Pursuing Hegemony, China Plays the Victim

It is barely a secret that the ruling caste of present-day China seeks to return the country to its former magnificence, lost during the ‘Century of Humiliation’ (1839-1949). This was when Japan and the great western powers unceremoniously carved up the Middle Kingdom. Such a broad policy objective is eminently sensible and justified – perhaps even righteous – when seen from Beijing and elsewhere: Given its resurgence over the past 50-odd years, China’s heft needs to be accommodated. However, this need not necessarily involve a clash with the regional and global powers that filled the country’s geopolitical space during its absence from the world stage.

Since 2012, the year President Xi Jinping secured power, Chinese foreign policy has focussed on re-establishing the regional hegemony of the distant past which saw the neighbourhood pay tribute – real or symbolic – to the great benign power at its core. So far, President Jinping has given scant attention to the Westphalian principles that govern the relations between sovereign states. Chinese strategists have some catching up to do and consider that pronounced differences in size and might must be properly reflected in diplomatic traffic and discourse – leading to a stable Pax Sinica.

Outsiders may reasonably conclude that China currently behaves like a regional bully, imposing its will on smaller neighbours and using its financial muscle to effectively ‘buy’ client states – not only in Asia, but in Europe, Africa, South America, and Oceania as well.

Beijing’s own self-image is that of a peaceful and benign power which naturally attracts and gathers satellites gravitating into its orbit. Attracted by wealth and genius, these lesser states submit to China’s brilliance out of self-interest – and the expectation of rich rewards. That, in any case, is the idealised narrative rescued, reedited, and reimposed by President Jinping. Reality intrudes every so often because, contrary to imperial times, contemporary China only possesses hard power. Today, the country sorely lacks the moral leadership of yore when its stability and scientific prowess were the envy of the regional – and the world.

Disconnected Narrative

Though present-day leaders may drone on about ‘Chinese Characteristics’, the nation has deployed its impressive economic progress, and the attending wherewithal, to mimic and expand on western (consumer) values. Thus, President Jinping’s narrative suffers a disconnect from a tangible reality that not even the vast propaganda apparatus of the state can mask entirely.

The influence of the imperial past on China’s current foreign policy goals and initiatives is but a ruse to frame its perceived exceptionalism – a grand storyboard that conveniently covers distinctly 21^st century ambitions and attitudes. The creation of a global financial and resources exchange system that keeps the economy humming, and the forging of interlocking trade and security mechanisms that secure the country’s regional hegemony, are expressions of the hard power that allows China to claim and obtain a role in world affairs.

China is, of course, not alone in abusing history to explain and frame the present. However, the country is, perhaps more so than others, quite willing to periodically rewrite its own history to suit the official discourse. In the 1960s, the official view held that the imperial past – as depicted in the stage spectacular The East Is Red – was a time of misery, suffering, and feudalism that needed to be expunged to unlock a glorious future of industrialisation and unbound happiness for the masses. Around the turn of the millennium, this storyboard was scrapped. Since then, China’s past was supposed to have been gloriously prosperous, peaceful, and even cosmopolitan as impressively choreographed in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The imperial splendour of dynastic China was, of course, brutishly attacked and dismantled by envious foreign powers seeking to subvert the gentle giant. By linking that history of victimisation to the present day, President Jinping has managed to cast the United States in the role formerly adjudicated to the colonial powers – those eager to contain China and deny the country its rightful place in the world. In that sense, the narrative constructed by Beijing appears seamless and offers a lesson for the future: beware of envious outsiders.

Mao Zedong was rather fond of predicting the capitalists’ imminent demise, likening the United States to a drowning person sinking fast. The great man ridiculed reactionaries – and their ‘running dogs’ – desperately trying to hold back the ‘wheel of history’. Much like the Bible or, indeed Winston Churchill, Mao’s exceptionally rich array of mutterings, writings, and comments offer a suitable quotation for every occasion. Now brought back out of the mists of history and once again fashionable, Mao’s view of western powers has gained new currency in the Jinping Administration.

Mao’s Prediction

After China emerged comparatively unscathed from the 2008/9 global banking crisis and managed to return to growth quickly in the wake of the first coronavirus outbreak, the country’s leaders have begun wondering openly if Mao may have been right after all. The West, it would seem, has lost its magic touch and US-style capitalism looks to be struggling as inherent contradictions take their toll with every crisis pushing the system deeper into debt, accelerating the decline. The Marxist view of history – linear, a bit simplistic, and still much in vogue – offers a neat frame on which events and trends may be gauged and interpreted.

Thus, the Chinese leadership has concluded that the inevitable decline of Western power as embodied by the might of the United States, and foretold by Mao, is taking place and, under President Trump, has been accelerated. This analysis now forms the very cornerstone of China’s foreign policy and determines its objectives – and approach. In this light, the Washington-led efforts to ‘comprehensively suppress’ the rise of China make perfect sense: They merely represent the Way of the West since time immemorial and, as such, the convulsions of a losing proposition.

A recent editorial in the state-controlled newspaper Global Times tellingly illustrated this perception: “China must accept the reality that America’s attitude to the country has fundamentally changed.” Former top trade official Wei Jianguo put it yet more bluntly: “The essence of the trade war is that the US wants to destroy China.” Senior diplomat Fu Ying, now chairperson of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, surmises: “It is a fight that the world’s waning superpower cannot afford to lose.”

Beijing’s entrenched view of the world, and its place and future in it, inescapably leads to heightened tensions as China seeks to reclaim its prominent position whilst battling the historical foes with the hard power the country now possesses. The expectation is that the US will double down on containment and suppression. In response, Chinese leadership is doubling down on policies to encourage domestic consumption, reorienting growth away from the increasingly ‘unstable and uncertain’ world. In practical terms, China is, however, not so much de-globalising as it is ‘de-Americanising’.

The self-sufficiency drive, always present in the background but since long not a priority, has been reinvigorated as a way to decrease the leverage of the US over the country. Last year, President Jinping earmarked an additional $1.4 trillion for investment in high-tech infrastructure.

Wishful Thinking

The Achilles heel of President Jinping’s approach is a rather pronounced form of wishful thinking whereby the actual power of the US and its western allies is grossly underestimated. The US, in fact, possesses much more than just hard power. Its influence is not based on military hardware and cash alone. The US and Europe derive their principal strength from soft power: Technological innovation, financial wizardry, cultural pre-eminence, and an unequalled moral standing and authority as expressed in values that are shared almost universally. China, on the other hand, has no soft power to speak of: Its economic advances may be admired, but the country’s almost dystopian society has few fans. Also, Chinese culture may have deep roots in history but does not travel well.

Rather than confront President Jinping’s assertive China with hard power, western nations would be well advised to deploy less lethal weapons by reminding all and sundry – including the Chinese – that repression at home and bullying abroad are counter-productive. In a sense, China must be reminded that the Westphalian principles which underpin civil discourse between sovereign nations is able to accommodate Beijing’s newfound heft and further its long-term interests without the need for a clash of civilisations. It is, undoubtedly, a difficult message to deliver and will take a generation or longer to be fully absorbed by Chinese leadership: History does not need to repeat itself – in fact it seldom does.

Cover photo: Neo-classical architecture on the Bund, Shanghai’s famed waterfront promenade.

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© 2011 Photo by Sami Hadar