The “China Dream,” President Xi Jinping’s vision to restore China’s great power status, was the underlying theme of Xi’s 75th National Day speech.
Many influential individuals and policymakers in Washington agree as a matter of fact that the one of the China Dream’s goals is to displace the US-led international order and thus Washington’s global leadership and power.
As exemplified by the lack of concern for foreign affairs in Xi’s recent remarks, they’re wrong. Beijing is unwilling and—more importantly—unable to replace America on the global stage. US policy must adapt to this reality to put American interests first.
Xi’s 2017 speech to the 19th National Party Congress is often cited as evidence of Beijing’s intent to overturn America’s role in the world. In that speech, Xi envisions China as “a global leader” having “mov[ed] closer to the center stage.”
If Washington is to take Xi at his word, as some are wont to suggest, then China merely seeks a greater say in the global order commensurate with its rise in power – not world domination.
When assessing Xi’s remarks at the 20th National Party Congress in 2022, he had even less to say about global leadership – only that China should aim to have the most “comprehensive national strength” and “international influence” by mid-century.
While a stronger statement than in 2017, it is based on highly subjective measures. Comprehensive national strength is based on the Chinese “Comprehensive National Power” concept, which seeks to calculate power through qualitative and quantitative factors.
Different inputs will lead to different outputs. With China’s low productivity, brewing demographic crisis and limited natural resources, it is difficult to see how Beijing claims the top power spot by 2050.
Equally, given the decline in China’s favorability in the United States, Europe and US-allied Asian countries and growth of “tough on China” policies, China has a long road ahead to reverse its influence fortunes.
Even if one were to read the worst into Xi’s and other Chinese Communist Party leaders’ speeches, Beijing’s three major foreign policy visions – the Global Development, Global Security, and Global Civilization Initiatives – don’t call for an overthrow of “American leadership” or the international order.
At worst, they collectively entail a vision of a multipolar order where China has a sphere of influence in East Asia and is the most respected great power.
Outside of China’s words and ideas, the People’s Republic’s actions show that it is not willing or capable of displacing the United States’ global role.
While Beijing has established and expanded various international institutions, such as BRICS and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, these have been opened to new members who will likely dilute China’s influence.
By virtue of their more limited scopes, Chinese-created institutions cannot replace the UN system, which even Beijing acknowledges is the premier representative of international order.
Militarily, China cannot project power globally. It has only one formal military alliance with its neighbor North Korea compared to the United States’ 51 treaty allies across the Americas, Europe and the Indo-Pacific, thereby limiting the scope of its military activities.
So far, China hasn’t sought additional treaty alliances – including its “better than an alliance” with Russia, which has not seen Chinese troops join Russia’s in Ukraine.
Beijing also lacks the global network of bases essential to power projection. While US intelligence asserts China is working to establish bases in eight other countries outside of existing arrangements in Djibouti and Cambodia, this would be a far cry from Washington’s over 750 military bases in 80 countries.
If successful, Beijing’s facilities would be limited to countries along its global trade routes.
Unlike global military power, China does seek global economic and cultural influence but this will likely fail. De-risking, reshoring, nearshoring and friendshoring are the commerce terms of the day with countries and companies seeking alternative sources to China.