Xi Jinping - US Policy
On 15 November 2012 it was announced that Xi Jinping had succeeded Hu Jintao, taking over his top positions as head of the Communist Party and the Party’s powerful Central Military Commission. Appointment as President and chair of the state Central Military Commission would follow at the National Party Congress in March 2013. Xi Jinping is representative of the Princeling Faction - children of senior party leaders, had the upper hand.
In 2015, Beijing unveiled a strategic plan called “Made in China 2025”. It set out a roadmap for establishing China as the world’s top player in key industries, but also triggered the country’s ongoing tensions with Washington. The latest developments could compound that situation. Some experts say Xi was using the friction to further strengthen his grip on power. At the same time, many people believe his policies to promote innovation are the key to making China a global powerhouse.
The American approach to China since the start of "reform and opening up" in the early 1980s was based on the premise that trade and engagement with China would eventually produce a peaceful, democratic state. Successive American presidents facilitated the peaceful rise of China. The Communist Party of China led the West to believe that the its system and the Party-ruled People's Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat.
With the advent of Xi Jinping, the hope of promoting a benign People's Republic of China appears to have failed. In fact, these policies produced the emergence of a 21st Century Evil Empire at least as dangerous as the Cold War Soviet version. This revisionist nuclear-armed communist dictatorship was focused on a single overriding strategic objective: overturning the hegemoney of the United States of America. Defeating the United States was the first step in achieving global hegemony in a new world order centered on China and based an ideology of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Under Modern Conditions.
Along the way technology theft from American companies took place on a massive scale through cyber theft and unfair trade practices. The losses directly supported in the buildup of the Chinese military that now threatens American and allied interests around the world. The military threat was only half the danger as China aggressively pursues regional and international control using a variety of non-military forces, including economic, cyber and space warfare and large-scale influence operations.
By 2020 the US/PRC strategic competition had entered a new phase with no certain endpoint or predictable end-state. US national security strategy and DoD planning, budgets and programs are making a shift not seen since the end of the Cold War. DoD had long thought China was an emerging military threat that would require adjustments in US defense policy. This view reached a new level of concern/awareness under the Trump Administration. China was now viewed in many ways as a military "peer" with credible capabilities in specific areas that have been purposely pursued to negate US & allied military advantages in the Pacific.
China on 20 February 2023 released a report on US hegemony and its perils to expose the US' abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the US' practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.
The report stated the US had been escalating the great power competition across the globe, and its style of seeking hegemony has been transformed from "benevolent" to aggressive, forcing more and more countries and regions to take sides. Chinese observers warned that attempts by the US to suppress and contain China will only intensify in the near future. Since becoming the world's most powerful country after two world wars and the Cold War, the US had acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, and to pursue, maintain and abuse its hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community, said the report.
The report pointed out that the US has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage "color revolutions," instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the US ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It took a selective approach to international laws and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a "rules-based international order."
The report listed instances of US interference in other countries' internal affairs. For example, in the name of "promoting democracy," the country practiced a "Neo-Monroe Doctrine" in Latin America, instigated "color revolutions" in Eurasia, and orchestrated the "Arab spring" in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and disaster to many countries. During the past few years, the US also tried to encourage and support "color revolution" in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).
The report also pointed out that the US' surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, or even leaders of allied countries such as former German chancellor Angela Merkel and several French presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the US such as "Prism," "Dirtbox," "Irritant Horn" and "Telescreen Operation" are all proof that the US is closely monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and partners has already caused worldwide outrage.
According to the Chinese report, the US has fabricated excuses to clamp down on China's high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. The country has imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China, the report said.
The report said that the US' unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn increasing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and it rejects interference in other countries' internal affairs. The US must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices, the report concluded.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
