As widely expected, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been given an unprecedented third term as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary and head of the Central Military Commission (CMC), with the party’s 20th national congress rubber-stamping a sweeping reshuffling of the top ruling body to fill it with Xi loyalists. With Xi accruing more power than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong (毛澤東), Taiwan and the international community face a much more powerful head of the world’s second-largest economy, who threatens to be more dangerous to global order and stability than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Xi’s political protege, Shanghai CCP Secretary Li Qiang (李強), well known for a controversial lockdown of Shanghai that provoked public resentment and an exodus from the city, has been promoted to No. 2 in the Central Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP. He is also the leading candidate to be the next premier. Li’s rapid rise to the party’s inner circle should disabuse anyone of the notion that Xi might rein in his expansion of power in China and around the world in the interests of economic development.
Tensions across the Taiwan Strait are unlikely to abate, either. China’s heads of Taiwan affairs have been excluded from the politburo, replaced by Xi loyalists, with CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong (何衛東), the architect of the military drills surrounding Taiwan in August, joining fellow vice chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠), an advocate of unifying with Taiwan by force. This is another reflection of Xi’s policy to take over Taiwan as the final piece to achieve his dream of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Xi’s remarks at the congress revealed a more radical foreign policy than ever. In his address at the 19th national congress in 2017, he did not touch on external forces, but this year, he hailed the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong as a move from “chaos to governance,” and said he would never renounce “unifying Taiwan by force.” He also made it clear that China would be “taking all measures necessary” against “interference by external forces.” He said that global geopolitics is “undergoing changes unseen in a century,” and that “the world system is broken, and China has answers.”
Some experts read from Xi’s comments that Beijing wants to be a world leader. China already has the world’s second-highest military spending, but Xi said Beijing “will work faster” to modernize its military. The CCP has added a charter to its constitution for the country to “create a robust and world-class military.”
Under Xi’s nationalism and repeated calls for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” China is demonstrating its ambition to reinterpret international rules and reshape the world order. It considers any objection to its expansion as foreign intervention, similar to Putin’s statements that his misguided invasion of Ukraine was needed to protect Russia’s sovereignty. China’s desire to expand its global influence has been seen in moves such as its sweeping claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea and the construction of military bases on uninhabited islands, the military drills surrounding Taiwan, and its attempts to persuade Pacific island nations host Chinese military bases.
A YouGov-Cambridge Global survey conducted in 25 countries revealed that China’s reputation has deteriorated over the past four years, with more countries regarding China as a growing threat to international democracy, human rights and stability.
Facing an expansionist China under Xi’s fortified one-man rule, Taiwan must confront all possible attempts at coercion. At the same time, democratic countries need to cooperate on efforts to foil China’s attempts to sabotage global peace and prosperity.
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