There is no question that when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he quickly moved to turn China into an increasingly centralized “surveillance state” that would ensure conformity through facial recognition technology, social credit systems to punish improper behavior, and the monitoring of each citizen’s internet, economic, and social activities. Higher party members have been kept in line by Xi’s ongoing crackdown on corruption and his intolerance for opposition. And both the many and the few have been subjected to a massive propaganda campaign, promoting the collectivist idea of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” – the great China Dream of the country taking its place as a co-equal or even dominant state at the top of the great power hierarchy. This campaign, along with the teaching of “Xi Jinping Thought” in both schools and workplace, seeks to solidify each individual’s commitment to the larger whole even as they followed Deng’s advice that “to get rich is glorious.” And the fact that Beijing seems intent on sharing its surveillance techniques to help autocratic leaders around the world remain in power only seems to reinforce the point that China is indeed a “revisionist” power intent on overthrowing the current international rules-based order and replacing it with something more to Beijing’s liking.

It is easy in the West to jump to the conclusion that the changes within China and in Beijing’s behavior toward the outside world after 2008 – the crisis with Japan in 2010-12 over the Senkaku Islands, the seizing and militarization of atolls in the South China Sea from 2009 to the present, China’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, the massive military buildup in East Asia, the extension of the Belt and Road Initiative to Latin America, and the ongoing coercive threats toward Taiwan – are clear confirmation that Chinese leaders seek to displace the United States as the dominant state in the world. And of course pessimists use this evidence to support their position that China has goals that go beyond the rational security ends assumed by systemic realists. 

The fact that Beijing seems intent on sharing its surveillance techniques to help autocratic leaders around the world remain in power only seems to reinforce the point that China is indeed a “revisionist” power intent on overthrowing the current international rules-based order and replacing it with something more to Beijing’s liking.

But before we assume that China is gearing up to take over the global system, and that it must be countered by an all-out effort to match its military buildup and reduce its economic growth by trade restrictions, three issues must be raised. First, it is important to establish to what extent the Chinese understanding of security is shaped by an imperative that almost all great powers face, especially as they reached certain stages of development: namely, to expand their economic power spheres just to keep GDP growth going. Second, we need to see how China’s problem of domestic stability is quite different from any other great power in modern history. And third, we must determine to what extent Washington’s own behavior, including the promotion of democratic liberalization around the world, can affect the way Chinese leaders see the level of external threats that surround them. Only after we have this foundational understanding of the Chinese view of security in place can we turn to the question of to what extent China’s recent behavior goes beyond mere rational security maximization, and thus to what extent it will be difficult to reach an accommodation with Beijing that secures the future peace.

One key question that arises immediately is whether the current tensions in U.S.-China relations are simply a function of Xi’s leadership and ambitions. The answer is no. As Andrew Chubb, Rush Doshi, and others have shown, China started to become much more assertive over such things as the Senkaku Islands near Taiwan and the atolls in the South China Sea just after 2007. Moreover, while the push to extend China’s economic footprint certainly got a lift with Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, this initiative, as Min Ye demonstrates, was really a new name for a series of policies that were started in 1997-98 and gained steam after 2007. Significantly, as Ye shows, the upticks in China’s going-abroad policies came just after periods when China’s growth rate had slowed dramatically and CCP leaders could see what might happen should China not be able to increase its production efficiency. 

We need to see how China’s problem of domestic stability is quite different from any other great power in modern history.

But China’s problem with falling rates of growth goes beyond the traditional great power concern about sustaining one’s power position relative to primary adversaries. China has domestic concerns unlike any other great power in history. Its population is huge – over 1.4 billion – and ninety percent of it is concentrated on around one-third of the land. Its history over the last two hundred years confirms that revolts and revolutions are not only common, but often devastating. Over twenty million died in the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s and 60s, started by a leader influenced by Christian ideas brought by missionaries. Millions more died in the chaos that began with the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and led to almost four decades of regional fragmentation, warlordism, and civil war. Chinese leaders today, for good reason, see these internal tragedies (the “century of humiliation”) as directly linked to the invasion of foreign troops, ideas, and firms after losing the Opium War of 1839 to 1842.  

Considering this history, it is not surprising that all CCP leaders since Tiananmen have worried first and foremost about maintaining the internal security of the state. They not only fear that western powers such as the United States are seeking to undermine the communist nature of Chinese society, but that the mere presence of U.S.-aligned democratic states near its shores in the form of Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan increases the risks of another Tiananmen crisis. In their minds, they thus have reason to take actions both within and without to protect the security of the state from foreign influences.

Considering this history, it is not surprising that all CCP leaders since Tiananmen have worried first and foremost about maintaining the internal security of the state.  

