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Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Fall 2026 Issue 89
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
China’s Economic Grand Strategy: Mission-Driven Finance and Tech Self-Reliance
Beijing’s concerns about the risks of dependence have shifted from exogenous economic and financial contagion to geopolitically motivated, weaponized interdependence. The U.S. denial order against ZTE in 2018, the addition of Huawei and its affiliates to the Entity List in 2019, and the expansion of the foreign direct product rule in 2020 made the warning tangible: Commercial success cannot eliminate vulnerability when Chinese firms’ supply chains still depend on U.S.-origin
Zongyuan Zoe Liu
Aug 3039 min read
The Four Seasons of Xi’s Foreign Policy
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
Jonathan Czin
Aug 3036 min read
Russia and China’s Grand Strategy
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
Elizabeth Wishnick
Aug 3028 min read
CLM Insights Interview with Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung
Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, China's Global Strategy under Xi Jinping. Oxford University Press, 2026. 296 pp. ISBN-10 : 0197828817; ISBN-13: 978-0197828816 Insights Interview Most analysts believe that the rapid change in the balance of power between China and the U.S. is the fundamental cause of the end of Deng’s grand strategy of “hide and bide” under Xi. You place more emphasis on Xi’s agency. Can you elaborate? The two are not mutually exclusive. The shift in the balanc
Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung
Aug 308 min read
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