Xi Jinping threatens war

Xi Jinping called on his generals to “show courage to fight”. He praises his people’s military for keeping the Americans in check with the most primitive of weapons during the Korean War. And the Chinese president regularly increases the military budget, officially this year by more than seven percentage points to about $225 billion. Unofficially, this amount is probably much higher, as experts assume.

We need to take this rattle of sabers seriously. “If Xi says he is preparing for war, it would be foolish not to take him at his word,” military experts John Pomfret and Matt Pottinger warn in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Chinese modesty is a thing of the past

The saber rattle has a method. As Rush Doshi points out in his book The Long Game, the Chinese Communist Party has been preparing for decades for possible war with the West, especially the US. Doshi is a China expert at the renowned Brookings Institution think tank.

Deng Xiaoping, the father of modern China, once called on his compatriots to “hide their abilities and buy time”. Xi doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. The Chinese president seems self-assured, stressing at every possible and impossible opportunity how decadent the West and especially the US have become.

Above all, Xi calls for a new world order. According to Xi, US bilateralism must finally be overcome and give way to multilateralism, i.e. a world order that is no longer dominated by the US superpower, but in which several equally powerful nations keep each other in check.

Xi does not want to achieve this goal primarily through military means. With the “Belt and Road Initiative”, China now makes half the world happy with highways, railways, ports and airports. China is also heavily involved in geopolitics, as recently shown in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Iran. China has long since brought its archenemies back together.

The modesty once demanded by Deng is a thing of the past. Movies like “Wolf Warrior” – a Chinese answer to the “Rambo” saga – celebrate the heroic deeds of their own soldiers. Terms such as “democracy” and “human rights” are no longer blatantly denied, but boldly reinterpreted to reflect Chinese conditions.

China’s charm offensive is having an effect. That more than 100 countries have not joined the Western boycott against Russia is largely due to Vladimir Putin’s best friend Xi, and that Xi received Brazilian President Lula warmly in Beijing these days is anything but a coincidence. In emerging markets, the United States lost a lot of goodwill with the unfortunate war in Iraq and the bailout of the banks in the 2008 financial crisis. Like Europeans, they are seen in Asia and South America as hypocrites and egoists.

The Americans, for their part, are not idly watching the build-up of the Chinese people’s army and the diplomatic advance. Democrats and Republicans fight each other on almost everything, but when it comes to China, there’s an uncanny consensus. President Joe Biden has not only confirmed the trade restrictions imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump. He expanded them. Semiconductors in particular may no longer be exported to China.

The US wants to contain China with the same means it once used to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. “Containment” is the name of this policy, which amounts to trying to isolate a country economically and politically. Xi rightly complains that the US is “surrounding” and “oppressing” China. However, Xi has to praise himself for the fact that the US containment also partially succeeds. China’s aggressive actions are having a similar effect in Asia to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ranks of countries friendly to the West are closing. Japan has promised to double its military spending. The Philippines has moved closer to the US again and Australia now wants to operate a fleet of state-of-the-art nuclear submarines with the Americans and the British.

The euphoria about the Western social model that spread after the fall of the Berlin Wall has faded. Emerging countries no longer rely on neoliberalism. The Chinese economic miracle has not gone unnoticed.

Nevertheless, China is unlikely to replace the United States as the leading global power any time soon. It is still unclear whether the country will fall into the middle-income trap. This describes the state of an economy that does not make the transition to sustainable prosperity after a rapid recovery. This would be disastrous for China, as its population is already shrinking. The Chinese grow old before they get rich.

The new Chinese self-confidence contrasts with a partly hysterical fear of China in the US. This shows the reaction to a balloon launch, with it being disputed whether it was used for espionage or meteorology. Or the excitement of the upcoming visit of Tsai Ing-wen, President of Taiwan, to Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy.

China’s demand for a multilateral world order is fundamentally justified. It is no longer justifiable today that about two billion people impose their will on about six billion people. Whether the Chinese model will be the alternative, however, is more than the question. China is, as The Economist recently put it, “a superpower that demands influence without winning affection; who wants power without vision and who denies universal human rights. Anyone who thinks this will make the world a better place should read the books again.”