Given all this, it is not surprising that Xi and his cohorts believe that the more they can strengthen the sphere of autocratic states around the world, the more China itself will be protected against the pernicious influence of liberal democracy. In this sense, Xi’s effort to promote China’s form of techno-authoritarianism has a very different end than Mao’s efforts in the 1960s to spread peasant-based revolution in the Global South. Mao was trying to inspire the masses to rise up against the local elites that were, in his mind, running regimes supported by the West. Xi is trying to do the opposite: he wants to prevent the many from overthrowing the few who run oppressive regimes, to stop them from sparking revolutions-from-below that lead to another wave of liberal democracy akin to that which swept the world in the late 1980s. And as a nice side benefit, he sees this as stabilizing the trade relations China has created with these states, and discouraging them from following Washington’s lead on commercial policy.

Despite the clear cultural and ideological distance between the American state and the Chinese state as shaped by CCP leaders over the last three decades, we should be careful not to assume that a rising China, regardless of which of the many possible pathways it eventually takes, will inevitably be as much of a threat as the two biggest rising threats the United States faced in the twentieth century: Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and Soviet Russia in the early Cold War. There has been much loose talk about Xi Jinping having global ambitions to dominate the world that imply parallels to the twentieth century drives of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Yet even if we think, as pessimists do, that China is already well along pathway E and will not only overtake the United States but be driven by drives for glory and the spreading of its ideology, we should not presume that a new all-out cold war, let alone a hot regional war, is inevitable. Understanding what it means for Chinese leaders to seek to non-security ends such as glory and the spreading of ideology, as well as what it means to improve national security, will help us see just how different the new Sino-American geopolitical competition is from previous periods that we have discussed in this book.

Xi is trying to do the opposite: he wants to prevent the many from overthrowing the few who run oppressive regimes, to stop them from sparking revolutions-from-below that lead to another wave of liberal democracy akin to that which swept the world in the late 1980s.

First off, as optimists note, there is simply no reason to believe China will “inevitably” overtake the United States in relative economic power, or that even if it does this is a huge problem for the western world. The very scholarly debate over whether China’s economy is already peaking or whether it will continue to grow significantly in absolute and relative power reinforces just how uncertain it is that China’s GDP will ever significantly overtake America’s GDP. But if it does, there are two key factors that will make this of much less practical salience than the similar fear of the Soviet Union overtaking the United States was in the 1950s. First, China’s huge population means that it will have for quite some time one-fourth to one-third the GDP per capita of the United States. This leaves the Chinese state with much less surplus, after fulfilling basic citizen needs of food, shelter, and health care, for power projection around the world. China is certainly now a regional power in East Asia.  But to “dominate the world” it would have to be able, as the United States has for eight decades, to credibly position its army and navy forces around the globe and be ready to put boots on the ground when a crisis arises. Not only can China not do this now, but its small per capita GDP would make it hard to sustain such a global posture if it were to try.

Second, China is highly constrained in its ability to build an “empire,” even if its leaders wanted to, by the very fact of what I’ve been calling the FDR legacy. The core political grouping in the world right now, as it has been since the late 1940s, encompasses the geopolitical arc of nations from Britain, through western Europe and the Middle East, to Southeast Asia and Japan/South Korea. And with the collapse of the Soviet realm, this arc now includes the states of Eastern Europe and Finland. Essentially all of these nations are either formally aligned with the United States or see America as their primary patron. China does not even have the equivalent of Comecon, the Soviet-era economic sphere in Eurasia, let alone the series of far-flung client states Moscow had during the Cold War such as Cuba, North Vietnam, and Nicaragua. Yes, China has done an effective job of using the Belt and Road Initiative to increase its economic penetration of some of the states that have historically been a part of the U.S economic power sphere. But the accepting of Chinese money to build railways, ports, and infrastructure, as Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya, or Greece have done, does not mean that when push comes to shove such countries will switch to trading exclusively or even primarily with China, let alone shift their political allegiance to Beijing.

Understanding what it means for Chinese leaders to seek non-security ends such as glory and the spreading of ideology, as well as what it means to improve national security, will help us see just how different the new Sino-American geopolitical competition is from previous periods.

The final point is perhaps the most important of the three. Because the liberal democratic states in the U.S. economic sphere are also typically politically aligned with the United States – and unlike past imperial systems, are freely choosing to be so – Washington has significant leverage over their larger foreign economic policies and how those policies shape the U.S. relationship with China. This is particularly true with regard to the question of the production of high-tech semiconductors and computer programs. The United States can thus slow China’s growth rate through concerted action.

For the above reasons, the United States should not be as worried about China having a GDP that is larger or even significantly larger than its own.

Excerpted from A World Safe for Commerce published by Princeton University Press ©2024