What really drives China today—is it Xi Jinping himself, the Belt & Road Initiative, old habits of statecraft, or the regime’s authoritarian nature? Four recent books help us sort through the morass.
“There
is no easy way to understand China,” the preeminent China historian Jonathan
Spence wrote in 1990. Opening his comprehensive work, The Search for Modern
China, Spence observed that “for a long time China was a completely unknown
quantity to those living in the West.” That had changed, he suggested, but
there were still enough questions to “keep us in a state of bewilderment as to
China’s real nature.”
Thirty
years later, the United States finds itself in the midst of a generational
debate on China. Sitting at the heart of that debate are the same fundamental
issues about China’s nature and direction that Spence raised three decades ago.
Seeking
to answer these questions, three recent works of non-fiction and, surprisingly,
one novel stand out in their ability to interpret modern China. Ranging in
topic from Xi Jinping’s effect on Chinese society, to an examination of the
Belt and Road Initiative, to an analysis of changes in Chinese grand strategy
over the past hundred years, to the psychological effects of living under an
increasingly authoritarian regime, these books were written by leading thinkers
with deep knowledge of and experience in dealing with China. And while their
focus and approaches vary considerably, they all seek to explain the nature of
the modern Chinese state.
Elizabeth
C. Economy opens her latest book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New
Chinese State, by asking the reader to consider the nature of contemporary
China. She notes that China “is a country that often confounds us with
contradictions.” Disentangling the contradictions and making sense of today’s
China is the daunting task of this ambitious book.
Economy’s
central argument is that the key to understanding contemporary China is
understanding Xi Jinping. In 2012, when it first emerged that Xi Jinping had
defeated his rivals and would become general secretary of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), he was “largely an unknown quantity.” Economy argues that that’s
no longer the case, even if, after almost eight years have passed under his
leadership, most observers are still poorly equipped to make sense of the
dramatic changes he has imposed on his country.
In
Economy’s telling, China’s trajectory under Xi Jinping is clear. Increased
centralization of power, more governmental control of society and individuals’
lives, and a growing number of regulatory, legal, and technological barriers to
contact with the outside world all characterize today’s China. But if those are
internal manifestations of Xi’s China, the external implications include a
deeper penetration of the outside world and a more assertive set of foreign
policies. Economy posits that it is a serious mistake to focus solely on
Chinese foreign policy and not pay attention to the fundamental domestic shifts
now underway in China. Both derive from the same basic impulse to reassert the
state in the making of China’s policies. Economy contends that China is an “illiberal
state seeking leadership in a liberal world order,” and that the implications
of China’s domestic political and economic system are profound, far-reaching,
and little understood.
Economy
systematically documents the steps Beijing has taken to exert further control
in virtually every field of human endeavor, with chapters examining the
political and cyber arenas, the economic realm—to include innovation,
state-owned enterprises, and the environment—and Beijing’s foreign and national
security policies. To research this book, Economy immersed herself in Xi
Jinping thought, reading scores of his speeches, commentary, and official party
documents in an attempt to understand “how Xi’s model is taking root and
transforming Chinese political and economic life.”
In this
wide-ranging survey, three core arguments stand out: the importance of Xi
Jinping, the presence of a definitive strategy informing all aspects of Chinese
policy, and the centrality of ideology. Each of these propositions respond to
core questions about today’s China—and for each, she makes a compelling case.
On Xi
Jinping, there is ongoing debate about both how much he represents a break from
the past and whether his actions are products of a larger leadership consensus.
Economy notes that not every policy decision China has pursued since his
ascension is new, but argues that the turn towards more internal repression and
external assertiveness have hardened and accelerated during his tenure. Xi took
power determined to change China’s course, Economy writes, and his reign has
born that impulse out by largely rejecting Deng Xiaoping’s previous efforts to
open up the Chinese economy and reassure the rest of the world of China’s
benign intentions by pursuing a low-profile foreign policy. What makes Xi
distinct is his accumulation of power within the CCP—unrivaled since Mao—and
the particular strategy he has set out for a CCP-led China.
Nowhere
is this clearer than in Xi’s call for a China Dream of national rejuvenation.
Because of the ubiquity of the phrase and its ill-defined nature, many
observers have dismissed it as either purely rhetorical or inchoate. Economy
believes this is an error, as under its banality lies a “number of concrete
objectives,” intended to allow a CCP-led China to “reclaim the country’s
ancient greatness.” There is a strong belief in Beijing that by historical
right, by correction of the past 200 years of humiliation by foreign powers,
and by its extraordinary economic growth, China will regain its dominant
position in the region. Internally, this means that the CCP must stay in power
and increase the Chinese state’s control. Externally, it means China must
regain its position of prominence by steadily accruing more power than its
international competitors. These objectives inform Chinese strategy and help
explain decisions on tightening the control over the domestic economy,
expanding propaganda and other forms of social control, investing deeply in and
acquiring technology, and developing cutting-edge military weapons.
