China According to China

In 2018, a group of young communists, soaked in the ideology of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, were surprised to discover that the Communist Party of China was opposed to communist agitation. The students had organized an action committee to protest poor labor conditions at major universities and to push for better wages for campus janitors, cooks, and other members of the proletariat. When the students gathered in the city of Huizhou to establish labor unions at nearby factories, state authorities jumped into action. They erased political messages, raided the residences of protesters, and arrested at least fifty activists. 

Barely a year after this remarkable crackdown, labor activist Chen Weixiang was arrested and sent to jail for two weeks for illegally ‘‘provoking quarrels and stirring troubles’’ with his own labor drive. Chen had hoped to negotiate a wage increase for sanitation workers in Southern China, but failed to secure the proper authorization. 

Barely remembered today, the two years leading up to the outbreak of COVID-19 were marked by extensive government-led campaigns to destroy civil society. The anti-labor operations were so harsh that even loyal supporters of the regime were stunned by the government’s actions. 

‘‘Forming a union is not a crime…what we are doing is entirely legal’’ the young leftists complained, ‘‘We are Marxists. We praise socialism. We stand with workers. The authorities can’t target us.’’ Except they can, and they must. That’s according to state-approved regulations designed to tightly monitor university campuses, factories, and other ‘hotbeds of liberalism’ and Western ideas. Political scientist Minxin Pei reports that government records going back to 2014 show that a state-created surveillance group sent a detachment to a Shandong state-owned mill to ‘‘study how reducing ‘excess capacity’—that is, closing factories—would affect social stability’’ (The Sentinel State, p. 74). Police forces stood ready to intervene if and when things got out of hand. The lesson here is that in Xi’s China, public disorder of any kind—even from communists spouting Maoist slogans—is not tolerated. 

What is perhaps most tragic about this particular bout of state discipline is that these young activists seem lamentably unaware of the country they live in. China is definitely not in favour of unsanctioned collective action, or any democratic movement for that matter. China has no functional democracy, no robust free speech rights, and is aggressively opposed to diversity of thought. It is also a proud ethno-state with a ruling party that is unapologetic about oppressing religious and ethnic minority groups. Other regimes may be more brutal and terror-inducing, but by virtue of its size, bureaucratic sophistication, and technological might, China stands apart from competing autocracies as the world’s premier illiberal state. 

China practices what Jennifer Lind calls ‘‘smart authoritarianism,’’ a form of social control which relies on technological innovation and a vibrant knowledge economy to provide its population with the feeling of national pride that comes with material wealth, while discreetly suppressing specific threats to the regime. Pei explains that the voluminous resources of the modern Chinese state, as well as its deep penetration of society, enables government authorities to be proactive rather than reactive. The government service can snuff a threat before it is visible to the public eye. Its army of spies maintains the labor-intensive requirements of continual surveillance (The Sentinel State, pp. 66–67). 

Most importantly, the preventive nature of modern surveillance means that news-generating outbursts of state violence are kept to a minimum. All manner of rebellious ambitions are discouraged by a simple knock on the door, followed perhaps by some tea, and when needed, a short period on house arrest. It is crucial to note that these discreet methods of persuasion and law enforcement do not mean that the business of law and order is devoid of all viciousness. As we will see, state officials do not hesitate to arrest troublemakers, interrogate them, and place them in reeducation camps for an indefinite period of time. Nor is the eagerness and cunning of state agents restricted to the home front. 

Chinese officials are as aggressive abroad as they are at home. During the global pandemic, China’s foreign diplomats shocked the world when they threatened to boycott goods and suspend trade with Australia over the latter’s insistence on investigating the origins of COVID-19. This was not a one-off event. The Chinese Communist Party’s infamous ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomats are continuously encouraged to publicly defend the regime’s illiberality and to back the conquering aspirations of the party leader. Not the party—the party leader. The personalist style of political leadership which now characterizes Chinese politics means that much of what China does is an expression of the fears, priorities, ambitions, and passions of one man. Any serious analysis of Chinese politics in the new millenium must therefore grapple with both the philosophy and psychology of Xi Jinping. 

