China's Global Ambitions Under Xi Jinping

good morning my name is jude blanchett i'm the freeman chair in china studies here at csis and i'm delighted everyone is joining us for this really important discussion with uh with bates gill on his important new book which is forthcoming from oxford university press daring to struggle china china's global ambitions under xi jinping anyone who's been reading or thinking about china has encountered bates's work which for decades has been some of the most insightful in exploring how china's foreign and domestic politics are changing and now he has written this important new book which comes at a critical time for china as we look ahead to the 20th party congress with xi jinping taking a third term we have to wrestle with how much has changed for china and for china's position in the world over the last decade and bates's book is essential reading for thinking not only what has occurred shifts transformations over these past 10 years but critically this is a toolkit for helping us navigate the the years ahead and for however long the xi jinping era continues um it's a special honor for me to be hosting this event because um bates was the freeman chair in china studies here at csis from 2002 to 2007 and of course when i first thought of or heard of the name of the freeman chair was when uh bates held this and so it is a it is a distinct honor uh to to be his uh successor um uh hopefully i have uh carried the torch uh more than enough thank you um so bates is right now a professor of asia pacific security studies and the head of the department of security studies and criminology at mockery university in australia um we're here to sort of cover broadly the the book um and it's it's really important insights and structure as i said the book will be published by oxford university press um later that the date has shifted a bit but hopefully early june is when the book will be on bookshelves i've had a chance to read it in digital form it's it's fantastic and without any exaggeration i think it is absolutely the best book we have to understand xi jinping's time uh in in power um so with that base it's a real honor and thank you for joining us it's an honor for me too jude thanks so much for having me um start with a simple question which is what was the motivation to write the book i guess that's an obvious question given how important china is and how important xi jinping is but i'm curious what was the point at which you said i've got to i've got to start looking at this in more detail well you know like a lot of things in writing books you know the original idea evolves morphs changes and i think what really drew me to it was i was increasingly interested but also increasingly concerned about the role that the party plays in life in china these days and of course in addition not just in terms of domestic politics and the economy but noting that it seemed to be increasingly involved more active having a bigger voice a bigger mandate to pursue foreign policy activities as well um you know and your work has noted the importance of of the party and its um impact on on policy and on on life in in china these days and i think we do have to link that to xi jinping and we're coming to the 10th you know 10 years that he's been in power we know that he wants to continue on for another 5 10 who knows how much longer and so i thought it was an appropriate moment to try and look back on this last decade of power that he's been there consider more deeply the role that he himself or maybe more broadly what he represents in terms of the party's uh involvement in china's foreign policy and the impact it's had and then try to think through well uh if if we can come up with a good framework for understanding that engagement of the party and its importance in china's foreign policy what does that imply then what are the implications of that going forward for the united states and for for you know for the world so i just was that sort of drove it and and the the the harder part was kind of coming up with a framework for how to take that enormous amount of information and complexity and distill it in a way that would hopefully make some sense for people and i want to ask you in a bit about that framework but actually if i could ask you a question i was curious about the epigraph for the book where words fail music speaks um why well uh i'm in a band and uh i've played in a band for probably 30 years or so and very unfortunately in the last two or three years we've lost to the two of the best musicians in that band have passed away and and i dedicate the book to them uh to jp fisher and chris simpson and i found this epigram which i think for me at least said what i felt about them that it's impossible to express some words how i feel about them but uh playing music helps me to to say what i want to say this should be a simple question but i find it for me one of the hardest to answer often times when i speak with friends family members relatives they ask what does china want right and i think there are some i encounter who have a clear easy answer for this but i find that i i do struggle in a a self-convincing way to give a pithy answer to it um when you're asked this question what does china want right what's your answer well that you know that's that's the opening line of the book um is a conversation that i had with uh with friend um you know one of the most privileged people in china living in shanghai uh and i asked him that question and the response didn't startle me but it made me concerned and maybe was a driving factor in wanting to get this book out he said we want we want to be accepted and respected and you'd better get used to it um and so i think it's it's what does china want well i think especially let's talk about what the chinese leadership wants what does the chinese communist party want and i believe it is to be to to to to be granted or to be given or to be allowed to receive legitimacy and respect appreciation even i think in their view approbation for what they've achieved internationally and they wish to be respected uh and that's what they want uh and and to be respected isn't simply a normative concept it means to have their interests respected to have you know their claims to territory