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Editor's Note
Great powers engaged in a protracted geopolitical conflict do well if they craft and follow a coherent and pragmatic grand strategy that identifies clear and achievable objectives and realistic means to achieve them. One of the key questions about China since its ties with the U.S. have turned fundamentally adversarial in recent years is whether its leaders have conceived and begun to execute a new grand strategy. Minxin Pei addresses this puzzle by examining speeches by seni
Minxin Pei
Aug 304 min read
China’s Emerging Grand Strategy: Timeline, Intellectual Origins, and Contours
After the first U.S.-China trade war in 2018, Chinese leaders began to formulate a new grand strategy that shifted their priority from economic development to security. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) blueprint for the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP), released in October 2020, provides a preview of this strategy. Conceptually, Mao’s doctrine of protracted warfare likely shapes how Chinese leaders see the Sino-American “new cold war” and influences their strategic calculus. Due
Minxin Pei
Aug 3024 min read
China’s Great Power Vision Comes into Focus
History may record the 2020s as the period during which China’s vision for updating the international political order came into focus. Chinese leaders and experts have laid their cards on the table, arguing that the era of “hegemonic politics” needs to be replaced by a new order that redistributes power away from its concentration in liberal democracies toward a more equal distribution among states, while protecting the inviolability of sovereign states to govern their popula
Ryan Hass
Aug 3020 min read
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