CCP to Address China’s Future

The world should be deeply concerned about China’s future plans.

The end of October marked the conclusion of the Fifth Plenum session of the 19^th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress. The CCP holds a Party Congress every five years. In between are annual plenary sessions. Each session traditionally covers a different area. The fifth plenary session held last week immediately precedes the next full Party Congress to be held next autumn. It serves as a preparatory meeting. The Plenum session typically provides a glimpse into where the CCP leadership intends to take the country in the coming five years.

Information from this year’s meeting documents, including the final 2020 communiqué, indicate China is deliberately entering a period of increased volatility in world affairs, from planned aggressive moves in the South China Sea, to “acquiring” high technology from Western nations. It denotes an intensification and acceleration of its quest to remake the world in China’s image and to become the world power by 2050. They may sound like lofty goals, but Chinese President Xi Jinping has his personal hand in editing the plan. Although the public version is not that explicit, we still can garner a lot of information from the meeting.

The CCP plans to make China more self-sufficient to enable it to better weather economic dislocations should foreign nations take actions to constrain the country. It is described as a “half decoupling” in China’s quest to force a strategic change in the international balance of power. The United States and other Western nations can expect increased international competition and rivalry from China in the next few years as it does not intend to slow down no matter who is president of the United States. Members of the CCP leadership see China as the rising star and they intend to ensure that the US is the setting sun.

There are three specific, inciteful phrases that explain China’s perspective. First, President Xi and the CCP senior leadership see themselves as “living during a window of strategic opportunity.” China entered this period in the early part of the 21^st century and from its world view, needs to take advantage of it now. Second, a repeated phrase in written documents and spoken about often over the last few years, is that this period in Chinese history will bring about “change unseen in 100 years.” This refers to the unequal treaties period of the late 19^th and early 20^th century in which Western powers demanded one-sided terms requiring China to cede land, ports, pay reparations, and provide extraterritorial privileges to foreign citizens from Russia, Japan, and various Western nations. The Plenum participants view this as a sign China is becoming stronger although it also means new confrontations on the horizon. The third phrase mentioned is that there are “profound adjustments coming in the international balance of power.” First seen in 2017, it is a reference to how well China survived and adjusted in the post-2008, global financial crisis environment.

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In Beijing’s estimation the US did not do as well, nor did it recover as quickly. It attributes this to its “superior” state-capitalism system. It looks to the more recent Covid-19 response in the US as an example of how Washington is unable to enforce adaptability across all strata of society as Beijing can over its population.

The West underestimates the uber level of belief in China that it will be a global hegemon within a few decades as “the wind shifts to the east.” We are facing a country with massive financial resources that they willingly use to pursue policies to bring about their end goal. The hybrid fusion of the public and semi-private sectors in China represents the total integration of their domestic economy. It is dominated by giant conglomerates that operate in unison under the direction of the CCP. The world have never face off with a nation-state with as many strategic resources or the strength of political will as China is exhibiting today. President Xi will remain in power for the coming decade and he is not one to back down from a challenge, no matter how hard the West wishes it so.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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