uh respected it means to have their aspirations towards leadership and even their aspirations to disseminate their own sort of way of looking at how the world should work um you know in in terms of and acceptance of especially of their form of governance domestically to be accepted and respected um i think that's what china wants uh it's it's it's amorphous i i'll i'll grant you that and it's not exactly a grand strategy um but nonetheless it has enormous implications uh because that pursuit their pursuit of that respect and that pursuit of that legitimacy runs directly into the interests of not just the united states but um countries all around the world and leads us i think to some increasing tension if we can imagine a counterfactual which is let's say some point um after the death of mao events occur in china which lead it to see a more fundamental transformation of its political system let's say it's something that's much more recognizably as a democracy how much of what you just articulated in terms of what china wants would be consistent and how much would differ i put the question another way how much of the story of this clash of interests between democracies western democracies and and china today is about the the substance and very nature of the communist party as a political institution and how it conceptualizes its interests and exercises power and how much of it is a deeper script about respect and about china's proper place in the world um that's a question i again i i i wrestle with the the conversation here in dc of course positions it as this is about the communist party but just in hearing you conceptualize what your friend in shanghai said i could imagine that same narrative and set of interests occurring under a a democracy of 1.4 billion people yeah i think what's happened is that um we've come you know we we we've first been in this intensifying competition with china around economic matters you know china's become a more powerful economy and you know i think that was an acceptable kind of competition we still talk about it in those sorts of terms you know at least rhetorically that we're prepared to engage uh you know in in that type of competition with china we're learning how to do that and we're figuring out how that can be done more recently let's say in the last 10 or 15 years that spectrum of competition has expanded to now more increasingly encompass let's call it just military forms of competition as we increasingly recognize that you know our ability to defend what we see as our americans see as their interests or what some of our allies and friends in the region see as their interest is coming under pressure as china becomes a more powerful military but you know i think there are ways of managing that that competition as well what i think distinguishes the xi jinping era is we now have opened a third phase i would say of competition and it does i think arise from the in more intensive importance and mandate and role that the party appears to be playing and which it appears to want to extend in many respects beyond china's borders to try and alter international thinking about what is and isn't a good form or bad form of governance uh what is and isn't the right way that international norms should be developed and executed so i think ideological competition is probably a little bit maybe too strong of a word because i think it implies too much about competition with the soviet union cold war or it implies that china wishes to impose its form of governance upon the rest of us i don't think that's really accurate but it is a new form of competition that we've never really experienced well maybe you could go back to the days of mao zedong and so on but of course in those days china was a much weaker uh you know less prominent international player so now you have this confluence of three major areas of competition at a time when china is the second world world's largest economy by some measurements much more powerful actor and led by a party not just one man but by a party that is absolutely determined to compete on these on these on these grounds and to win picking up on that last point you made of centering the party it seems especially discourse on china since the the 19th party congress in 2017 we've really centered xi jinping as the prime mover of china's grand strategy its its missteps many of its successes your subtitle your book is china's global ambitions under xi jinping he's on the cover when i was just hearing you describe though the nature of of the competition you're centering the party as a broader apparatus if i can continue to ask counterfactuals okay um how much of our discussion today and the substance of your book would uh diverge if we had had 10 years ago a different outcome of of the leadership transition put another way is this xi jinping's party and we're all living in it right or is xi jinping leading a party where there is an elite consensus around the need for a much more aggressive confrontational forward leading global posture yeah i'm more drawn to the latter interpretation that you know he's received a mandate from the larger you know collective of party leadership to take on this more strong man role to pers to pursue this more proactive uh assertive policies at home to promote the party and its value from their perspective to china's success and so on um but it's a mix i mean obviously he was chosen for a reason because of the kind of person he is you couldn't just put anybody into that job to to pursue that mandate as we're seeing it unfold so i'm sure it's a combination of having a full mandate of the party consensus behind him largely behind him but in the knowledge that as an individual he is capable of taking on that mantle taking the risks right wearing it having the courage honestly to to be in that job and probably the right kind of ego and character to be able to achieve the mandate that i think the party broadly speaking wants china to to achieve so i guess it's primarily a i would say it's a consensus i think he's a consensus that that's probably not a strong enough word i think there's a very powerful degree of support behind him but it couldn't be done by just anybody i mean i think he had the right mix in their view of pursuing what was necessary at that time and i think he still largely has that kind of support behind him towards the later end of the conversation i want to circle back around to that because i want to ask you how what seemed to be mounting headwinds in china might be fracturing that consensus and especially as we the months leading up to the 20th party congress there's open speculation about has xi jinping you know um gone too far showed too many mistakes and and is this opening up avenues for challenges but i'll we'll come back to that later early on in the book you write a decade into xi's leadership and as he looks ahead to sustain his power and influence for at least another decade or more china is better positioned than ever to realize its grand ambitions um i wanted to ask if you could um unpack that a bit and let's put aside for the moment these headwinds because i think we can talk about the ways and i'd like to ask you subsequently have events over the last three to six months changed your underlying assessment but let's just rewind to the day before china signed its joint statement with russia which many date is as this beginning of a series of missteps but let's go back to february third what has changed over the past decade which you feel has given china this advantageous position looking out over the broad sweep of 70 years of the prc or 100 years of the communist party why is it better positioned today to realize its objectives i would i would unpack it in two ways one what we have today is you know china's more wealthy it has ever been before uh it's certainly more powerful economically militarily diplomatically than it's ever been i mean but you know some would say well that's that's a rather low bar i mean you know we look across the last hundred years of the history of the communist party um you know nearly half of it yeah we could we could say half of that was chaos was a mess so you know the fact that they've emerged from that era uh the earlier era to where they are today i think arguably it's pretty clear they're in a better place now than they've ever been to achieve what they that doesn't mean they will it just simply means that they have brought themselves to a place where they certainly could if they play their cards right the other reason i would make that statement and how we can unpack it a bit is you have this combination of um capacity and will over and i think especially over the past you know 10 to 15 years uh of you know increasing uh hard power economically militarily especially um combined with this consensus that we just talked about of what appears to be up until you know quite recently part strong party unity around she's leadership his acceptance of the mantle and his dogged pursuit of all of these things so you combine you know capacity plus will i don't think we could look to a previous era where there was that same combination for china as we see it today so that's where i come out with saying you know they're certainly in a better position than ever before but as we'll talk that doesn't mean they're going to succeed i'd like to turn out to the the framework the structure for the book how you explore the last 10 years you know there's a number of ways you you could have done this and i wanted to ask um you you end up arriving at thinking about six six fundamental objectives legitimacy sovereignty wealth power leadership and and ideas before i ask you about some of these specific buckets i just want to ask how you arrived at this being the the framework you thought for you was was most able to help you explain or explore how china has evolved yeah i i mean i was purposeful in thinking about the book that i wanted it to try to appeal to a wider audience that it might be useful for people who are just getting into the field maybe students it might be useful for people who are had never really studied china but they're well informed citizens of the world maybe they're having to get seconded to a new position a new job a new role in government or in business or somewhere and they need to try to read something that's not going to be too overly academic and give them a framework that's relatively easy to remember and and can be applied i think usefully uh to try to understand you know how do you take all that complexity that's involved in chinese foreign policy and its intersection with its domestic politics uh and make it easy to understand so i said okay how can what can you come up with as a as a five or six point set of issues or topics or umbrellas under which you can collect all this and so these are the six i thought were important i mean in some ways the framework isn't you know you know isn't staggeringly new i mean others have also tried to you know boil down the essence of china's foreign policy to a handful of of key objectives but what i tried to do though in the book is instead of sort of looking at them sort of uh individually or as stand-alone topics there's a diagram in the book that it's a venn diagram which tries to so graphically depict that while for the purposes of a book you have chapters across these six objectives nevertheless they are overlapping with one another they are synergistically in in operation with one another and of course in the form of the zen uh the the venn diagram at the center where the other five um objectives overlap is the key objective that i think is so important for us to understand and that's legitimacy of the party why don't we start with that there's a few words in discourse around china that i find although we use it if i if i scratch i find that oftentimes we have different underlying conceptions legitimacy and ideology are two such terms where i think if you line up 10 people you'll get 14 different particular descriptions of what they mean um can you unpack legitimacy and how it relates to chinese power and how it relates to the communist party what to in your eyes is is legitimacy in the eyes of the communist party and i'd like if you could just sketch out how what shifts have you seen and how the party is conceptualizing and trying to grow or enforce its legitimacy vis-a-vis chinese society well i think again i get back to this word acceptance and respect um when i think about legitimacy so i think the party is desperate especially with its international relationships to be seen as a as an acceptable form of governance not only not only acceptable but one that ought to be applauded in many respects because of the accomplishments that the party wants us to believe they've they've made and and maybe even going further accepted and respected for what the party could achieve going forward or even what lessons can be learned from the from the parties experience that could be applied internationally and this is critically important you know this is this is a leninist party state uh that rules well at the end of the day rules purely on its ability to convince the population that they deserve it um there's there's no elections you know it's it's purely based on on the on the belief of a relatively small portion of society you know seven percent of the chinese population is communist party members um that they get to rule because uh they're better than anybody else and they know what they're doing that's that's basically the their their their their claim to being legitimate rulers um and i as i speak in the book there are several narratives that they try to promote you know that only the chinese communist party could have saved china from the disaster that it faced in the early part of the of the 20th century you know only the chinese communist party could have put in place this economic miracle sort of performance legitimacy you know only the chinese communist party can be the rightful steward of china's cultural tradition and and increasingly under xi jinping i think we hear more although there's always been a part of the marxist leninist tradition but nevertheless under xi jinping you hear a lot more that only the chinese communist party understands the tides of history uh in a way that will allow them uh to be at the vanguard and to lead china to to its future rejuvenation these are legitimacy narratives that are extremely important to in order to convince two important audiences um one is the domestic audience uh in china that because of these achievements and accomplishments and abilities the population should continue to grant the mandate of leadership to the party and not only just grant it but be thankful and appreciative of it um and then i think it's also important for an international audience to convince the outside world that the party deserves to be where it is um and it ought to be granted the proper respect uh that it that it wishes to have the problem is that many of these narratives especially as they operate and are voiced and vocalized and and executed internationally you know disrupt and interfere with and even you know can oftentimes even attack the interests of other countries so the more they pursue this legitimacy narrative the more problematic it becomes in many of their relationships internationally you've got wealth as a separate bucket but if i can well as you say there's a venn diagram but you've got it as a distinct objective i wanted to ask to about legitimacy we talk about and you just mentioned that there are um other elements of a legitimating narrative that the party is trying to put forward nationalism is one there they've been reworking some of china's near history to buttress the role of the communist party does the legitimacy of the party survive a dramatic and enduring slow down in china's economic performance put another way we've got various bells and whistles and knobs and and dials on the legitimacy machine but i wonder to what extent is is economic growth and performance a master and you know the master volume yeah and although you can tweak and turn the other ones does the party survive does its legitimacy survive um after uh five or ten years of dramatic slowdown in other words as bill clinton said it's the economy stupid how much does that still weigh on the party i think it's still absolutely critical and and it has been a foundational element of the party's claim to legitimacy i think it continues to be but as we know um there are diminishing returns on that um and you know the ability for that aspect of you know the performance legitimacy narrative uh you know can't be sustained for forever sometime this economy is going to slow down it already is and um and it's going to become more difficult for that element of their legitimacy narrative to work but that's but that but i think the party certainly knows that and are looking to other ways of buttressing its legit their legitimacy including through economic measures so i think it goes a long way to explaining why there's this attempt yet again to you know work to develop indigenous innovation to become less dependent on external sources of capital of technology of know-how um we'll see where that goes but i think it's a it's an ind it's an indicator uh that if this economic narrative is going to continue to work for them they're going to have to figure out a way to get out of the middle income trap that they're in in the moment and and continue to find new forms of productivity for the economy in order to maintain that that economic narrative but short of that i think other legitimacy narratives have to come to the fore and maybe their knobs start getting getting larger and more important i think nationalism is a very important one uh obviously and i think uh possibly even the sort of cultural stewardship narrative is also i think going to be a bigger and bigger thing for the party as the economic one meets head meets headwinds and and begins to falter i wanted to next move to um ideas um is the is the is the word you use in the in the book the chinese that you're drawing from um what if you talk about how what changes you've seen over the last decade i'd like to also ask how much you see china as being able to translate its own preferred ideological construction and project that outwards you said i think you tipped your hat early on the discussion saying you think it might be overblown some of these ideas of exportability or china's ability to sort of push its preferred ideological constructions out out into the world but i wanted to ask if you could if you could unpack that a bit well this was i have to say this was a was the sort of one of the fact that of the six elements that are at the center of the book this is the one i really kind of wrestled with hardest um it is the most amorphous i think um and and it's probably the most if we if we put those sort of six key elements of of of chinese foreign policy on a timeline i would say that the promotion of ideas or the attempts to promote china's own wisdom for the world is relatively recent i mean there are examples under the maoist era i suppose of when maoism uh was was was promoted worldwide or was attempted but it strikes me that this is is is is is somewhat different and um what i'm looking at really it gets it get it circles back to legitimacy again it's an effort to try and reshape global thinking about what is and isn't a proper form of governance what is and isn't a proper approach to development in the world and doing so mostly through international organizations like the united nations but also through fora which china has created and um and and fostered and promoted such as um you know the forum for uh for cooperation with with africa or you know with the arab league and other sort of china's center-focused china-centered multilateral organizations where it's an opportunity to promote their vision about how the world should work in their view more equitable but i think at at core more accepting more willing to respect and legitimate their form of governance and you know um you know when you write a book you have to stop writing at some point and hand it over to the to the publisher so um you know the book came out before the famous february 3rd statement uh between china and i'm what i mean to say as i had handed over the manuscripts before right before it got interesting but i think that look no further really than that statement as a a sort of summation of many of these ideas right um which china's trying to promote internationally about how the world should work i want to ask you about the question of of leadership i remember when president obama then president obama tried china as essentially shirking its international responsibilities and being a free rider under the same obama obama administration when china unveiled the asian infrastructure investment bank the airb there was pretty vociferous pushback against that and i still hear today aiib used as an example of where china clashes with our interests it's an example of china trying to build parallel orders um i want to ask just on that question of where where is the legitimate space for china to lead and in what precise form are we comfortable with i can understand some of china's frustration with what seems to be a ping pong sort of narrative of the us in particular how we welcome china to be an active presence in the international order but when we see it take leadership positions in established multilateral institutions when we see it create something like the aib which is not a radical maoist organization hell-bent on fomenting revolution but as a um i think putting it in a positive spin is is helping to fill a gap of infrastructure spending in areas that need it um how do you think about that question and and where do you think the space is for china to be a leader in the international order that would be acceptable to established powers well i think i mean the answer to that question is probably very few places because those established powers fear you know new kid on the block with different ideas and trying to change the system and also i think it's important for us to be honest with ourselves in the west that a part of this concern i think has to arise from the fact that we ourselves uh you know in our own domestic political systems uh in many of the institutions that we are deeply involved with and have invested in we're failing or we're having a lot of trouble let's put it that way so you have this combination of again will and capacity on china's side to pursue leadership roles and and real resources serious resources to devote uh to to to trying to fix some of the uh world problems um at the same time that we ourselves are you know flailing a bit in trying to generate our own good ideas and and and sort of reassert our uh our leadership so that's that's i think that that explains a lot of the fear that we have and i think under would underscore then why when there is this ping pong narrative that when when china does seem to want to put its hand up and do something there's a lot of a lot of concern on our part um i mean i think all that said china itself i think remains comparatively comparatively reluctant to really step forward and do a lot in ways that it probably could and it it seems that it's largely interested to do so in two major ways one uh to try and reform um and in their view improve uh multilateral governance institutions especially within the un system and secondly to just unilaterally pursue leadership especially in you know emerging forms of technology to try and dominate and and corner many of the emerging technological realms in ways that they can assert their leadership in those in those ways as well so uh in both cases i think it it raises a lot of alarm bells in places like washington and and as we see there's a lot of pushback against china and its efforts to do so yeah there is it's interesting you mentioned that there is a lack of consistency in where when and how china does or does not take a leadership stance you know two recent examples are earlier on in after covet emerged you know from china and spread globally when china was in a fairly good position about containing the spread of the virus domestically while the united states and other other democracies were not to put it lightly it seemed at the time there was a worry that china was really going to sort of push on an open door and assert leadership in the in the public health sphere globally and i never saw that happen and the second is after the russia invaded ukraine there was a month or so where there was this hope or expectation that china was going to step up and play some sort of mediating role right now probably mo both of those were more aspirational than they were accurate reflections of where china's political system was at the time but it is interesting speaking of which you talk about it depth in the book sort of strategic windows of opportunity where china could really be asserting its interest there is a deep reluctance what's interesting now is with xi jinping i've also noticed the same attribute when things get really tough domestically in china that's when he usually puts someone else out in the front early on in covet it was on the pull-up bureau she was the one who was sent down to wuhan lee kichong was sent down to wuhan right now there's this round of of speculation that lika chong is surging ahead because the economy is doing uh sort of lackluster performance another interpretation is this is very xi jinping and as the economy is is facing headwinds he's he's moving you know another another fall guy out leojo was responsible for trade relations with the united states rather than you know xi jinping was very absent from that entire discussion so it seems he has a conservatism too about being too vocal and out front when there is uncertainty in outcome and i wonder if the same if we could scale that up to the communist party more generally where there are safe opportunities for example staffing un key un bodies where the united states is awol that's a leadership china is is willing to and one of i mean i think one thing china has a lot of and that is cash and uh there are they are doing a lot uh within the un system uh in funding initiatives uh providing support for example for um the secretary general's peace and development fund is mostly mostly prc money uh and prc individuals get to choose you know how that money gets spent within the un system so they're they're lower key and it's actually not it's very much like like you're suggesting i think and and it's not i think it's characteristic uh not just of xi jinping's leadership but i think we can go back to other chinese leaders of attempting something testing waters seeing what might work see what see what see what doesn't get too much push back and do it in a more quiet way and then scaling it up it's the lenin quote which i i will butcher but it's something to the effect of you know probe with your bayonet if it's mush continue forward if it's steel you you retreat um cognizant of the time what i want to do is i want to turn to some of the questions that have come in from the audience and then i want to end circling back to the book and i want to ask you about um some of the headwinds and how those um how those might shape the trajectories you've written about in the book um let me start with one close to your current home out in australia and that is on the solomon islands i want to ask for your assessment of how big of a how big of a move was this by china does this fundamentally affect the security architecture in your region and also was this a failure by australia or the united states well i think it's a big deal i mean i think it's important not i don't see it as as important necessarily quite yet as some sort of you know fundamental alteration of the strategic balance in the region i think that it's way too early to know if that's what this really is going to end up pretending um but what i find interesting as a china watcher is that this is a pretty bold move uh for china to do because they would surely know what the what the response was going to be in the region um they've tended to be relatively reluctant about you know sending their own you know unilaterally sending their own you know law enforcement authorities over the borders into other countries it's it's relatively rare thing typically it's done you know under the auspices of the united nations or something like that so um i think it's a pretty bold move on china's part um remains to be seen exactly what this agreement is going to entail and and how much is it really going to matter at the end of the day but it's a testing of the waters it really is uh and and and probably beijing felt it was relatively small um offer of assistance um could it turn into something bigger probably could but will it we don't know yet i think a lot's gonna depend on what let's not forget the solomon islands have enormous agency here uh as do other countries in the region that might want to try to either put up a better offer or or try to deflect what what china's up to there's no doubt that a country you know the size and location of the salman islands is not going to gain a whole lot of attention from the united states and even though it may be in australia's backyard so to speak that's how the australians often phrase it so too there probably not getting the kinds of attention and appreciation that leaders in the solomon islands would prefer so there's a lot of baggage in australia's relationships with its neighbors especially in the pacific island region that you know has not been fully cleared up and and and made you know made made improvements so yeah i think there's a there's a fair bit of failure on our part for not um trying to engage these countries like that more effectively question returning to the legitimacy goal does china's position as you know defender of the realm in the face of a global perceived global encirclement campaign how does this or does this bolster their claims to legitimacy domestically in other words as strategic competition with the united states australia uk japan the the list is growing becomes more real and palpable will the party be able to translate that judo that or jiu jitsu i forget which one into a stronger value proposition of the party is here to protect china from uh this global encirclement well i think they're already doing it and and this has been a fundamental element of the party's claim to legitimacy for a long long time and this is what you know scholars in the field you know call you know the the narrative of aggrieved nationalism right that the world is out to get us and only the party is in a position to protect china from from those depredations now typically that kind of narrative always links back to you know invasion by japan you know colonialism by the british you know american interventions around china's periphery and it usually links back to that history and then tries to suggest that well if it weren't for the party well you're trying to be all carved up now so it's it's nothing new um for china chinese communist party to talk about encirclement containment you know hegemony and how it alone can protect the chinese people the chinese heritage now chinese cultural tradition from those depredations um but i think i think the implied message