According to Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, the authors of China’s Global Strategy Under Xi Jinping, the key to understanding Xi’s global ambitions is ‘Tianxia’ or the ‘all under heaven’ doctrine (China’s Global Strategy, p. 92). Xi’s dream is to create a unified and stable Han Chinese state that is widely recognized by the community of nations as the uncontested global leader in innovation and statecraft. In Xi’s ideal world, nations wisely submit to Chinese leadership and, through their open co-operation with the Chinese Communist Party, work to forge the ‘common destiny’ of mankind. With so many nations ‘all under heaven,’ the promise is that the world will enter a Pax Sinica that is not only more respectful and just than the one that preceded it, but far more ‘democratic’ than the morally overbearing compact offered by the United States. 

The reality of course is that this Sino-centric peace is a cynical offer. Xi’s new system of international relations may make the world of international affairs and power competition more transparent, legible, and predictable, but it will not make the world more morally secure. On the contrary, as the authors make clear, the international order that China seeks to put in place ‘‘would be safe for autocracy’’ (China’s Global Strategy, p. 25). Worldly acclaim and protection will only empower China to continue its already remarkable repression of dissenting voices. 

When Chinese authorities discovered that its Muslim populations were building a separate and increasingly passionate political identity of their own, they vowed to erase any trace of religious fervor on the mainland. Xi called on state officers to show ‘‘absolutely no mercy.’’ The ensuing crackdown on ‘disloyal’ thought resulted in the detainment of at least one million Uyghurs and the ‘sinicisation’ of society. An analysis by the Financial Times found that since 2018 close to 80% of the 2,312 mosques the paper reviewed had been either destroyed or modified to reflect ‘native’ Han aesthetics. Worshippers have no illusions as to what this means: ‘‘We’ve all deduced that this isn’t just about a dome…They want to Han-ify all Muslims, to remove Islam from life…to change our culture, our way of living,’’ said one faithful. Critics are not wrong. In 2015, Xi called for the ‘sinicisation’ of religion in China. The destruction of mosques is but one aspect of his grand plan to ‘harmonize’ Chinese society. 

The extreme scrutiny of every aspect of an individual’s life is already a frightful endeavor for any state to take on. But Xi is not satisfied with public obedience to government rules. James Leibold and Tenzin Dorjee explain that like all true totalitarians, Xi has ‘‘sought to remake the inner life of China’s non-Han peoples so that claims to distinct political identity become harder to imagine, mobilize, or transmit.’’ Such a sentinel state has no inclination, especially at this time of global economic unrest, to wind down its repressive infrastructure. Chinese leaders do not wish to do away with their mafioso ways, and there is in fact no good reason to believe that China’s ascension to the position of world leader will herald a new era of moral progress. Quite the contrary. Evidence suggests that China plans to use the current moral chaos in the U.S. to intensify its infamous surveillance and total oppression of ethnic and ethical minorities. 

The state’s pursuit of an ‘ethnic unity’ law, which targets those ‘‘who engage in acts that undermine national unity and progress or incite separatism,’’ is the first sign that the global disorder brought on by a predatory U.S. government has created an opening for authoritarian states to consolidate power and advance their securitarian ideologies. The law would force China’s 55 ethnic minorities, including all non-state approved philosophies, to conform their ideas, manners, rituals, languages, and symbols to the dominant Han Chinese secular worldview. The very language of the law suggests a desire to engineer new citizens. The law, the authorities explain, is about ‘‘forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.’’ As Leibold and Dorjee point out, the English translation does not fully capture the Orwellian gist of this proposal. Forging in the Chinese sense in which it is used refers to casting molten ore into unbreakable iron. Leibold and Dorjee suggest that the goal is not just to foster loyalty but to ‘‘mold individual consciousness itself.’’ This is the party’s attempt to engage in soulcraft: to remake the ‘‘habits, attachments, and historical memories that national minorities in China rely on to understand who they are and where they belong.’’ The Mongolian political scientist Uradyn E. Bulag calls this ‘politicide,’ the annihilation of a community’s sense of political identity and memory (A Chinese Rebel Beyond The Great Wall, p. 334).

