort markets, but they bolster party legitimacy.

Water scarcity could be even more existential. Chronic shortages in the north threaten farming and industry. The South-North Water Diversion Project, which has shifted tens of billions of cubic metres of water, is as much a political safeguard as an engineering feat.

These pressures shape diplomacy: soybeans from Brazil, oil from the Gulf, gas from Australia and Qatar, grain from Russia. To cast them as expansionism misses the point – they are about keeping promises to the people.

Perhaps the most sensitive need is stability. Xi’s doctrine of comprehensive national security now spans everything from cyberspace to outer space. Surveillance, censorship and ideological policing tarnish China’s global image but are justified internally as defences against chaos and “colour revolutions”.

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Hong Kong illustrates this calculus. For Beijing, the city remains a vital financial hub and gateway for capital, but it is also a political risk. Instability here is seen as a threat to party legitimacy. That helps explain why Beijing prioritised control over reputation, even at the cost of international backlash. In this framework, stability is not optional – it is survival.

Taiwan is often described as something China wants, but for Beijing it is also a need. Taiwanese independence would be an unthinkable humiliation that could undermine the party’s authority. However, a reckless military invasion that triggered devastating sanctions or war could threaten growth, food and energy supplies and social stability – the very foundations of legitimacy.

This helps explain why Beijing invests so heavily in grey-zone tactics, economic coercion and military deterrence rather than rushing into conflict. Taiwan is a sovereignty issue, but also a matter of survival. That duality makes it highly sensitive yet also constrained.

Critics are correct that Xi’s China has grown more coercive and risk-tolerant. “Wolf warrior” diplomacy, swelling defence budgets and an expanded nuclear arsenal are real, but even assertiveness is structured by constraint. China cannot simply walk away from growth, food and energy flows or domestic order. These pressures both fuel ambition and set limits.

If needs instead of wants drive China’s choices, the strategy of rivals, adversaries and even partners towards Beijing should adjust. They should avoid over-militarisation as an approach focused solely on war-fighting risks the very insecurity spiral Washington fears.

They should also carefully target their pressure as blanket decoupling or sweeping export bans threaten Beijing’s ability to meet basic needs, narrowing its room for compromise and raising risks. Calibrated measures preserve leverage while leaving space for cooperation.

At the same time, they should engage on shared needs. Agricultural trade, climate, health and energy transition are arenas where China’s needs align with global ones, offering practical avenues for collaboration.

Finally, they should leverage constraints. By understanding where China is most vulnerable – energy chokepoints, food supply, technology bottlenecks – policymakers can better shape Beijing’s risk calculus.

Asking what China wants risks producing misperceptions and overreactions. Asking what China needs points to the underlying constraints that make its behaviour at once coercive and cautious. That shift does not make Beijing benevolent, but it does make it more comprehensible and its policies more realistic.

Recognising needs means designing responses that defend one’s own interests while avoiding unnecessary escalation. If leaders keep asking the wrong question, they risk fighting the wrong battles. A needs-first lens will not end the US-China rivalry, but it could prevent it from becoming more dangerous.

Alejandro Reyes

Alejandro Reyes is an adjunct professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration and senior fellow at the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at The University of Hong Kong. He is also scholar-in-residence at the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre.