Xi Jinping has a plan for how the world should work, and one year into his norm-shattering third term as Chinese leader, he\u2019s escalating his push to challenge America\u2019s global leadership \u2014 and put his vision front and center. <\/p>\n
That bid was in the spotlight like never before last month in Beijing, when Xi, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and some two dozen top dignitaries from around the world, hailed China as the only country capable of navigating the challenges of the 21st century. <\/p>\n
\u201cChanges of the world, of our times, and of historical significance are unfolding like never before,\u201d Xi told his audience at the Belt and Road Forum. China, he said, would \u201cmake relentless efforts to achieve modernization for all countries\u201d and work to build a \u201cshared future for mankind.\u201d <\/p>\n
Xi\u2019s vision \u2014 though cloaked in abstract language \u2014 encapsulates the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s emerging push to reshape an international system it sees as unfairly stacked in favor of the United States and its allies. <\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/strong>Viewed as a rival by those countries as its grows increasingly assertive and authoritarian, Beijing has come to believe that now is the time to shift that system and the global balance of power to ensure China\u2019s rise \u2014 and reject efforts to counter it. <\/p>\n In recent months, Beijing has promoted its alternative model across hefty policy documents and new \u201cglobal initiatives,\u201d as well as speeches, diplomatic meetings, forums and international gatherings large and small \u2014 as it aims to win support across the world. <\/p>\n For many observers, this campaign has raised concern that a world modeled on Beijing\u2019s rules is also one where features of its iron-fisted, autocratic rule \u2014 like heavy surveillance, censorship and political repression \u2014 could become globally accepted practices. <\/p>\n But China\u2019s push comes as American wars overseas, unstable foreign policy election-to-election, and deep political polarization have intensified questions about US global leadership. Meanwhile pressing issues like climate change, Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine and Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza have sharpened discussion over whether the West is taking the right approach to respond. <\/p>\n All this coincides with longstanding calls from countries across the developing world for an international system where they have more say. <\/p>\n Many of those countries have substantially enhanced their economic ties with Beijing during Xi\u2019s rule, including under a decade of his up to $1 trillion global infrastructure building drive, which leaders gathered to celebrate last month in the Chinese capital. <\/p>\n It remains to be seen how many would welcome a future that hews to China\u2019s worldview \u2014 but Xi\u2019s clear push to amplify his message amid a period of unrelenting tensions with the Washington elevates the stakes of the US-China rivalry. <\/p>\n And as the procession of world leaders who have visited Beijing in recent months, including for Xi\u2019s gathering last month, make clear: while many nations may be skeptical of a world order pitched by autocratic China \u2014 others are listening. <\/p>\n A more than 13,000-word policy document released by Beijing in September outlines China\u2019s vision for global governance and identifies what it sees as the source of current global challenges: \u201cSome countries\u2019 hegemonic, abusive, and aggressive actions against others \u2026 are causing great harm\u201d and putting global security and development at risk, it reads. <\/p>\n Under Xi\u2019s \u201cglobal community of shared future,\u201d the document says, economic development and stability are prioritized as countries treat each other as equals to work together for \u201ccommon prosperity.\u201d <\/p>\n In that future, they\u2019d also be free of \u201cbloc politics,\u201d ideological competition and military alliances, and of being held responsible for upholding \u201c\u2018universal values\u2019 \u201cdefined by a handful of Western countries,\u201d the document says. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat the Chinese are saying \u2026 is \u2018live and let live,\u2019 you may not like Russian domestic politics, you might not like the Chinese political regime \u2014 but if you want security, you will have to give them the space to survive and thrive as well,\u201d said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. <\/p>\n This vision is woven through three new \u201cglobal initiatives\u201d announced by Xi over the past two years focusing on development, security and civilization. <\/p>\n \ufeff<\/strong>The initiatives echo some of Beijing\u2019s long-standing talking points and are largely short on detail and heavy on rhetoric. <\/p>\n But together, analysts say, they present a case that a US-led system is no longer suited for the current era \u2014 and signal a concerted push to reshape the post-World War II order championed by it and other Western democracies. <\/p>\n That current international framework was designed to ensure, in theory at least, that even as governments have sovereignty over their countries, they also share rules and principles to ensure peace and uphold basic political and human rights for their populations. <\/p>\n China has benefited from that order, supercharging its economy off World Bank loans and expanded opportunities under the World Trade Organization, which Washington backed Beijing to join in 2001 in the hope it would help liberalize the Communist country. <\/p>\n Just over two decades later, Beijing is chafing under it. <\/p>\n The US and its allies have watched warily as Beijing has not only grown economically competitive, but increasingly assertive in the South China Sea and beyond and more repressive and authoritarian at home. <\/p>\n This has driven Washington\u2019s efforts to restrict Chinese access to sensitive technology and impose economic sanctions, which Beijing sees as bald-faced actions to suppress and contain it. <\/p>\n The US and other nations have decried Beijing\u2019s intimidation of the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan and tried to hold it to account for alleged human rights violations in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, the latter of which a UN human rights office last year said could amount to \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d \u2014 a charge Beijing denies. <\/p>\n In response, Xi has ramped up longstanding efforts to undercut the concept of universal human rights. <\/p>\n \u201cDifferent civilizations\u201d had their own perceptions of shared human \u201cvalues,\u201d Xi told leaders of political parties and organizations from some 150 countries earlier this year as he launched China\u2019s \u201cGlobal Civilization Initiative.\u201d Countries wouldn\u2019t \u201cimpose their own values or models on others\u201d if China were setting the agenda, he implied. <\/p>\n This builds on Beijing\u2019s argument that governments\u2019 efforts to improve their people\u2019s economic status equates to upholding their human rights, even if those people have no freedom to speak out against their rulers. <\/p>\n It also links to what observers say is growing confidence among Chinese leaders in their governance model, which they see as having played a genuinely positive role to foster economic growth globally and reduce poverty \u2014 in contrast to a US that has waged wars, sparked a major global financial crisis and faces fraught politics at home. <\/p>\n \u201cAll this makes China think America is quickly declining,\u201d said Shanghai-based foreign policy analyst Shen Dingli, who says this feeds Xi\u2019s drive not to overturn the existing world order, but revamp it. <\/p>\n Beijing, he added, sees the US as merely \u201cpaying lip service\u201d to the \u201cliberal order\u201d to hurt other countries. <\/p>\n \u201c(China asks) \u2018who is more prone to peace and who is less capable of leading the world?\u2019 This has beefed up China\u2019s self-image, (and this idea that) \u2018We are great and we should be greater \u2014 and we should let the world realize it\u2019s our time,\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n For strongmen leaders and autocratic governments, Xi\u2019s vision has obvious appeal. <\/p>\n While Russia\u2019s Putin, accused of war crimes and continuing his brutal invasion of neighboring Ukraine, and Afghanistan\u2019s Taliban leaders are shunned in the West, both were welcomed to Xi\u2019s table of nations in Beijing last month. <\/p>\n Just weeks earlier, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad \u2014 who has been accused of using chemical weapons against his own people \u2014 was feted at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, where he arrived on a Chinese-chartered jet and visited a famous Buddhist temple. <\/p>\n A headline in the state-run Global Times portrayed Assad\u2019s visit as one from the leader of a \u201cwar-torn country respected in China amid Western isolation\u201d \u2014 providing a glimpse into the through-the-looking glass scenarios that could become the norm if Xi\u2019s world view gains traction. <\/p>\n But Beijing\u2019s broader argument, which implies that a handful of wealthy, Western countries hold too much global power \u2014 resonates with a wider set of governments than just those at loggerheads with the West. <\/p>\n Those concerns have come into sharper focus in recent weeks as global attention has focused on Israel\u2019s relentless assault on Gaza following the October 7 attack on its territory by Hamas. The US has been in the minority opposed to broad global backing for an immediate humanitarian truce \u2014 and its support of Israel is seen in much of the world as enabling the country to continue its retaliation, despite mounting civilian casualties. <\/p>\n In recent years, even some countries that have for decades embraced a close partnership with the US have drawn closer to China and its vision. <\/p>\n \u201cPakistan aligns with Chinese leader Xi Jinping\u2019s view that a new global era is emerging, characterized by multipolarity and a departure from Western dominance,\u201d said Ali Sarwar Naqvi, a former Pakistani ambassador, now executive director of the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad. <\/p>\n But there are also many governments that also remain wary of its politics and ambitions, or