Domestic security and stability, one Chinese official explained, is ‘‘about liberating man, standardizing man, developing man.’’ The national unity law contributes to this standardization by ensuring that all Chinese individuals adhere to the same cultural standards and personal lifestyle. Tech companies are lining up to assist the government with this extraordinary anti-pluralist program by offering state planners the AI-powered tools they need to squash dissent on a grand scale. One company executive told the New York Times’s Vivian Wang that it plans to work with police forces in ethnic-minority regions to deploy a speech recognition software that can identify more than 200 Chinese dialects. One can easily imagine a future in which in some highly supervised localities anyone caught speaking a language other than what has been prescribed by the state could face severe punishment. 

These moves are likely indicative of what the future holds for those who happen to transgress state-manufactured norms. Repression will not cease. Rather, dissenters will continue to be thrown in jail and religious minorities consigned to brainwashing camps. The only thing that will likely change under this ‘new heaven’ are the constraints imposed on criminal states that oppress their citizens at home. According to a report by the New York Times, China was one of several autocratic nations to push for cuts to the United Nations human rights fund after the American administration threatened to withdraw funding. The fund enables UN staff to investigate claims of human rights abuse, a formalized practice which China and other autocratic states find greatly bothersome. Understandably, China would prefer a world where nations are left alone to toy with the lives of proclaimed state enemies. As it stands, Chinese operatives are systematically working ‘‘to steer liberal international norms toward a metamorphosis’’ that can allow the Chinese state to more freely exercise control over its domestic affairs (China’s Global Strategy, p. 46). Both the UN and China's BRICS initiative are vital parts of this maneuver. Anti-Western sentiments can be consolidated into a strong veto power any time liberal nations wish to contest some domestic decision. With the support of its allies in the United Nations General Assembly, China can more easily blunt Western attempts to sanction its leadership via the usual tools of economic and financial debilitation. This community backing allows Chinese officials to respond more quickly to emerging security threats at home without having to worry about foreign interference and getting dragged by human rights lawyers. 

When China received stern reproaches from Western newspapers and diplomats concerning its mistreatment of ‘ethnics,’ its default response was to either deny or downplay the seriousness of the allegations, while protesting the world’s violation of its natural right to sovereignty in the management of its affairs. China also managed to gather the signatures of 36 countries, including Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, in support of China’s ‘deradicalization’ policies in Xinjiang and other Muslim regions of the mainland (China’s Global Strategy, p. 120). The pandemic provided some welcome relief to China’s embattled diplomats (at least on this issue), but it left many of them with a bad view of the use of Western morals in politics. The UN’s hyperfocus on the less than flattering aspects of China’s futuristic society was a turning point in China’s attitude toward the Western-led human rights regime. 

Tsang and Cheung note that China’s human rights lawyers, most of whom were trained and professionalized during the ’80s and ’90s, were ‘‘driven to extinction’’ as revelations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and other parts of China elicited condemnations from the United Nations and major NGOs (China’s Global Strategy, p. 119). Chinese officials subsequently stopped using the universalist language of human rights and tilted their emphasis toward the sovereign right of independent nations to manage their internal affairs. China’s use of morally neutral language when dealing with foreign conflicts, as well as its studied silence during viral outbursts of moral indignation (say in Gaza), are partly a reflection of China’s acute awareness that its moral values and interests are simply at odds with those of the West. China has no interest in being the world’s policeman. Its leaders would prefer to let other nations run their affairs as they see fit, so long as these affairs do not pose a security threat. China certainly resents other countries, notably the U.S., rousing the world in opposition to its domestic policies. Xi has insisted that countries must ‘‘refrain from imposing their own values or models on others’’ and be sensitive to the ‘‘legitimate security concerns’’ that each government is dealing with. 

