Retirement of China's chief provocateur signals course correction
Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin was equivalent to a three-star general
Dave Sharma is a member of Australia's House of Representatives. He chairs the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties.
When Hu Xijin stepped down as editor of the Global Times last month, China's most combative propaganda outlet, accompanying reports in official media stated Beijing was keen to "strengthen [the paper's] political guidance."
Though he possessed no official role or title, Hu was seen as influential within policy circles. Australia's Ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher, even sought him out for lunch in late 2020, in an attempt to calm troubled Australia-China relations.
Hu Xijin has been one of China's chief spear-carriers in the English-language media, frequently threatening war with Taiwan and ever-ready to give a provocative quote to U.S. media outlets to fan the flames of U.S.-China tensions.
In the battle for information dominance and control of the narrative, he was equivalent to a three-star general, a provocateur-extraordinaire, and spiritual leader of China's 'wolf warrior' cadre of diplomats.
On the day before his retirement was announced, a long profile appeared in The Guardian, with Hu's cooperation, describing him as the "voice of Chinese nationalism."
No one is indispensable in President Xi Jinping's China. Perhaps, like Jack Ma, Hu's retirement was a way of checking his ambition. A reminder that, like everyone else in China, Hu is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party.
But it may also be that the move reflects a broader course correction underway in China's foreign policy. This past year has not ended well for China and Xi's goal of "national rejuvenation."
2021 was meant to be a year when China took advantage of "great changes unseen in a century," capitalized upon Western disarray, and strengthened its claims for global hegemony. But it has not worked out like that.
Whilst the rest of the world is on a graduated return to normalcy from the COVID-19 pandemic, China's borders remain effectively closed. It continues to pursue an elimination strategy, cutting it off from the rest of the world.
The Beijing Winter Olympics, already shaping up to be a low-key affair due to China's strict border control measures, has now been hit with official boycotts from several countries. It is likely to rival the Sochi Winter Olympics as a propaganda failure.
The near-collapse of Evergrande, a broader slowdown in China's property sector, and the troublesome debt of China's local-government financing vehicles, are all taking the luster off China's economy, and causing many to ponder whether China's model of growth is broken.
China's working-age population is in decline, and in 2020 the number of newborns in the country dropped by 15% from 2019. It is hardly the picture of demographic virility that is the hallmark of a rising power.
Externally, 2021 was a year of new coalition formation in response to Beijing's more aggressive stance. The West got its act together. The Quad countries - Japan, India, the United States and China - met at leaders' level in Washington, D.C. for the first time. A new security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States - AUKUS - was forged.
Thanks to this partnership, Australia will now acquire nuclear-powered submarines, a significant step-up in the range and capability of Australia's naval forces, providing Australia the means to operate in distant naval choke points, and greater interoperability with the U.S. Navy.
This month Japan and Australia have concluded a Reciprocal Access Agreement, a significant step to increase cooperation and joint exercises between the two militaries.
China's attempt to coerce Australian decision-making through hostile trade measures has failed. Australia remains in overall trade surplus, exports to China have held up in dollar terms, and affected exporters have found new markets. Public support for the Australian Government's approach toward the relationship with China is high.
Taiwan's government and people continue to demonstrate resolve and have not buckled under the weight of growing Chinese air incursions and other attempts at intimidation.
Countries around the world have taken note. Lithuania, population 2.8 million, has decided to open a representative office in Taipei and weather China's anger and disapproval.
Meanwhile, China's demands of the world have taken a back seat to those of Russia, which is massing troops on Ukraine's eastern border and making a series of demands that amount to a bold claim for a sphere of influence. Despite a weaker hand, Russia remains a far more capable geopolitical actor than China.
On any objective reckoning, China's aspirations toward global leadership were set back in 2021. Deeply attached as they are to a linear, Marxist view of history, this would be unsettling for China's policymakers. They did not account for the fact that the rest of the world, and the west in particular, would adapt and change course in response to growing assertiveness from China.
But this is exactly what has happened, with new balancing coalitions forming in response to China's disruption of the global order. It may be that 2022 will be a year of recalibration for China's foreign policy.
China's ex-Washington envoy and close confidante of Xi, Cui Tiankai, delivered an important keynote speech in Beijing in December in which he appeared to counsel against the growing bellicosity of China's diplomacy, warning that exchanges of anger and attrition were threatening China's hard-won gains on the world stage.
The Glasgow climate conference, where China did not play the destructive role feared by many, may be a foretaste of a more emollient Chinese foreign policy.
Perhaps the 'retirement' of Hu Xijin, and a less combative and antagonistic editorial line from the Global Times, is another sign of such a shift underway.
China's ultimate objective will remain unaltered. But it is possible that after a period when China thought it could bully its way to the top, it is coming to realize that global leadership is as much a product of legitimacy as it is of power. It cannot be taken, but must be earned. The rest of the world has a say.