WION Global Summit: Decoding China | How is Xi Jinping driving China's quest for global domination?

[Music] [Music] to understand the changing world it is important to understand the man who is triggering many of these changes xi jinping the leader of china has been in charge for more than seven years now and xi jinping's china is not mao's china this is not dengs china this is an aggressive beast she's chinese dream is the resurrection of mao's totalitarianism with the technological tools that mao could only dream of how do you deal with xi jinping's china that's what we'll discuss in this session joining us from pune ambassador gotham bombably he was india's ambassador to china during the modi shi wuhan summit he also led the diplomatic initiative to defuse the 2013 debsan standoff in ladakh from london we have bruno masai a senior fellow at hudson institute and senior advisor at flint global he served as europe minister for portugal from 2013 to 2015 he's the author of belton road a chinese world order and from california derrick grossman senior defense analyst at rand corporation he tracks china's foreign and security policy he's an expert on indo-pacific security affairs ambassador bombably i want to begin with you what explains xi jinping's actions and his aggression especially at a time when when there's a pandemic that the world is dealing with and most in the world believe that the pandemic was his fault that's an excellent question palki and to answer that i think i have to go back to 2012-13 when xi jinping first came in as general secretary of the communist party of china he started very aggressively within china domestically by trying to put many of his opponents out of business some of them were put into jail and some of them even lost their lives and i think this particular streak of aggressiveness is now being seen internationally you can see it in hong kong where a new national security law has been passed very quickly you can see it in the south china sea where china has been aggressive for several years now and you can even see it now on the india china border so i think this is something to do with his approach his mental makeup the covet 19 situation seems to be a time when uh china feels that it can uh strike out and hit out at others uh while they are dealing with the kovite 19 situation that is the other countries and i think as far as india is concerned we are particularly concerned that the india-china border has become a live border while india is still tackling the covet 19 disease bruno massage china is being blamed for this pandemic is xi jinping hoping to brazen it out is this a case of offense being the best form of defense or or is he buying his own propaganda and does he truly believe that he can conquer all i think i think it's a bit of both chinese authorities and xi jinping in particular probably think they're going to pay a reputation price they're going to pay a price in terms of how the world regards china anyway so you might as well take advantage of the opportunity to make some moves that otherwise you would be cautious about i think hong kong is an example of that the india question i think has its its own dynamics at the same time um i don't think it's all about gtp i think it's about the trajectory of china over the past few decades uh 10 20 20 25 years ago china was uh focused on growing economically um and was aware of its weaknesses and china now is is obviously a different china it's already past that threshold where you feel confident that you can create economic growth on your own that you can create technological development on your own and so with egyptian or with another leader i think we would see a much more aggressive much more ambitious china anyway about this time and even dango uh talked about this then chopin talked about this on on some occasions that in the future there would be another china his strategy was not a strategy that would last forever since you've mentioned the past derek grossman it's no secret that xi jinping has junk dengs mantra and he has broken the low profile doctrine he's not shy of showing his strength and he doesn't seem to be to believe in the idea of biding his time uh but would you say that his world domination plans are ill-timed right now well i uh i i would dispute i guess the the premise of the question that china wants world domination um i don't think that even xi jinping himself believes that he can achieve that even having uh done away with term limits uh and you know xi jinping for life potentially out until at least 2049 the hundredth uh year anniversary of the founding of the people's republic of china i mean that's really a tall order for world domination but what i do think xi jinping is very interested in doing is having at a minimum china being the center of uh the indo-pacific the center of gravity and that means u.s forces essentially out of the region by 2050 and that would reverse the century of humiliation that china talks about in its propaganda narrative time and again but you know what's also important to point out is that that doesn't mean that china's ambitions are necessarily limited to the region i think they do want to play a global role on par with the united states out into that 2050 time frame right the u.s forces in the region have nothing to do or little to do with india gotham baby two years back you were in wuhan facilitating a new chapter if i may in the indo-china friendship uh a lot has changed now they've come to blows did you see this coming no i did not see this coming uh but i can very clearly say palki that you know that chapter now seems to be closed china has attempted military coercion on india's borders i think china has um in order to do that china has lost india strategically and i'll just make three other points uh quickly on the same theme uh you know in the last decade or so there were three major themes which were being discussed one was whether there would be a peaceful rise of china i think the answer is staring us in the face very clearly no it will not be a peaceful rise two is china a responsible stakeholder in the global