Xi seems to have assumed the Western sense of time, dominated by short-termism, and wants the ambitious goal of becoming the Central Empire to materialize under his mandate. Time will tell. But he doesn’t seem to run for the new emperor.
It has always been said – and it is usually true, even if it is a cliché – that the conception of time is different between Western and Eastern cultures. We Westerners want everything quickly and that makes us lose strategic sense. The short term dominates. On the other hand, in Eastern cultures, more oriented to the primacy of the collective than the individual, what is important is the medium and long term, beyond the vital horizons of specific people.
Naturally, this type of statement deserves many nuances, but it seemed that China’s secular history supported such an interpretation. From Confucius to today, the history of China is one of permanent values that have allowed its existence as a culture and civilization for thousands of years and more than 23 centuries as a political subject.
Despite all kinds of turbulence, invasions and civil wars, China, the Central Empire, has maintained its basic stability, through a political model based on dynasties and with an emperor – the Son of Heaven – at the head. This was the case until well into the 20th century.
These are the consequences of the “century of humiliation”, which began in the mid-19th century, when technological and military superiority was lost in the face of the irruption of the European powers – which did carry out the Industrial Revolution – and the United States and Japan – which also carried it out with the Meiji Restoration–, which causes the structural weakening of the system and the establishment of a republic, with its limited sovereignty and that has to face external aggression and, also, the internal division between nationalists and communists. China thus loses its dual nature: its full sovereignty and its hegemonic ambition.
«When Mao dies in 1976, he leaves a miserable country, economically irrelevant, although he is once again key in global geopolitics, especially since the internal schism of communism with the break with the USSR after the death of Stalin»
After the Second World War and the communist victory in the Civil War, China recovers the first, with the constitution in 1949 of the People’s Republic of China. But not its hegemonic vocation. When Mao dies in 1976, he leaves a miserable country, economically irrelevant, although he is once again a key player in global geopolitics, particularly due to his intervention in the Korean War, but above all after the internal schism of communism with the break with the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. The US knew how to read it and took advantage of it to weaken its main rival in the cold war.
But the hegemonic vocation must inevitably go hand in hand with technological, economic and commercial relevance. That is the roadmap marked by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms: introduce market economy mechanisms beyond centralized planning and encourage the creation of wealth over its distribution. Obviously, this cannot be done overnight. It requires time and patience. And undisputed political authority.
Deng learned from the Soviet fiasco and never gave an inch in the leading role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), curtailing (Tiananmen) any hint of freedom and democratization. The West assumed it as an inevitable cost in the short term, from the conviction that growth, the creation of middle classes or the international mobility of citizens were going to be the starting point of a new democratic China in the future. He even promoted the integration of China into the great multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization, in the belief that open globalization allowed what Deng called the “peaceful rise” and, at the same time, considerably reduced the possibility of potential conflicts by increase economic and commercial interdependence.
In parallel, Deng put the PCCh above its leaders, promoting the limitation of mandates and “taxed” mechanisms of succession, to avoid the excesses of the Mao era. His pragmatism gave enormous results and today China is the second world power and the first from the commercial point of view and in some technological fields. It is a strategic partner for the West and the rest of the world and, probably, the great beneficiary of free trade and globalization.
“It should not be forgotten that Deng had a long-term project, presenting as pragmatism a strong will to accumulate forces, quietly, and waiting for the right moment to return China to its glorious imperial past”
At the same time, Deng inspired an unassertive, conflict-averse foreign policy while focusing on the enormous domestic task of solving domestic problems. But it should not be forgotten that Deng had a long-term project, presenting as pragmatism an iron will to accumulate forces, quietly, and waiting for the right moment to return China to its glorious imperial past.
Barack Obama already began to sense that strategy and turned US foreign policy towards the “Asian pivot”. Donald Trump made it much more crude and coarse explicit, focusing on trade and technological protectionism. Today, with Joe Biden, the US position is clear: China is the main strategic adversary that endangers its hegemony as the great global superpower on the planet in this century.
But also Japan, Korea, Australia or Europe itself – not without internal differences – have reoriented their policy towards the Asian giant, aware of the challenge posed by an increasingly aggressive, expansionist China, with a desire for global projection – with the Belt and Road as a paradigmatic example – and without complexes when explaining its ambition. Including military force and the struggle for technological supremacy based on the digital revolution.
The Russian aggression against Ukraine has shown the contradiction between wanting to be the great alternative superpower and the need not to break with globalization and the relationship with the West, in order to continue with economic growth and the search for technological supremacy.
In this sense, Xi is clearly disruptive. It has been seen with crystal clarity at the 20th CPC Congress. Xi no longer speculates with the “peaceful rise” nor hides his will to incorporate, even by force, Taiwan. His path towards a leadership without limits and an accumulation of power that not even Mao had returns us to the imperial figure under the new dynasty of the Party, eliminating any dissidence – the expulsion of Hu Jintao is a clear warning to navigators – and subjecting the economy to the political nature of the regime.
«The increasingly suffocating control of political power over large innovative technology companies limits and harms their global performance and undermines the growth potential of an economy that is increasingly removed from the free market»
The lack of response to the questions we asked ourselves in the past Notes is a good example of this. Despite the clear weakening of the economy, no changes are proposed in the delusional zero Covid policy, nor are deep crises such as the one in the real estate sector – which in turn affects its banking and credit system – or the debt of the set of public administrations. Meanwhile, the increasingly suffocating control of political power over large innovative technology companies limits and harms their global performance and undermines the growth potential of an economy increasingly removed from the free market.
The growth rate is going to be clearly lower than forecasts, unemployment is increasing, the yuan is weakening, there is a risk of deflation without a clear policy being perceived by the monetary authority. Without forgetting a profound structural problem that affects the sustainability of the system and its competitiveness: the unstoppable demographic decline, about which there was no mention during the Congress.
At the same time, support for Russia – more rhetorical than real – has harmed its position on the geopolitical stage in the face of the strengthening of the Atlantic and Western link. Vladimir Putin’s tragic and criminal adventure is increasingly detrimental to China’s long-term interests and complicates Taiwan’s claim. It is no accident that the CCP Congress has looked the other way on this issue.
The worrying question is whether this objective situation cannot lead to greater aggressiveness abroad and to a worsening of the decoupling started a few years ago, exacerbated by the pandemic and fueled by the consequences of the Russian invasion.
Someone may wonder why China, with Xi, has abandoned its “strategic patience”, which advised waiting, without feeling overwhelmed by historical urgencies. Xi probably thinks that the opportune moment Deng was talking about has already arrived. But precipitation is always a bad adviser. It seems that Xi has assumed the Western sense of time and that he wants the goals to materialize under him. Time will tell. But, today, China seems to lose by abandoning the oriental sense of historical becoming.
