Editor's Note
- Minxin Pei
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
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 senior leaders and official documents. As revealed in the Chinese Communist Party’s landmark blueprint for the 14th Five-Year Plan in October 2020, the broad contours of a security-centered strategy are largely visible. Based on speeches by Chinese leaders, in particular by Xi Jinping, Mao’s doctrine of protracted warfare is likely shaping how Chinese leaders see the unfolding Sino-American “new cold war” and influencing their strategic calculus. Some of the more pragmatic lessons drawn by the party from the collapse of the Soviet Union also likely inform China’s emerging grand strategy. But because of the politicization of the debate within China over how the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, the positive effects of these lessons may be mixed at best. Overall, China’s emerging grand strategy emphasizes shifting the balance of power in its favor through a combination of reducing vulnerabilities, mobilizing domestic resources, developing substantial external partnerships, preserving China’s external economic linkages, and maintaining strategic focus. Despite its apparent intellectual coherence, effective implementation still faces serious obstacles, chiefly the personalization of decision-making and the ideological rigidities in the Xi era.
Chinese leaders have long harbored ambitions to restructure the international political order to their preferences. According to Ryan Hass, they may finally have an opportunity in this decade to turn their vision into reality. Rhetorically, Chinese leaders and experts have become more vocal in advocating the narrative that the era of “hegemonic politics” needs to be replaced by a new order. Their preferred new order would better reflect the new balance of power in the world, redistribute power away from its concentration in liberal democracies toward a more equal distribution among states, and reinforce the inviolability of state sovereignty in domestic affairs. As Beijing continues to see the U.S. as a declining but dangerous great power, it pursues a strategy marked by prudence and patience. Instead of confronting the United States in a contest for leadership, China is content to patiently accumulate power and influence until the country becomes broadly recognized as the leader of a new political order. Such an outcome is possible but not preordained. A core tension is whether China will match its expansive vision with a willingness to pay the costs of leadership.
Like its geopolitical competitors, since the outbreak of the U.S.-China trade and tech wars in 2018 China has taken major policy measures to address the risks of weaponized economic interdependence. Consequently, Beijing’s economic strategy since 2020 has prioritized achieving a form of controlled interdependence as a source of resilience and leverage, with technological self-reliance its most important objective. Zoe Liu finds that China has repurposed its entire financial system to pursue this objective. The Chinese government pairs greater tolerance for technology investment risks simultaneously with tighter controls on the financial sector. By 2026, a formal interagency mission-driven technology finance architecture has emerged. The system is designed to make public and private financial institutions behave more patiently, accepting more technological risks without granting capital or financial institutions greater autonomy from the party.
Jonathan Czin’s examination of China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping reveals three distinct phases that oscillate between proactive and reactive postures. After he became party chief in late 2012, Xi moved quickly to embrace a more proactive foreign policy, ultimately forcing other powers, most importantly the United States, to react to China’s gambits with forceful counter measures. Yet in face of President Trump’s first trade war against China in 2018, Xi was uncharacteristically unprepared. As a consequence, Xi lost much of the initiative that had characterized Chinese foreign policy during his first term. The passivity and hesitancy of Chinese foreign policy in general, and of policy toward Washington in particular, continued until the closing months of the Biden administration. Since then, however, China has grown more proactive, as seen in its forceful response to U.S. export controls. The Chinese foreign policy posture during Xi’s third term is beginning to resemble that in his first term. After the second Trump administration retreated from its second trade war in the face of Chinese countermeasures, Xi demonstrated a newfound willingness not only to play offense against U.S. allies and partners but also to seek to stabilize ties with the United States. During Xi’s fourth term, China is likely to pursue an even more proactive and assertive Chinese foreign policy than most observers expect.
China’s relationship with Russia has evolved from a partnership of convenience to one of strategic necessity. But are the two countries joining forces to advance an alternative vision of the global order? Elizabeth Wishnick examines the significant deepening of the Sino-Russian partnership during the Xi Jinping era. Since 2022, notable achievements have been made in military cooperation, energy cooperation, and regional relations despite persistent imbalances in overall bilateral economic relations. The full-scale war in Ukraine has made Chinese support indispensable to Russia. It has also increased Russia’s value to China, especially in terms of lessons gained from drone warfare. The deepening military cooperation between China and Russia should be of greater concern to the U.S. and its allies than a closely coordinated effort by Beijing and Moscow to reshape the international order.