system i think the answer is very clear to many of us around the world that china is not a responsible stakeholder in the global system and the third and last theme was that of the china dream and i think i believe that the china dream is becoming a nightmare for many people and many countries across the globe i couldn't agree more bruno massachusetts you recently wrote that the border clashes with india were a strategy of war psychology what does that mean well i think china is interested in to some extent in intimidating india it sees india as an obstacle it sees india as a problem india of course has led the reaction against the belton road and it now looks like india is going to lead the world's reaction against chinese technological dominance the apps ban is very significant my friends in beijing were much more concerned about that than they are about the border skirmishes it's significant that the indian ambassador that was in wuhan speaks about china like this today in this show certainly the wuhan spirit seems that it wasn't clear a year ago but so it's important what is happening in india and chinese authorities are very aware of this they don't talk about india all the time but i think that's deliberate that's a way not to give india too much importance and not to increase its self-confidence but india is certainly regarded as a problem for chinese foreign policy uh in a way compared to russia china has dealt with russia very well has engaged it has co-opted it with india things have not gone well from from the start of of chi chi ping's term um and it's perhaps a criticism that one can can can make or one can regard it as more or less inevitable you have two giants growing at the same time uh both ambitious uh there was the relationship was always going to be difficult i don't think india was ever considering a change of heart on bri but whatever little chance china had if any has been lost now this was no way to get india on board uh derrick grossman what was the strategy behind the galwan stand up according to you and what did xi jinping gain if anything at all by taking on india and what did he lose according to you yeah i i think the common narrative out there is that the timing of the galwan incident is mostly related to china trying to exploit the coronavirus pandemic for its own geopolitical gain but the problem with that narrative is that there's simply no evidence available to support it china has been engaged since since xi jinping came to power in 2013 she china has been engaged in these salami slicing tactics whether you know it's against taiwan or in the south china sea in the east china sea against japan and also against india for many years now and so the pre-pandemic behavior of china is essentially the same as what we're seeing during the pandemic and so i don't think it's related uh it may be in part related somehow to the pandemic but there's no evidence to support that it is that china is doing this because of the pandemic what i have seen in my own research is that a lot of this is related to china's concerns about um india changing the status quo uh near the line of actual control now whether you know china is obviously changing the status quo as well so they're they're certainly uh you know a culprit uh in this situation i'm not trying to pin all the blame on india but i'm just saying that beijing's perception is that what india is doing is improving infrastructure there improving patrols there and also the article 370 decision in august 2019 by prime minister modi i think really shook beijing up quite a bit in terms of how it now assesses india is thinking about territorial claims broadly uh and so yes you know the terror the territory the article 370 decision was was a nothing burger in india right because i mean that was union territory anyway but for china china is now concerned about what does that mean for the status of oxide chin and what does that mean for the status in other disputed areas and so i think we need to at least understand that china has been thinking about it that way uh there's dr ashley tellis who is a very esteemed uh analyst of of india who has said that chinese interlocutors have been beating down his door recently talking about cardiographic uh aggression by india so this is something that we have to at least consider as a possibility for the timing i have so much to say about what you've said but i'd let gotham bombable do the talking for the moment no i i think palki what the chinese have done this summer is uh something which is not uh is not something which happened in the past we very often talk about the uh face-offs and the standoffs between the indian army and the chinese army of 2013 at depsang of 2014 at chuma 2016 at doklam in bhutan but those were standoffs between patrols and smaller formations of the two armies this time the chinese have come in strength several divisions of their pla are in eastern ladakh and in the the hinter you know the depth areas so this is something which has been well thought out it has been planned it's premeditated uh and what has happened is as a result of the deaths which occurred on the night of 15 june the entire architecture which was built up by both the governments through a series of agreements from 1993 to 2013 that entire architecture which aimed at maintaining peace on the border because both sides knew that it was a frontier which had not been delineated or demarcated all that architecture is now fallen by the wayside and i'm afraid that the blame if you want to call it that for uh for it is entirely with the chinese side um the indian army has of course and the indian armed forces have given a very solid reply on the ground and that message that we have sent is that we will not tolerate chinese bullying and chinese hegemony we will not accept that and i am afraid that we will have to reiterate and repeat that message through policy decisions of the time that we have just made about banning 59 chinese apps and i have been pressing for a ban on chinese companies from participating in india's 5g trials as well as rollout that makes the two of us uh gotham uh since you mentioned the word bully which is often associated with the chinese and the chinese leadership i want to know uh what is it like to deal with xi jinping is he warm and receptive is he cold and distant how difficult is it to negotiate with him and his team and i ask this because chinese diplomacy has come to be dominated by an entire new breed of diplomats so called wolf warriors does this flow from the top uh look i i can't answer the question about xi jinping i only presented my credentials to him i don't really know him at all but the point you make is not wrong you know as a result and as a reaction to the situation across the world the chinese have come out diplomatically swinging in all directions what they describe as wolf warrior diplomacy this is something that we have not seen from chinese diplomacy in the past it is perhaps because of the new circumstances where china is the second largest economy in the world but i don't think this world warrior diplomacy is doing them any good is doing china any good and you know i i keep wondering why uh they are moving in this direction being so uh aggressive and flailing out almost in all directions bruno massage does xi jinping have any real allies anymore and i'm not sure pakistan and nepal count very much also does it matter when when the global order is so fractured and alliances are built on shifting sands and it's it's more transactional than alliance really yeah i think that's that's a bit of the paradox because you have many analysts uh saying that this is perhaps not in china's interest but you don't see china really interested in taking advantage of the problems america is having with some of its allies and trying to move then clearly china doesn't think that's important clearly china doesn't think that world politics is a popularity contest and it's not uh very worried that its popularity is going down it's about hard power and it's about economic power it's about the way you become uh almost invulnerable because others are dependent on you and we've seen that dynamic play in many parts of the world you know i would call your attention to german chinese relations where if you look only at soft power variables if you look at the human rights question which is important in german politics you would think that germany and china would be at the point of breaking relations but that's not happening at all and chancellor merkel is still uh publicly insisting that uh china is important for the future of of the german economy uh and no breakup is is really envisioned why well because chinese companies are already highly dependent on german companies are already highly dependent on the chinese market and so it becomes difficult to take decisions against chinese interests i think this is what china is counting on and it's also why china is worried about india because india does have the capacity to become a serious economic competitor my theory is that uh what what we saw happening in galwan has a lot to do with movements which you saw in india about trying to take advantage of china's problems with the trade war and with covet to perhaps attract some of the industrial change to india this was as you can imagine badly received in china you were seen as a serious threat to china's plans um and i think uh gawan was a way to react to that so the game is is is not limited to the border it's a much larger and in a way an economic game that is being played and xi jinping uses the military to conduct his foreign policy derek grossman china is an authoritarian state and xi jinping brings an extraordinary level of personal political power to china's one-party system how dangerous does this make china for the world well i mean i yeah i mean you're right uh authoritarian i mean if you look at if you look at the international relations you know theory literature i mean authoritarian uh regimes tend to go to war more often i mean you know there's there's always a talk about how democracies never fight each other right or almost never fight each other i think a lot of wars unfortunately are started by authoritarian governments you know but that said china also has a lot of other concerns on its plate that it has to deal with i mean for example china is bordered by 17 different countries and it has to keep an eye on all 17 countries right and the united states is not even one of those border countries uh of course india is one right in china now has a a pretty severe economic downturn that it's going to have to address because of this coronavirus crisis and so as those numbers continue to go down or stay the same i mean that's that expectations will not be met and so we'll see if there's a domestic clamoring for some kind of change at the top we also have to consider that china spends approximately a third of its budget one-third of its budget on domestic security issues to police its own population so when you have all of these other factors in play and you and you contin and xi jinping talks about by 2050 china is going to be a world power it it kind of it kind of stretches credulity a bit so i think we have to keep in mind the context here that china just like the united states just like india just like any other country is juggling many many different balls in the air at the same time they have ambitions they're spending more on defense than they ever have but they also have limitations that they have to consider right uh gotham bombay xi jinping has amassed immense power he has led purges both political and against people in the army is there no opposition whatsoever that he faces at home and what have you observed in the years that you were in in beijing well i i think he has uh taken control of most of the levers of power and he has got his people into positions of power he has tried to um you know he has moved away uh one way or the other any opposition to him either in the party or or in the army uh the armed forces the pla in general but i think what is more important palki is that you know the chinese communist party has always had this problem of legitimacy and it seeks legitimacy from the people of china the current uh the current contract the social contract as most people know and most people argue is that the party will deliver uh ever improving standards of living to the people which it has for the last 40 years if there are economic problems as some of the other speakers have been indicating then of course there's a turn to the nationalism card which is again a very important card to be played domestically by the chinese party and by the leader of the chinese party uh in order to gain legitimacy from the people of china so i i wonder uh you know whether there is a serious economic strain in china itself domestically which is leading uh the party and the leader of the party to play this nationalism card through um the military action across the borders of china i will come to nationalism in a bit uh bruno massa xi jinping is called the chairman of all things in china is he really invincible according to and how do the people of china see him because it's very hard to independently verify you have to go largely by the chinese press and they're there to cheer rather than report well i lived in china last year for for for 12 months my my impression talking to many kinds of people students academics businessmen particularly in the tech sector is that uh well the legitimacy of the party is strong you know people outside china may not like to hear this particularly in the united states uh but most people seem to think that the party is delivering on the things that they care about economic opportunity safety fighting covert after the the initial problems so there is a sense that the party is delivering the party is present everywhere i didn't see any elements of what you could call the sort of the the last decades of the soviet regime where the party was so separate from the people he had no idea what was going on the chinese communist party has 90 million members they are distributed all over the territory uh there's a story and a tradition of going out into the small villages at the beginning of your career that being said you also hear criticisms although sometimes those criticisms actually come from the right let us say not from the liberal left but from a more nationalistic more authoritarian right that thinks that chi chi ping is being too soft on america for example so you do hear criticisms you know at dinner a quiet dinner it is possible to hear that but uh but but it seems uh that jiji ping has actually been able to extend his network all over the party all over chinese society and and those that oppose him are more or less powerless at this point derrick grossman how much damage has the pandemic done to xi jinping's position in china and when i say the pandemic i also mean the fallouts including the economic fallout yeah that's that's a really difficult question to answer uh and i think you can find evidence to support you know that he's going down the tubes or that he's actually uh emboldened and empowered by this uh i think the economic numbers of gdp you know last quarter was um what was was pretty disappointing for china but um but then again i mean if china is way way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of the curve right uh the coronavirus flattening the coronavirus curve we don't yeah we don't know right we don't know what we don't know but if i'm saying if they are and they're already you know out of their first wave and maybe can even avoid a second wave then china is going to come out looking very very good in all this and you know obviously xi jinping is setting china up to be the the one helping everyone in the world get over coronavirus even though it came from china and that could include china coming up with a coronavirus vaccine before the end of this year that's what they've been saying is going to happen right so you know there's that side of it right but then of course the negative side is um if china enters a second wave right things are even worse than before economic indicators continue to go down the relationship with the us continues to to unravel um you know the relationship with india continues to unravel you know these china and you mentioned earlier china really has no friends they have pakistan maybe they have they have cambodia i guess right do they have north korea maybe sort of kind of right so i mean are those is that really becoming of a a new superpower in the world i mean it it kind of it doesn't seem right uh and so xi jinping may have to answer those kinds of questions but also as bruno said i mean the communist party has you know 90 million members they tend to co-opt the very wealthy to become communist party members uh and so that uh gives them some skin in the game some skin in the system to keep the system uh humming along and so i don't see china becoming you know not communist any time soon uh but they may decide to get rid of xi jinping if everything goes in the wrong direction but it's really difficult to tell unfortunately gotham you spoke about nationalism xi jinping has been talking about rejuvenation since the day he entered office his own brand of nationalism he's co-opted confucius uh how much of this is positioning and and do the chinese people really care about all of this uh when they i believe would much rather move forward than dwell on the past and focus on what they're earning no i i think it's an important issue in china as it is in many countries across the world most countries across the world but the thing is that you know the turn to uh towards playing this nationalism card in order to win support from the people uh this is something which happens when the economics of the situation are not going right um and i'm not saying i really don't know what's happening with the economic situation within china right now especially in the post orbit china uh but if the economic situation is not as hunky-dory as is being made out to be then of course there will be a need to play the nationalism card which includes being muscular and aggressive in the south china sea possibly the east china sea hong kong taiwan and on the india china border bruno masais xi jinping calls himself the son of the yellow earth he's also a party princeling he's tried to find a way to to to reach out to both the sections of society in that sense he's a crusader against corruption he says but he's also the usurper of power how do you decode this man in this leader well there's one thing unifying all factions and and and actually giving purpose to being himself which is uh really to to eventually to equal the united states in power and in the second half of this century uh to replace the united states uh i was amused to see a recent speech by uh foreign minister uh uh uh about how uh china has no intention whatsoever to displace the united states and you know having and anyone who has lived in china knows that this is a goal that cuts across society uh that cuts across the leadership so i think this gives purpose to uh to the leadership and gives purpose to chinese foreign policy then it is true there are there are different sensibilities uh and when we see for example over the past four or five months china becoming much more aggressive you already saw that in china it was part of of the chinese communist party and part of chinese society and perhaps what that means is that egyptian eventually decided that that sector of the party and that sector of society was now more powerful than other sectors he himself was always inclined to think along those terms he was always inclined to think that china would have one opportunity to affirm its power and had to grab that opportunity that these things would not come naturally perhaps leadership in the past both mao and dang believed in loss of history and you just had to wait and naturally uh you would come out on top chi chi ping is much more of a leninist in that sense more of a landing is than a marxist he thinks that you have to grab the opportunity when it comes and it's possible that that he thinks this is the opportunity it is possible that he thinks that covet and and the american election is really the opportunity where china can change the rules of the game which is something they've been trying to do for a long time they think that the rules need to be changed do you think he also overplayed his hand with the belt and road uh no i don't i think the belton road so far has worked pretty well for china it's moved faster than than they thought and with the exception of india they've they've managed to acquire a level of influence that they didn't have before part of it because of the sort of the hopes and expectations that belton road creates that a lot of money is going to be available it is true that china doesn't have allies but when china needs to have a statement signed by a number of countries on xinjiang or in hong kong they can get 60 countries to sign a statement sometimes in statements that you you read the statement and you wonder how anyone could have signed it and it's not because they are treaty allies or very friendly countries but it's because it's countries that are already so integrated economically with china that uh the chinese ambassador in those countries has no trouble getting the government to sign pretty much anything derek grossman a u.s embassy telegram in 2009 said this about xi jinping it said that he's not corrupt but he's been and he's not interested in money but you could say that he's been corrupted by power do you agree with this assessment a long time colleague of mine i won't say who but who's extremely knowledgeable on chinese politics said in china you cannot rise to the position of the leader of china the the head of the the general secretary of the chinese communist party without being corrupt uh it is it is an impossibility because in order to um create the environment that would get you into that position you need to have friends in high places you need to have what they would consider to be guanxi which is you know just connections networking but in fact a lot of times is payoffs uh and quid pro quo's um and so yeah the notion that xi jinping is not corrupt i think is patently false that's an interesting insight corruption is a prerequisite to rise in the chinese system gotham i would like to end with the question i began with how do you deal with xi jinping's china the talk of boycott is all very well but we all know that china is not dispensable not dispensable just yet so what kind of alliances then should india work on or perhaps even lead um i i think i'll begin uh to answer that question especially for the indian audience because i think we have to understand that india's approach to the world which is summarized by the sanskrit words vasudeva meaning the world is one family is something which the chinese don't subscribe to the chinese look at themselves at the center of the world and they're very selfish and they are looking at their own national self-interest and there's nothing wrong with that so i think for an indian audience you know we should begin with this big difference between the way india approaches the world and china approaches the world but to come back to your question i i would say that you know india is now i believe on the path where it will have to strengthen its partnerships with democracies across the world including the united states of course but also japan australia perhaps countries like indonesia south korea and we will have to do this relatively quickly uh as i said earlier that uh what has happened on the ground uh militarily in in the india china border areas this summer has pushed india definitely strategically into the arms of the united states and we need to strengthen that partnership there's no doubt about that where i am concerned bruno masai uh is their global political will to put china in its place hong kong i would say is as good as gone the uighur issue has been around for years but it's only now that sanctions are being imposed uh the call for a probe is more symbolic than substantial are leaders of the world really ready to take on china or are they just going through the motions in dealing with china no i think i think they are uh more and more people are worried about about chinese power we all know that china is going to become a very powerful