In a bid to revive its ailing economy, China this year set about attracting foreign investors and stabilizing its relations with the West. But those goals clash with what China’s leader Xi Jinping sees as his top priority: strengthening national security in a world he sees as fraught with threats.
Mr. Xi has warned that China must resist a United States campaign to contain and suppress the country’s rise. In this worldview, foreign rivals use spies to weaken China’s economy; Russia is not treated as a pariah but as a key partner in containing the NATO threat; and the diplomatic stage is a place to assert China’s influence and reshape the world order in its favour.
Domestically, the authorities left foreign companies cold with a nationwide crackdown on consulting firms with international connections. China’s state broadcaster accused western countries of stealing sensitive information in key industries with the help of consulting firms that help investors navigate China’s grim economy.
Abroad, China’s efforts to improve ties with Europe – driving a wedge between the United States and some of its key allies – have been complicated by Beijing’s proximity to Moscow. Visiting Germany this week, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang dismissed criticism that Beijing is not doing enough to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. He also warned that China would retaliate if the European Union decided to impose sanctions on Chinese companies accused of supplying Russia with technology for its military.
China’s increasingly forceful crackdown has also raised concerns in Canada. That administration accused a Chinese diplomat of intimidating and collecting family information about a Canadian lawmaker who was a harsh critic of Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. After Ottawa ordered Chinese officials to leave the country, Beijing expelled a Canadian diplomat in Shanghai.
“China’s ability to manage diverse and competing national and global interests is fast becoming a critical challenge for Xi,” said Evan S. Medeiros, an Asian Studies professor at Georgetown University who served as an advisor to President Barack Obama.
While this is nothing new, Mr Medeiros said, it has become much more difficult as China’s economic recovery has increasingly coincided with a slowdown in export growth and a rise in unemployment rates. “Xi seems to think he can both prevail and lure other countries by relying on the gravitational pull of their economies and global frustration with US power.” These are big gambles.”
The campaign against consulting firms has puzzled observers amid recent assurances from China that the country is open for business again after three years of strict Covid measures. But the companies’ access to data on Chinese industries, including defense, finance and science, has apparently triggered alarms in the country’s security apparatus, which now takes precedence over economic decisions.
The party has long struggled with the tension between its distrust of the outside world and the need to maintain global connections to fuel its growth. However, Mr. Xi stressed at the annual parliamentary session in March that he prioritized security, calling it the “foundation of development.”
“President Xi has made it quite clear that security is more important than development,” said Ryan Hass, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director for China at the National Security Council under President Obama.
“If that requires beating the skulls of the consulting firms and deterring foreign capital in the process, then that’s a price he appears willing to pay,” added Mr. Hass.
Ultimately, Beijing believes that access to China’s expansive market is simply too tempting for foreign companies and governments to forego.
Mr Qin ended his four-day trip to Europe on Friday after making further stops in France and Norway, with competing interests looming everywhere.
In France, Mr Qin sought to build on friendly talks last month between Mr Xi and President Emmanuel Macron, who was traveling to China with a bevy of French business leaders. Mr. Qin met with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Wednesday and told her, “China stands ready to work with France and other countries to create a bigger cake for cooperation and development opportunities.”
Mr Macron had advocated Europe’s “strategic autonomy” from Washington, particularly over contentious issues such as Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing. Beijing wants more countries in Europe to follow Mr Macron’s example. But the continent remains deeply divided over China, especially as Beijing continues to support Russia economically and diplomatically while it wages war on Western Europe’s doorstep.
The snappy tone of Chinese diplomats has also done China no favours. Last month, its ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, sparked a diplomatic firestorm after he challenged the sovereignty of former Soviet states like Ukraine. The remark, which was dismissed by the State Department, may reflect an overconfidence among Chinese leaders about China’s lure.
“China believes it has a relatively high degree of flexibility to use aggressive tactics to protect its interests because Europeans cannot afford to allow breaches,” Mr Hass said. “We’ll see how this theory is tested in the future.”
Unease with Beijing’s assertiveness has pushed other countries deeper into the United States’ arms, including longtime allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia, and frontiers like the Philippines. It has also brought India closer to Washington than ever before, something that once seemed unthinkable in US foreign policy circles given Delhi’s non-aligned history.
Analysts say such self-inflicted wounds are inevitable under Mr Xi’s leadership. The more insecure and threatened Mr. Xi feels, the more his nationalist tendencies compel him to resist at all costs.
“The regime was in a defensive position after the failure of the ‘zero Covid’ policy and the economic downturn, so Xi needs to show a strong face,” said Suisheng Zhao, a US-China expert at the University of Denver. “As long as he feels vulnerable, he will try to convey to the world that he is powerful, is steadfast and will defend all of China’s so-called vital interests.”
Still, talks this week between China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan hinted at a possible thawing in relations between Beijing and Washington.
As relations with the West falter, China has stepped up its courtship of the global South, recently holding meetings with foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan, while Mr Xi is set to chair the first China-Central Asia summit on May 18.
“From China’s perspective, and given its deteriorating relationships with advanced, democratic countries of the Global North, this makes sense,” said Bates Gill, executive director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
China’s intent is to be “a much bigger player in the Global South,” Mr. Gill added, so that it can “use that leverage within the larger geopolitical rivalry with the United States.”
Olivia Wang contributed to the research.
Comments are closed.