of appearing to side with Beijing over the West. <\/p>\n \u201cWe relate to the West, we relate to the East \u2026 We maintain a straight line, we don\u2019t compromise our friendship with all people,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n And while others may be ready to back China in calling for a more representative international system \u2014 there are questions about what that means under Beijing\u2019s leadership. <\/p>\n \u201cChina can count on Brazil day and night to say that multilateralism is important, and we have to revisit global governance \u2026 however, there\u2019s a very important \u2018but,\u2019\u201d according to Rubens Duarte, coordinator of LABMUNDO, a Brazil-based research center for international relations. <\/p>\n He points to questions circulating within some countries, like Brazil, about why China is now championing concepts promoted in the Global South for 70 years \u2014 and claiming them as its own. <\/p>\n \u201cIs China really trying to promote multipolarity \u2014 or does China just want to (become a) substitute (for) US influence over the world?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n For decades, China has built its international influence around its economic clout, using its own rapid transformation from a deeply impoverished country to the world\u2019s second largest economy as a model it could share with the developing world. <\/p>\n It was in this vein that Xi launched his flagship Belt and Road financing drive in 2013, drawing dozens of borrowing nations closer to Beijing and expanding China\u2019s international footprint a year after he became leader with the pledge to \u201crejuvenate\u201d the Chinese nation to a place of global power and respect. <\/p>\n \u201cChina\u2019s traditional (foreign policy) thinking was very heavily focused on economic capability as the foundation for everything else. When you become an economic power, you also naturally acquire greater political influence and soft power, et cetera \u2014 everything else will fall in line,\u201d said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington. <\/p>\n But as China\u2019s economic rise has come alongside geopolitical friction with the US and its allies, Beijing has seen the need to expand its vision \u201cand tackle geopolitical issues as well,\u201d Zhao added. <\/p>\n The war in Ukraine has only heightened this dynamic. China\u2019s key economic partners in Europe tightened ties with the US and reassessed their relationships with Beijing after it refused to condemn the Kremlin\u2019s invasion, while at the same time Washington shored up relations with allies in Asia. <\/p>\n This \u201cserved as a wake-up call to the Chinese that the great power competition with the United States, ultimately, is about (winning over) the rest of the world,\u201d said Sun from the Stimson Center in Washington. <\/p>\n Then, faced with mounting pressure from the West to condemn Moscow\u2019s invasion of a sovereign country, Beijing instead used the moment to argue its own view for global security. <\/p>\n Two months after Russian troops poured into Ukraine, Xi announced China\u2019s \u201cGlobal Security Initiative,\u201d declaring at an international conference that \u201cbloc confrontation\u201d and \u201cCold War mentality\u201d would \u201cwreck the global peace framework.\u201d <\/p>\n It was an apparent reference not to the Russian aggressor, but to NATO, which both Moscow and Beijing have blamed for provoking the war in Ukraine. <\/p>\n Xi\u2019s words were far from new for Beijing, but Chinese diplomats in the following months ramped up their promotion of that rhetoric, for example calling on their counterparts in Europe\u2019s capitals, as well as the US and Russia, to build a \u201csustainable European security architecture,\u201d to address the \u201csecurity deficit behind the (Ukraine) crisis.\u201d <\/p>\n The rhetoric appeared to catch on, with Brazilian President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva days after returning from a state visit to China this spring calling on Washington to \u201cto stop encouraging war.\u201d <\/p>\n This gets to the heart of Beijing\u2019s aims, which experts say are not to build its own alliances or use its military might to guarantee peace in volatile situations, as the US has done. <\/p>\n Rather, it looks to cast doubt on that system, while projecting its own, albeit vague, vision for countries ensuring peace through dialogue and \u201ccommon interests\u201d \u2014 a phrasing that again pushes back against the idea that countries should oppose one another based on political differences. <\/p>\n \u2018\u201cIf a country \u2026 is obsessed with suppressing others with different opinions it will surely cause conflicts and wars in the world,\u201d senior military official Gen. Zhang Youxia told delegations from more than 90 countries attending a Beijing-led security forum in the capital last month. <\/p>\n Beijing has said its model is already successful, pointing to its role brokering a restoration of ties between longtime rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in March. It also dispatched an envoy to the Middle East following the outbreak of the latest conflict, pledging to \u201cmake active efforts\u201d to de-escalate the situation \u2014 though Beijing\u2019s readouts of his trip made no mention of any stop in Israel or Palestine. <\/p>\n \u201cIf we don\u2019t (push back), China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s effort to broadcast its vision to reshape the world order is enabled by an extensive network of international organizations, regional dialogues and forums that it has cultivated in recent decades. <\/p>\n Bolstering those groups \u2014 and positioning them as alternative international organizations to those of the West \u2014 has also emerged as a key part of Xi\u2019s strategy to reshape global power, experts say. <\/p>\n This summer both the China and Russia-founded Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security grouping and the BRICS group of emerging economies increased their numbers \u2013 and acted as a platform for Xi to promote his brand of geopolitics. <\/p>\n Countries should \u201creform global governance\u201d and stop others from \u201cganging up to form exclusive groups and packaging their own rules as international norms,\u201d Xi told leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa after they invited Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join BRICS \u2014 the group\u2019s first expansion since 2010. <\/p>\n Weeks later, he appeared to underline his preference for his own alternative architecture \u2014 skipping out on the Group of 20 summit hosted by New Delhi, where US President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders were in attendance. <\/p>\n But besides the splashy, high-profile events on China\u2019s diplomatic calendar, officials are also broadcasting China\u2019s vision and pitching its new initiatives throughout ministerial or lower-level regional dialogues with counterparts from Southeast Asia to Latin America and the Caribbean \u2014 as well as topical forums on security, culture and development with international scholars and think tanks, official documents show. <\/p>\n So far, China has appeared to have little trouble getting dozens of countries to at least cursorily back aspects of its vision \u2014 even if it\u2019s typically not clear who all these supporters are or whether their backing comes with any tangible commitment. <\/p>\n China\u2019s Foreign Ministry earlier this year claimed more than 80 countries and organizations had \u201cexpressed approval and support\u201d for the Global Security Initiative. <\/p>\n According to Beijing, the economic-focused \u201cGlobal Development Initiative,\u201d launched in 2021 to support United Nations sustainability goals, boasts some 70 countries in its \u201cGroup of Friends\u201d \u2014 hosted under the auspices of the UN. <\/p>\n This chimes with China\u2019s long-held strategy to win broad backing for its position against that of Western countries in the UN and other international organizations,\u00a0where Beijing has also been pushing for a bigger role. <\/p>\n But in addition to how much tangible support Beijing can garner, a key hanging question also remains over whether Xi\u2019s ambitions are limited to efforts to dominate the global narrative and shift the rules in China\u2019s favor or if he wants to truly assume a role as the world\u2019s dominant power. <\/p>\n There is a broad gap between China\u2019s power and military capacity relative to that of the US \u2014 and the potential for an ailing economy to slow its rise. <\/p>\n For now, experts say, China appears focused on shifting the rules to undercut American credibility to intervene or hold countries to account for domestic issues \u2014 be they civil conflicts or human rights violations. <\/p>\n Success doing that could have implications for how the world responds to any potential future move it could take to gain control of Taiwan \u2014 the self-ruled, democratic island the Communist Party claims. <\/p>\n But China\u2019s actions in Asia, where its military has become increasingly assertive, while decrying US military presence, suggest to many observers that Beijing does hope to dominate the region. <\/p>\n They also raise questions about how a more militarily and economically powerful China would behave globally, if left unchecked. <\/p>\n China, however, has denied ambitions of dominance. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is no iron law that dictates that a rising power will inevitably seek hegemony,\u201d Beijing said in its policy document in September. \u201cEverything we do is for the purpose of providing a better life for our people, all the while creating more development opportunities for the entire world.\u201d <\/p>\n Then, in an apparent reference to its own belief, or hope, for the trajectory of the US, it added: \u201cChina understands the lesson of history \u2014 that hegemony preludes decline.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Xi Jinping has a plan for how the world should work, and one year into his norm-shattering third term as Chinese leader, he\u2019s escalating his push to challenge America\u2019s global leadership \u2014 and put his vision front and center. That bid was in the spotlight like never before last month in Beijing, when Xi, flanked <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018Shared future\u2019<\/h2>\n
Who\u2019s listening?<\/h2>\n
Expanding ambitions<\/h2>\n
Alternative architecture<\/h2>\n