It is not unreasonable to expect that a United Nations under Chinese power would have to stand down in the face of atrocities on Chinese soil. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd explains, “the Chinese position is to roll back the post-Srebrenica/post-Rwanda consensus on the level of activism required on the part of UN peacekeeping operations’’ (China’s Global Strategy, p. 115). This means greater tolerance for human rights abuses, as well as fewer attempts to investigate claims, monitor evolving situations on the ground, and protect civilians from outrages. There is no other way to conceive of China than as a subversive power, working within the rule-based international order to undermine the ‘‘prevailing liberal architecture’’ (China’s Global Strategy, p. 168). 

China does not need to extinguish liberalism altogether to get what it wants. It is quite enough to weaken liberalism’s influence over time through the inner workings of its signature institutions. Tsang and Cheung liken this operational change to a recurrent software update: ‘‘Like continual ‘upgrades’ to a computer’s operating system, this change is gradual but, over time, could eventually be so extensive that it amounts to a new system’’ (China’s Global Strategy, p. 169). A United Nations that does not shame or prosecute crimes against humanity would have fundamentally changed its purpose, and then would function in a manner congenial to determined human rights violators like China. 

The failure of the UN to intervene more forcefully in Gaza is widely seen as a step toward such a post-liberal order. A world in which liberal values have lost both their appeal and effectiveness is exactly the kind of world that China wants. Xi’s tianxia worldview sees China as the pre-eminent power in a new multi-polar global ‘order’ that does not operate according to liberal ideals of morality, law, and politics, but rather views China’s relative moral indifference to human rights violations as a source of long-term geopolitical ‘stability’ and human ‘prosperity.’ Looked at from the perspective of national interest, what China wants is to bring about a reversal in moral legitimacy that pushes developing nations away from a Eurocentric system of values based on supposedly universal norms of conduct, to one that recognizes the advantages of allowing each country, including China, to act according to their own ethical framework and domestic interest. 

Tsang and Cheung argue that ‘‘dethroning the United States from its position as the global hegemon is a means, not the goal, of China’s global strategy’’ (China’s Global Strategy, p. 50). China’s goal is to achieve the restoration of its might as a regional empire, and to be recognized as a source of inspiration and leadership. Speaking to anxieties about China’s influence on the UN, the Chinese embassy in Washington released a statement clarifying that ‘‘China never intends to challenge or replace the U.S. … We hope that all parties could see China’s positive role in UNESCO objectively.’’ The attractions of hegemony aside, Xi seems prepared to compete for the no-less-historic position of pre-eminence in the Global South. 

There are a number of historical developments, not all of China’s doing, that are accelerating the transition to a China-made and -molded world. The creation of the BRICS association, the deepening influence of anti-Western powers such as Russia in Africa and other parts of the world, the authoritarian mood in the U.S. government, as well as the anti-American sentiments promulgated by left-wing activists and political leaders on social media, all contribute to the long-term goals of undermining the moral authority of liberal democratic societies and laying the diplomatic groundwork for an act of historic aggression. 

Seizing Taiwan would not just be a brazen act of diplomatic defiance. If completed in the face of American protestation and military reprisal, it could trigger a major shift in global alliances, and possibly initiate a geopolitical realignment. The most favorable outcome of this political shock would be a submission to China’s dominance in Asia, and wider global recognition of its preeminence on the world stage. Xi has made it his life mission to restore China to its past glory as the global exemplar of civilizational greatness. To do this, he must reestablish full control of both Hong Kong and Taiwan, and topple the United States from its perch as world leader. 

Some liberals may not wish to either see or treat China as an ideological adversary, or worse, as a visible threat to their cherished way of life, but Chinese officials are under no illusion that liberal democratic capitalism is the People's Republic of China’s contradiction. The United States and its system of values is the most potent security challenge the party currently faces. Liberalism’s popularity must wane for Xi’s tianxia dreams to come true. 

That should be a troubling reality for all liberals who happen to be concerned about the institutional weakness of the United Nations and the erosion of human rights protections in the twenty-first century. If the foregoing analysis is correct then there are good reasons to believe that China’s rise to top position of global influence will likely spell disaster for the millions of people who live under autocratic regimes. That in itself should be sufficient motivation to care about China and what its party leaders are up to. 

Featured Image is Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin