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President Xi ‘s Megalomania

More than three thousand years ago, around the time horses were domesticated, men from the upper classes started wearing pants in China. It was a sign of prestige. The elite typically owned the horses during this period and wearing pants made riding easier for them. By 1205 AD these “big boy pants” became known as britches. Today, China’s ambitious President Xi Jinping has outgrown his modern-day britches. His grandiose desire to remake the world in China’s image is an outsized and extremely dangerous dream. The threat is one the world has only recently accepted as real and imminent.

RAND Corporation released a major 252-page report this week examining the international and defense dimensions of the US-China relationship from Beijing’s perspective to aid western leaders in developing a strategy to deal with the rising communist giant. Using primary source documents, it confirms that the communist giant’s immediate goal is to establish its primacy in the Asia-Pacific region and assume leadership of the international order. It reveals that China has not ruled out military force to achieve its objectives, although it currently is relying heavily on its economic expertise and diplomatic wolf warriors. According to the report, China may choose to conduct a proxy war with the US in the next decade or so or engage in a direct limited conflict to attain it goals. Most significantly, it says that China’s strategy “will not allow” the United States to get in its way or to dislodge China from its future position of advantage over the West.

The authors of the report, Timothy Heath, Derek Grossman, and Asha Clark conclude that Chinese military strategy calls for building a superior force to make the cost of war too great for any nation, including the US, to oppose China’s plans. Part of that strategy includes shaping the international environment so that security ties with client states favor Beijing and not Washington. The analysts point out that China already acknowledges there will be intense competition but has yet to overtly admit to the inevitability of a future armed conflict. Unlike earlier hegemons, China primarily is centered on dominating Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa. “Chinese international leadership would be characterized by a reliance on finance, diplomatic engagement, and security assistance to exercise influence while maintaining a modest overseas military presence,” they said.

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Marginalization of the United States and its Western allies would have dire economic consequences for the whole world. The RAND report has implications that should wake up the Biden Administration and West European leaders. By 2050 it says China expects successful competition with the United States may include “militarized crises or conflicts of a limited scope.” China expects the US to be forced into recognizing its authority as the global leader. President Xi plans to contain the US in the Americas. Worse still is China’s goal to alter the international rules-based order, a system which has proved stable, in favor of the norms upheld by China when managing conflicts of an economic or military nature. According to the report, Beijing expects to dictate the terms under which the US and the communist giant cooperate. 

Chinese overseas aggression has intensified since President Xi assumed power. The country has embarked on a mission to secure the South China Sea, absorb Hong Kong under Chinese law, internationally isolate and then take Taiwan back, militarize and control space, and ensure the US and Europe remain at odds in their approach toward China, among other areas. The authors summarize five major objectives derived from Chinese primary sources. First, Beijing intends to force the US to modify its policies to accommodate China’s demands regarding its core interests. Next, China intends to foment divisions inside the US regarding opinions on the threat posed by China. This involves the US media, academia, and cultural elites. Third, it intends to force the US government to cooperate on shared concerns on equal terms per the “new type great power” framework. China also expects the US to facilitate it technological development and it plans to ensure Washington is ineffective in restraining Chinese “extraction” of the needed technology. Finally, China intends to make US attempts to constrain Beijing ineffective. To do so Beijing intends to make its BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) the compelling choice above US geoeconomic initiatives. 

China has gotten too big for its britches. US diplomatic efforts going forward need to shore up American alliances and partnerships to restrain China. Anything else dooms the free world to a Chinese style gulag archipelago by 2050.