in the question is correct and that is that it is likely to be for the party an even more and more important element of its legitimacy narrative um and i think we can see that today just taking the ukraine example you know the second or third sentence out of any official statement these days about what the situation in ukraine is well don't forget nato and belgrade don't forget the bombing of our embassy and the and the spilled blood of chinese martyrs in our embassy in belgrade thanks to nato so this has not gone away it's always been an element of the party's effort to bolster its position domestically and you know as i think henry kissinger once said um even paranoids have real enemies so it's going to remain something for china to or the party to to promote as the relationship with many key actors internationally becomes more and more contested i want to end thinking through some of the headwinds and how what seemed to be at least for the moment a growing pile of missteps own goals but also structural changes to the international order that augur a much more complicated external environment you know in our stripped down bumper stickers story of of china over the past several decades pragmatism flexibility that the party has shown as it moved out of a planned economy underneath that and oftentimes insufficiently articulated i think it's just a very hospitable international order right for for chinese outbound investment for firms coming into china very permissive environment in which china could hide and abide by essentially self strengthening aggregating building wealth building up its economy borrowing begging and stealing foreign technology which it can incorporate into its own domestic innovation ecosystem and supply chains a number of things seem to be changing on the ground is is just moving underneath china's feet again through a combination of what what are clearly pathologies within the political system being accentuated by xi jinping but also just a much more scrutiny and outright hostility towards china in the international environment the low-hanging fruit fruit of china's economic growth productivity gains have been plucked one of the reasons xi jinping is pushing so hard on indigenous innovation and and uh investments into high tech is to find new productivity gains i i i am tempted to look at all of this and feel like um there is a the the slope of china's ascent is has decreased by some not insignificant magnitude because it's hard to see how the ship is rewrited because this isn't just domestic politics gone awry it's structural factors in terms of china's you know operating environment globally um how do you think about this are are we seeing the the beginning of a fundamentally new chapter to china's to the next you know decade or so of china's development that is much more contested and difficult are we now doing what we often do where we look at temporary hiccups extrapolate into regime collapse and then are proven wrong again have we yeah have we have we have we have we reached peak c have we read peace you know and i mean i think you know as i've completed the book and i think there isn't there is a logical arc i'd like to believe because the book starts with the chapter called opportunity and it sort of tries to explain you know where was china in 2012 2010 2012 as as he was being groomed for power and as he assumed leadership and i think at the time uh i think they saw enormous opportunity ahead and an opportunity uh to to to devote those burgeoning resources and a reunified will uh as personified by this guy xi jinping to to grab those opportunities and achieve the great rejuvenation of the chinese nation um but by the end of the book you know 10 years later now here in 2022 the book's concluding chapter is challenges and it and it's the very pursuit of those six objectives as i've framed them it's the very pursuit of them which are not maybe not largely responsible for but substantially responsible for the very pushback and headwinds that they're facing across all six of them and so it's it's a fundamental dilemma that now that you've staked your claim to these um six important objectives and you put in place a process um by which to promote them and um and and which the party believes is the correct pathway to achieving them um how do you walk back from that how do you readjust how do you rethink or you know admit failure uh and try to take a different direction the way i conclude in the book is that that's not going to happen i i just don't believe that under the current leadership in china which i think we have to presume love to hear your thoughts on this i think we have to presume it's going to be xi jinping at least for the foreseeable future next five years or so i do not see him and the current leadership of the chinese communist party as in any mood to back down or at least not to do so substantially and that's why i think we're just we're going to be entering into this much much more contested era because i don't think they have a good plan for how to how to readjust quite against the headwinds that they're facing across all six of the key objectives that i lay out i know you've got a flight to catch so we're going to leave it on that depressing note but hopefully also that has piqued the interest of viewers that if they want to hear more of this analysis they've got to go spend the 29 dollars cheaper on digital cheaper on digital to to buy the book daring to struggle again it's just a i think an essential guide to to understanding the past decade and also as you were just um as you were just describing to understanding what what's coming next so uh bates it was a real it was a real pleasure um and uh um i look forward to the second edition of this in in uh in in ten years or so when we've um you know we're we're where we've maybe we're poachy yeah yeah when she is entering uh is is just mid-stride to the uh 400 years he's planning on unruling china so anyway thank you thanks jude great thank you and thank you to everyone [Music] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

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Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics

Id: gQdJgDc7VmU

Length: 52min 24sec (3144 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022