country we know that china is going to be one of the world's two superpowers but still that has to be managed and particularly when china becomes expansionist or even sort of spiraling into a kind of imperialistic dynamic uh then countries have to get together and and see how this can be managed for the time being i think the critical question is really the economic question i go back to that that's where you find a consensus all over the world uh that china's economic rise is creating problems for everyone when you go into questions like xinjiang hong kong or questions of security then there are disagreements india i think has some of the best thinkers of on china uh uh today so i always uh have a certain trepidation in giving advice but i wrote a recent piece in the times of india arguing that the economic question is really the critical question and the best way for india to respond to to to the problem that china is causing is to become a five trillion dollar economy and to really move into these areas of high technology that's actually where you see china worried about india so that's that's um i think critical um now the important thing i'll conclude with that when dealing with china is that you never find yourself in a position of dependence uh then you never find yourself in a position of vulnerability and if you're not in that position it's uh it's it's possible to talk to china and to and to reach a solution that uh both sides can agree on if you find yourself in a position of dependence then then you suffer uh and some countries have been successfully doing this and others have not some countries that sign a bri memorandum have been successful doing this malaysia is a good example and other countries that are outside bri have not been successful in reducing their dependence ties i mentioned germany and i think it's still a good example so focus on having a balanced economic relation with china where you also have leverage where you also have power and then i think things will go much better dara grossman xi jinping is an avid player of the board game go and some say that it chosen as foreign policy too how do you deal with his china i think that analogy has been used quite a bit uh and it's probably true i mean china definitely has a long-term vision which is unfortunately severely lacking in the united states and that long-term vision of where it sees itself and how it's going to get there is multifaceted i mean you can take a look at you know anytime there is a a party congress you know they release lots of documents um that explain you know five-year plans like where china is going to be and how it's going to get there specifically and it they break it down into every different sector too i mean agriculturally technologically uh you know and the list goes on and on right so so i think that it's not necessarily so much um a game of go because that that makes it seem like there's some kind of secret motives involved i mean i think the motive is clear that china wants to become on par with the united states if not surpass the united states as other panelists have said but but i think it's more about they have a strategy they're sticking to the strategy and that makes them i think that puts them in a in a better position at least vis-a-vis the united states in my opinion because in the united states we're very much you know kind of chasing the ball one issue after another and coronavirus is just the latest uh version of that we're trying to get our act together on china there's now a bipartisan consensus in congress to compete with encounter china at every turn there's an indo-pacific strategy report that talks about how china's arrival and an adversary and we need to compete and counter china at every turn but i mean we have to put all of that into practice china's already been putting their plans into practice so that's what that's what i worry about longer term yes summit reports that the u.s president may have sought chinese help for re-election so it's an interesting uh time to to be tracking china thank you gentlemen thank you very much for your time when xi jinping came to power many said that he might be the chinese gorbachev a man of reform who they hoped would reform the system without destroying it but he turned out to be the chinese putin a president for life and now he's left all of them behind in his quest for world domination can the world find a way to deal with xi jinping with minimum collateral damage as they say only time will tell marie curie had once said nothing in life is to be feared only to be understood now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less well that was our aim and mission with this edition of the we on global summit we believe the key to tackling the threat from the middle kingdom is to understanding it first the wuhan virus pandemic is one of the most defining moments for mankind the actions that world leaders take today will define the destinies of their countries and the world the same is true for an assertive and jingoistic china the recent actions of the communist party pose a challenge to the world order it is said to change after the pandemic and we have to see how there will be new rules that will dictate national security economic priorities the use of technology diplomacy and it would be pretty much all to suggest what the post-pandemic world will look like but it won't be wrong to say that the question of china would be at the heart of the new rules of engagement thank you for watching [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: Wion, world news, Wion News, Latest English News, International News, wion global summit, china, china debt policy, china economy, china great wall of debt, china markets, china obor, china current economy, china expansionist policy, china news, china tech policy, wion summit, decoding china with wion, xi jinping, xi jinping leadership, chinese president, super power, world power, will china take over, taiwan, europe, india

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Length: 40min 11sec (2411 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020