China’s Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping

Pekingology

This episode explores the fundamental shift in China's foreign policy under Xi Jinping, moving from a collective leadership model to a stron

Key takeaways

• Xi Jinping's primary driver is the intersection of his personal authority and the security of the Communist Party.
• China seeks 'preeminence' rather than 'hegemony,' aiming to be the global leader without assuming the costly public goods responsibilities of the US model.

Main topics

• Xi Jinping's leadership style
• China's global strategy

Notable quotes

China is one of the 21st century's most consequential nations.

Conclusion

The episode provides a critical framework for understanding how China'

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:04) China is one of the 21st century's most consequential nations. It has never been more important to understand how the country is governed and what its leaders and its people actually want and believe. Welcome to Pekingology, the podcast that unpacks China's evolving political system and the trajectory of China's domestic and foreign policy. I'm your host, Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. This is Pekingology. Speaker 3 (0:36) I am very pleased to be joined today by Professor Steve Tsang, co-author of the new book, China's Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping. Steve is also a professor of China Studies and director of the China Institute at SOAS. He is one of the world's leading experts on Chinese politics and contemporary foreign policy coming out of Beijing. I'm so excited to hear about his new book. Steve, thank you for coming on the show. Speaker 1 (1:06) Well, thank you very much, Henrietta. It's a great pleasure to join you. Speaker 3 (1:11) So we're going to be talking a lot about Xi Jinping today, but first I would love to talk a little bit about you. How did you decide to study Chinese politics? Speaker 1 (1:21) Well, I grew up in Hong Kong, so I have a Chinese background myself. And when I was a young scholar starting out, it was in the 1980s when Hong Kong's future was very much at stake. So I started with Hong Kong and also tried to understand Taiwan. But ultimately, it is all about China. China's politics and what drives China, what really is going to determine what China will or will not do. Because when you are looking at what happens in places like Hong Kong or Taiwan, you really cannot ignore the China side of the story. And with China becoming much more important in the last couple of decades, I think it becomes obvious to me that where China is going is the central question. that we have to confront increasingly. Speaker 3 (2:26) And to answer the question of where China's going, of course, the question of where Xi Jinping is going and what drives his own thinking has been increasingly important in recent years. And I think one of the exciting aspects of your new book is that you lean very heavily into the importance of understanding Xi's personal mindset and ambitions to the degree that that's something we can do. in parsing out what China is really trying to achieve in the world and overcoming some of the projections of perhaps our own perspective or worldview that admittedly we can sometimes deploy out of Washington or other G7 capitals. So let's talk about Xi. You write in the book that he has pursued a more assertive approach to foreign policy than what we had seen from China in recent decades. And I'm quoting, not out of a cold calculating pragmatism, but because he believes in it. What does that mean? Speaker 1 (3:29) Okay. Before I answer this question directly, let me just clarify that I think what I start to do is not to argue for any kind of China specialism. That China is not exceptional in many ways as a rising Greek power. A lot of things that China does do follow the general patterns of what new Greek powers do. But in the case of China, because of the particular political system in place, which enable a super strong man to emerge as its leader. its leader has a disproportionately important role in shaping the thinking of that country and the government and the governing party. And that is where Xi Jinping comes into the picture. And what does Xi Jinping want? What does he believe in? Here we are dealing with somebody who, when he consolidated his power back in 2017, Speaker 1 (4:40) put his thought into what effectively was China's de facto ideology, guiding the country and its people to move in a direction that he thinks is the best direction of travel for China, for the Communist Party, and for Xi Jinping, arguably in reverse order. But to him, It doesn't matter because they are all the same thing. So here, what I'm really trying to argue with Olivia in this book is that when we try to understand China, we apply the international relations theory that are based on wisdom we have developed over a very long period of time and very large body of examples. Yes, but before we do that, we will need to take into account the distortions to behavior. that the practices that are specific to China, Xi Jinping's role, the political system, and the calculation of interests, before we simply apply the standard neoclassical realism, then we can get to understand China. And for Xi Jinping, he is committed, without openly saying so, that he is going to make China great again. This is his fundamental belief. But for him, there's also something else which is fundamental. The leadership of the Communist Party under Xi Jinping is the most basic factor that will guide China in the right direction. And therefore, nothing can be done to allow the continuation of the party and Xi Jinping in. power being threatened. And this is where it will come out in the book in terms of the analytical framework and the various drivers that shape Chinese foreign policy. Speaker 3 (6:50) And in terms of those drivers, you identify them as a Sinocentric Party-State Realism and then draw out what I think is a helpful hierarchy of drivers. So there's four that you identify, and it sounds like, tell me this is wrong, but in order of importance, they would be regime security, which you mentioned, you know, everything comes down to the party, and Xi increasingly being equivalent to the party. So Xi's political dignity, as our Chinese counterparts like to say, comes first. Then you have ideology, Xi Jinping thought, which we can get into. Third, and you're going to have to tell us what this means, an instrumentalist approach to transforming the international order. And then lastly, at the bottom of that list, you put realism. So more like conventional Western IR, international relations framework. So in other words, part of what I took from that is that we shouldn't expect Xi to act in a realist, rationalist way if doing so would conflict with his ideological priorities or his perception of the party's security at home. Is that a fair way to read your framework? Speaker 1 (8:04) Yes, I think that is a very good way of summarizing what that framework is. When I was conceptually structuring the book, there was always a bit of a tension between whether I put the overriding driver of Xi Jinping focusing on keeping himself and the party in power first, or I put it last. Because that is the overriding driver, as we call it in the book. But it is not something that happens on a regular daily basis. Xi Jinping is not so lack of confidence that he feels that he and the party are constantly at threat. He is aware of that, that he has to be watching out for it. But most of the time, that is in the background. But if there is any indication that there might be any kind of challenge to him, he will act on that challenge. However, it may work in a more normal conventional calculation of the balance of power or changing balance of power and calculation of national interest. Because this also affects how China looks at and calculates national interest. Most of the time when we are looking at a rising superpower, we can use international relations theory, standard ones. to map out what that country's national interest would be at any particular time, and therefore calculate how that government will act and respond. In the case of China, it doesn't always work because the national interest has an inner core. And that inner core is the interest of the Communist Party. And with Xi Jinping now being the core of the Communist Party, within the calculation of the interest of the party, there also is a core, and that is Xi Jinping. And this is something which in the end will come out as a very significant factor if and when we want to devise policies that are designed to deter China on any policy matters. It has to be something that will get Xi Jinping to understand it and then he will react to it in a way that we can expect him to. Otherwise, we will be doing the wrong kind of engagement will be doing the wrong kind of deterrence and will not get the result required because we are fundamentally thinking about a different kind of actor. Speaker 3 (10:47) And I think we could reasonably assume that maintaining the security of the rule of the Communist Party is at the heart of ultimately domestic or foreign policy for China and has been for a long time. I don't think that's unique to Xi. But a unique element is the increasing conflation, as you've identified, of Xi and his personal authority and dignity and respect in the world. with the security of the party's position. And so can you help us understand how that actually matters in the world? Like, how does that affect Chinese foreign policy as we experience it? Speaker 1 (11:26) Well, it does matter. Because when we were looking at the pre-Xi Jinping era and the post-Mao era, we're looking essentially at what I would call an extended opening up and