Finally,
Economy highlights that Xi Jinping’s China is an increasingly ideological state
that sees the CCP existentially threatened by liberal values. She quotes Xi
speaking to the Chinese National Propaganda and Ideological Work Conference in
2013, when he held that “the disintegration of a regime often starts from the
ideological area. . . . If the ideological defenses are breached, other
defenses become very difficult to hold.”
Policy
has following accordingly. Domestically, the party has ramped up its rhetoric,
casting constitutional democracy, human rights, academic freedom, freedom of
the press, and judicial independence as fundamental threats. It has increased
its control over the media, expanded ideological training of its citizens, and
winnowed the opportunities for exposure to information from the outside world.
Externally, it has sought to suppress and censor speech it deems offensive
while also exporting its technological tools for social control to struggling
democracies and like-minded regimes. Economy warns about Beijing’s efforts to
export elements of its authoritarian model, undermine democracies by taking
advantage of their openness, and engage in an ideological struggle against
liberal values. In so doing, she raises several challenging questions for those
who dismiss ideology as a driving force behind Chinese policies.
If
Economy’s work is broad survey of China under Xi Jinping, Nadège Rolland’s
monograph on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a much more narrowly focused
examination of Chinese aspirations. China’s Eurasian Century? Political and
Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative looks at Xi Jinping’s
signature policy and analyzes its origins, ambitions, and implications.
Organized around transportation, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure
projects, BRI is meant to connect Europe and Africa to Asia, strengthen
cooperation among the nations of Eurasia, and increase political, monetary, and
cultural integration. BRI has both economic and strategic components. Indeed, the
two are intimately related, as deepening economic cooperation between China and
its neighbors is intended not as an end, but rather as a means to promote
Beijing’s political and strategic gains. This, Rolland argues, is the “core of
BRI.”
Although
writing almost exclusively on BRI, Rolland paints on a much broader canvas.
Making extensive use of official and quasi-official documents, Rolland finds
that BRI has multiple objectives, including using China’s overcapacity in
construction materials, lifting the fortunes of its state-owned enterprises,
boosting regional development, hedging against possible disruptions to maritime
supply in the event of a conflict, and strengthening other authoritarian
regimes.
To
Rolland, the vision “reflects Beijing’s desire to shape Eurasia according to
its own worldview.” BRI is much greater than the sum of its parts and should be
understood as “a grand strategy that advances China’s goals of establishing
itself as the preponderant power in Eurasia and a global power second to none.”
In this reading, BRI is a key tool to return China to a dominant global
position.
Rolland
warns against the temptation to dismiss BRI as merely an ill-defined collection
of infrastructure projects. China’s leaders take it seriously and Xi Jinping
has staked his reputation on it, declaring its success a personal priority of
the highest order. Mentions of BRI permeate official speeches, statements, the
media, and even popular culture. Moreover, China has plowed enormous amounts of
prestige, intellectual energy, and money into the initiative. Dismissing it, in
her view, amounts to strategic malpractice, combining willful blindness of what
China’s rulers say they want to achieve with a lack of imagination about just
how profoundly Beijing is moving to reshape the global order.
According
to Rolland, “BRI remains—arguably purposely—an amorphous and ambiguous
construct.” Her work attempts to nail down the nature of that project, zero in
on its stated—and unstated—objectives, and answer why Beijing has mobilized the
full resources of the state behind it. The monograph proceeds in a forensic fashion,
accumulating evidence and clues as it analytically moves its way toward its
conclusions.
Rolland
believes that through BRI, China offers the promise of material benefit, and in
return expects muted criticism of its policies and compliance with its wishes.
In exchange for offers of investment, infrastructure projects, and security
benefits, Beijing “expects that they [BRI partners] tacitly agree not to
challenge China’s core interests, criticize its posture, or seek to challenge
its political system.”
Rolland
sees BRI as a laboratory and prototype for the type of order China seeks to
build. Eurasia would be linked by high-speed trains; the Digital Silk Road
would effectively be sealed off from the rest of the world and closely
monitored and controlled; when BRI countries have disputes with China, they
would appeal not to international law, but instead to Beijing on bilateral—and
inherently inferior—terms; U.S. alliances would be substantially weakened in
both Asia and Europe; increasing webs of aid and trade between China and its
neighbors would create fundamental dependencies at all levels. In this vision
of the future, transparency has weakened while corruption and social control
have strengthened, breathing new life into authoritarian regimes. The end result
is that, “wary that they might be punished and isolated, most countries
silently acquiesce to Beijing’s diplomatic priorities.”
