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

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

China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping thus far has had three distinct phases, oscillating between a predominantly proactive foreign policy and a more reactive posture. When Xi was heir-apparent, the Global Financial Crisis precipitated the most consequential debate in Chinese politics in the 21st century – whether China should continue adhering to Deng’s Xiaoping guidance that China should “hide its capabilities and bide its time” or whether it was time to “show and go.” Wh

Is China poised to advance an alternative vision of the global order in partnership with Russia? After gathering momentum during the previous decade, the Sino-Russian partnership has been deepening under Xi Jinping. Since 2022, progress has been notable in military cooperation and, although Sino-Russian economic ties have long been a weak spot, they have made some progress in energy and regional relations. The full-scale war in Ukraine has highlighted China as an indispensabl

Despite the perception that China is actively exploiting the perceived missteps by the Trump administration and filling the void that Washington has left in the world, the actual picture is more complicated, and it defies a singular generalization. U.S. allies and partners might have more questions regarding the U.S. But such questions have not translated into a genuine swing toward China. In functional areas, China’s bilateral aid budget has seen only marginal growth and its

The idea of leading developing nations everywhere towards greater prosperity and autonomy has long been central to PRC foreign policy. But it was not until 2023 that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi first used the term “Global South.” By positioning the PRC as a perpetual member and natural leader of the Global South, Beijing has now crafted a narrative in which China can simultaneously be a developing nation and a great power capable of stalemating the United States. At the

China’s leadership, state media, and foreign policy analysts consider the U.S. a declining but dangerous power. That assessment has remained durable since Michael Swaine analyzed views in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in his 2021 essay for China Leadership Monitor , though the frequency of that assessment has fluctuated. The resilience of such views in the PRC press reflects genuine assessments of U.S. internal contradictions, the Chinese Communist Party’s Leninist pre

Toward the end of 2021 China unveiled a new framing, “The party’s overall strategy for solving the Taiwan issue in the new era,” to summarize General Secretary Xi Jinping’s policy toward Taiwan since 2013. A close examination of statements by top Chinese leaders and senior officials responsible for the Taiwan portfolio shows that the “overall strategy,” for the most part, deviates little from the policy of Xi’s predecessors. However, the “new” components of the “overall strat