Analyses
China at 70: Xi’s bold bet
By Frederick Kempe, AtlanticCouncil 3/10/19
Oct 4, 2019 - 8:10:19 AM

Chinese President Xi Jinping this Tuesday will celebrate not only the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic but also underscore his quest for “national rejuvenation” and global leadership.
With every day, China’s leadership is more openly demonstrating its desire and capability to shape the global future in the face of a distracted America.
Yet President Xi’s pursuit of party control and nationalistic rhetoric has made his legitimacy and that of his Communist party more susceptible to political and economic shocks than is generally recognized.

This isn’t the outcome President Trump anticipated when he started his trade war with China some 15 months ago.

Chinese President Xi Jinping this Tuesday will stage the mother of all military parades through central Beijing, celebrating not only the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic but also underscoring his quest for “national rejuvenation” and global leadership in the face of damaging US trade and economic pressures.

Meanwhile, President Trump – famously admiring of such spectacles – is hunkered down in Washington, fending off impeachment efforts and domestic political assault. Reports on Friday that White House officials are considering new financial sanctions on China, including a plan that would stop Chinese companies from listing in the United States, shook markets and underscored the declining odds for any meaningful trade agreement.

On October 1, President Xi will inspect 15,000 troops, more than 160 aircraft and 580 active weapon systems from 59 military units. Watch in particular the anticipated, high impact final scene: a phalanx of strategic nuclear missile systems, finishing with Beijing’s most potent projectile, the DF-41 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

The underlying message: It is China’s moment. With apologies to President Trump, President Xi Jinping will be demonstrating to the world that he is busy making China great again. With every day, China’s leadership is more openly demonstrating its desire and capability to shape the global future in the face of a distracted America that, in the view of Chinese officials, has provided Beijing a global opening through overstretching its resources and underappreciating its allies.

Writing in the People’s Daily this past week, the Communist party mouthpiece, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China’s global standing had achieved a historic high, boosted by its diplomatic activism. As quoted in the South China Morning Post ahead of this past week’s UN General Assembly, Wang said China would seek a lead role in reshaping the international order (the product of US leadership). It would expand and defend its national interests, he said, and it would resist foreign interference in its affairs.

For good measure, he said strategic cooperation with Russia was at a historic high due to relations between President Xi and Vladimir Putin. What went unsaid is that those who have argued that the United States’ rich alliances were a decisive asset in its competition with China would need to reexamine their facts.

Yang Jiechi, China’s highest-ranking diplomat and a Politburo member, recently laid out the sense of external siege behind this global ambition.

“Our determination and resolve,” he said, “are as firm as iron when it comes to defending our national interests and dignity on issues about Taiwan, maritime affairs, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong as well as trade rifts. No one should expect China to swallow the bitter fruit that would damage our own interests.”

His accomplishments thus far are historic in nature.