Of
course, such a future is by no means assured. Because BRI is an external
project of grand dimensions, its success depends on other states deciding that
BRI is in their interests. But that means that its ultimate fate rests on “the
rest of the world’s willingness to accept China’s objectives and go along with
its plans.” Rolland describes what Chinese analysts have identified as the main
challenges to the realization of this vision and the strategies Beijing has
undertaken to mitigate them. Of special attention is the negative reaction BRI
has engendered in both large and small partner countries, and Beijing’s renewed
efforts to soften, transform, and manipulate public opinion in various
capitals.
Along
the way, she reveals some other key insights. One is the role of media in BRI.
In 2016, at the Media Cooperation Forum on Belt and Road, Xi declared that
“media plays an essential role in communicating information, enhancing mutual
trust and building consensus.” This, in essence, is how the CCP, and Xi, view
media: indistinguishable from propaganda and meant to advance the aims of the
state. Such information might not be fake news, but it is state-sanctioned and
intended to harness, manufacture, and when necessary manipulate public
opinion—at home and abroad.
And yet,
despite these conclusions, Rolland’s study should be read as neither a
wholesale dismissal of BRI nor a blanket call for its rejection. Rather, it is
a much-needed attempt to understand its often obscured purposes. Why are those
purposes obscured? Rolland suggests that it might be because BRI is not yet
fully developed and, being opaque, allows for adaptability. Alternatively, it
may be because BRI has no strategic design, and is simply an accumulation of
many dispersed initiatives. Or, most alarmingly, it might be because Chinese
officials fear that being transparent about their aims would produce an intense
counter-reaction. Hardly definitive, but certainly suggestive, is her quoting
of an officer in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: “If you tell people, ‘I
come with political and ideological intentions,’ who will accept you?”
The
promise of economic benefit in exchange for political obedience is not a
particularly new concept. Neither, of course, is spending money and manpower to
win friends and build diplomatic support. And, if these approaches fail, there
are always other forms of coercion that can be employed. As much as these
strategies can be seen in China’s near abroad, they are squarely in keeping
with how China’s leaders have approached their own population.
This is
one of the primary arguments in Sulmaan Wasif Khan’s Haunted by Chaos: Chinese
Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. In this brief survey, Khan
attempts to dissect the major movements of Chinese statecraft, charting the
fears, objectives, and strategies of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu
Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Unlike Economy, he finds very little new under the sun
and in his telling, there is far more continuity than discontinuity in the past
hundred years of CCP strategy. “The dramatic changes modern China has endured,”
Khan writes, “have obscured the commonality of purpose and power.”
Khan’s
book is a search for those commonalities, an attempt to understand the calculus
behind China’s decision-making, and an explanation of how its leaders have seen
the world. All saw China as brittle and constantly threatened by a dangerous
world. All believed that security lay in territorial expansion. And all held
that preserving their hold on power necessitated political cohesion, economic
growth, a strong military, and a favorable balance of power. Khan also finds
that CCP leadership, from Mao to Xi, approached diplomacy in a similar fashion,
by promoting good relations, protecting core interests, calibrating the use of
force, and being pragmatic. These conclusions are largely unsurprising. What
makes Khan’s take of greater interest are the conclusions about Beijing’s
expanding ambitions, and its read of, and response to, American actions.
Khan
claims, paradoxically, that while China is more powerful than it has been in
centuries, it now feels more insecure and threatened than it has in decades.
“With growing strength came a broader definition of what it took to stay safe,”
Khan writes. The more powerful China has become, the greater its ambitions have
grown and the further afield its grasp has reached. Ambitions alter with
circumstances, Khan notes, and success has allowed Chinese leaders, from Mao to
Xi, to redefine their goals, demanding more for China and asking more from
others. It is particularly illuminating to read his account of the lessons the
Chinese leadership drew from the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996. It was
America’s under-reaction to initial Chinese attempts to dial up pressure on
Taiwan that signaled that “American inaction meant acquiescence.” That
particular read proved to be a miscalculation, but as Chinese power has grown
and foreign responses have remained muted, one wonders how often Beijing takes
silence for consent.
In one
way or another, each of these authors focus on what is known to describe
something that is, ultimately, unknowable—the direction of contemporary China.
And all attempt to describe something of the country’s nature.
