April 20, 2021 | China's Vision of Multilateralism
China's ruling party frequently advocates for global multilateralism, but is this just a veiled condemnation of US global influence?
To fully understand China, we need to understand how China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) view the United States. The Trump administration confirmed many of the CCP’s long-held yet unspoken beliefs regarding the US. What are some of these beliefs?
The dynamic is pretty simple: 1) the CCP believes it is uniquely suited to carry out the “great rejuvenation” of the Chinese people and Chinese civilization. 2) the CCP believes the United States is in a terminal decline that will leave an opening for China to recreate the world order in its image.
China’s ruling party believes the world is structurally shifting away from a US-dominated unipolar configuration toward a multipolar world without a dominant hegemonic power. We see this belief reflected in Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference on Tuesday, April 20:
…there is no fundamental change in the trend toward a multi-polar world; economic globalization is showing renewed resilience; and the call for upholding multilateralism and enhancing communication and coordination has grown stronger. While we live in an age rife with challenges, it is also an age full of hope.
Chinese leaders frequently advocate for a “multilateral” international order for two main reasons. Firstly, it’s essentially a veiled condemnation of US unipolarity and the current rules-based order. The CCP believes a declining United States is its top external threat to its domestic legitimacy and China’s stability.
Secondly, China hopes that by prescribing multilateralism as the remedy for humanity’s ills, it can avoid a direct showdown with the US while also allowing China to avoid taking on many of the responsibilities that come with being a global superpower.
When China proposes multilateralism and multipolarity, it’s really proposing multipolarity within the existing US-dominated world order. Bill Bishop summed up this thinking really well in the intro to today’s Sinocism newsletter:
Can you construct a new world order using the structure of the existing world order? That increasingly seems to be Xi Jinping’s goal, couched amidst calls to “to safeguard the UN-centered international system, preserve the international order underpinned by international law.”
We can’t rule out the possibility that China’s vision of multilateralism includes a drastically reduced US presence in East Asia. In fact, I think we can count on it. Part of the mission of the great rejuvenation of Chinese civilization includes China reclaiming what it perceives to be its right to a dominant position in Asia. Chinese leaders reject this claim publicly, as Xi does at the Boao Forum in the following manner:
However strong it may grow, China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence. Nor will China ever engage in an arms race. China will take an active part in multilateral cooperation on trade and investment…
The west can accept Xi’s words at face value, but as I mentioned in yesterday’s notes, it makes much more sense to root our understanding of US-China relations in fixed constraints. What that means is we need to be mindful of the CCP’s primary mission: to consolidate domestic legitimacy. The legitimacy of China’s ruling party hinges on shepherding China to dominance in the Asia Pacific and the world.
Chinese leaders now find themselves in an awkward position. The United States’ gross mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic has served to bolster the CCP’s domestic legitimacy. China’s leaders have held up US governance failures as evidence of the superiority of China’s model of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
In some ways, they’re right, but it seems the CCP has also overplayed their hand here by holding up the United States’ recent failures as incontrovertible proof of its terminal decline.
Now that the Biden administration is shifting course and formulating a freshly coherent vision for America’s future, China’s leaders will be burdened with the pressure to outcompete the United States in nearly all facets to maintain domestic legitimacy. This is a tall order.
Xi Jinping Boao Forum
Full Text: Keynote speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday delivered a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021.
Highlights: President Xi's speech at Boao Forum for Asia opening plenary
China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence no matter how strong it may grow, Xi said.
Nor will China ever engage in an arms race, he added.
"We must not let the rules set by one or a few countries be imposed on others, or allow unilateralism pursued by certain countries to set the pace for the whole world," Xi stressed.
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