Ma Jian,
the Chinese writer and dissident living in self-exile in London, does the
same—but, with the license of a poet, his novel China Dream is far less
constrained. A searing work of fiction that is at turns darkly humorous,
satirical, and hallucinatory, Ma’s dystopian tale undercuts and ridicules the
Chinese Communist Party, which he accuses of destroying China’s society,
erasing its history, and perverting the nation’s soul.
In his
take on contemporary China, Ma weaves together references to real events and
documents, as he chronicles the unravelling of Ma Daode, a fictitious corrupt
CCP party official. In between attempts to appease multiple mistresses, hoard
stolen goods, and evict peasants off their land, Ma Daode runs the “China Dream
Bureau,” charged with promoting Xi Jinping’s China Dream of national
rejuvenation. In order to champion the glorious future the Chinese Communist
Party is steering China toward, Ma must erase the memory of its violent past
and replace all private dreams with a collective dream of a greater China. As Ma
tells his staff, “our job, in this Bureau, is to ensure that the China Dream
enters the brain of every resident of Ziyang City. It seems to me that if the
communal China Dream is to fully impregnate the mind, all private remembrances
and dreams must first be washed away.” The problem, however, is this mission
proves impossible. Unable to suppress memories from the Cultural Revolution, Ma
is consumed by visions of students beaten to death and his own denouncement of
his parents. The cultural madness of China’s recent past seeps like a poison
into the present as Ma increasingly has trouble distinguishing the two and,
ultimately, is driven mad.
An
engrossing story in its own right, Ma Jian’s novel works as historical
testimony, social commentary, and description of the workings—and effects—of
dictatorship. What emerges is a scathing indictment of the regime, exposing its
hypocrisy, its brutality, and its willingness to mete out violence to anyone
who deviates from the official line. By blending the past and present, Ma shows
how the destruction of trust between student and teacher, parent and child,
governor and governed brings a coarsening effect on a whole society. And he
offers a powerful explanation of why totalitarian regimes attempt not to erase
history, but to re-write it. “Of course, the past must be buried before the
future can be forged,” the novel’s protagonist declares. Authoritarian regimes
understand that their claims to legitimacy rest, at least in part, on a
particular interpretation of the past. Anything that deviates from that line
must be eradicated.
Ma Jian
is not particularly shy about where he stands. In the book’s foreword, he
writes that “Chinese tyrants have never limited themselves to controlling
people’s lives: they have always sought to enter people’s brains and remould
them from the inside.” In Xi Jinping’s China, there are no actual devices
implanted in people’s brains to censor the past and control what people think.
Ma Jian’s China Dream argues that that is beside the point, because both the
intent of Chinese leadership, and the demand on its population, is the same.
While the entirety of the novel’s action take place in China, it also suggests
that Beijing’s ambitions to shape, suppress, and guide thought extend far
beyond its borders and are “beginning to corrupt the democracies around the
world.”
Each of
the four authors use a different lens to understand the nature and direction of
China. Whether it is the particular significance of Xi Jinping, the motivations
behind the Belt and Road Initiative, the continuity of Chinese grand strategy,
or authoritarianism with Chinese characteristics, there are plenty of ways to
explain China’s present course. Despite their differences, though, there are
several common themes woven throughout these books—the expanding level of
Chinese aspirations, the centrality the Chinese Communist Party plays in
shaping those aspirations, the internal and foreign repercussions, and the
mixture of confidence and insecurity driving China’s leaders.
Of
course, these are not the only questions to ask about China’s direction today.
Looming over public debates are rising international concerns about China’s
crackdown in Hong Kong, its ongoing interment of over a million ethnic Uighurs,
Kazakhs, and others into camps and prisons in Xinjiang, and the level and depth
of CCP interference activities overseas.
Responding
to an emerging China is the strategic question of our time. America’s
longstanding policy has been to try to engage, integrate, and bind China into
the existing liberal order. That approach no longer seems viable; whatever
economic benefits it has generated, U.S. policy has not produced the China that
policymakers had hoped for. What has instead emerged is a richer, more
powerful, more repressive China that is expanding its political influence
around the world and attempting to impose a regional version of the Chinese
domestic contract: stability, growth, and acquiescence. While there is now an
emerging consensus that it is time for an overhaul of America’s China policy,
there is less agreement on what exactly that should be.
These
policy questions are ultimately about how America chooses to respond to shifts
in Chinese behavior, and less about why China’s domestic and foreign policies
have changed. But a firm grasp on these questions remains essential not only to
understanding China, but also to fashioning an appropriate policy response.
These books offer an excellent place to start.
***Published
on: November 21, 2019
*Charles
Edel is a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre and previously
served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s policy planning staff from 2015 to
2017. He is co-author of The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order.