The China Media Group New Year’s Gala, which was broadcast throughout China and abroad on the eve of the Lunar New Year, featured an appearance by combat and armored troops of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Was this somewhat jarring segment intended more as a warning to the domestic audience or the international community?
Either way, the inclusion of such a militaristic item in the midst of festive celebrations is quite in keeping with China’s global image.
Last year marked a turning point in the course of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) growing power. Speaking of his government’s achievements over the past year, Xi claimed that employment and prices were generally stable, and that a glance around world showed that “the landscape here is beyond compare.”
Xi also reiterated his call for “confidence in our political system” and his hope that everyone would help spread optimism about China’s economy. The Chinese Ministry of State Security has even threatened those who spread pessimism about China’s economy.
The reality is that the landscape in China is not as good as some other places, and Taiwan is a good contrast to China’s faltering economy. China’s property market, stock market, employment and consumption all show signs that people are having a hard time. There are also longer-term concerns such as negative population growth and a chronic shortage of labor.
As the stock market continues to decline, droves of shareholders have visited the US embassy’s Sina Weibo account to voice their discontent. Amid such unrest, it is probably no coincidence that the PLA was given a segment in the New Year’s Gala.
In particular, over the past year, the Chinese ministers of foreign affairs and national defense, who were originally handpicked by Xi and were also state councilors, have been removed from their posts, as have a dozen senior generals of the PLA Rocket Force.
Former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in October 2022 was ushered away from the seat he had taken at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th National Congress, and on Oct. 27 last year, former Chinese premier Li Keqiang (李克強) died of a heart attack. Their departure leaves hardly any surviving members of the CCP’s Communist Youth League faction. With most of the power in Xi’s hands, the CCP Politburo Standing Committee is packed full of his allies.
From his position at the top, Xi has purged any key officials who were not “the king’s men” and raised the curtain on the “Xi Dynasty.” However, among the inner circle this inevitably leads to rivalry and mutual suspicion as to who would be Xi’s eventual successor. Consequently, Xi’s sense of crisis has actually increased and the standards he sets for loyalty from senior cadres have become even more stringent.
Such is the very nature of power.
A sense of insecurity in the inner circle of power is like a crack in a dam, telling you that the dam would eventually collapse. The trouble with being at the peak is that the higher you climb, the harder you can fall.
While these “internal worries” are increasing, the “authoritarian axis” of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea is waiting for any chance to stir up further trouble for the US-led West. Russia’s war in Ukraine has just entered its third year, while Israel and Hamas have become engaged in another conflict, and the security of Red Sea shipping routes has become a weapon for controlling the West by means of trade.
However, Xi’s world view is still focused on the Indo-Pacific region. China’s expansion of its power in the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the South Pacific has not been slowed by its “internal worries.” Some people think that Xi is so preoccupied with national affairs that he would not be able to make waves outside the nation. They think that these problems especially hinder any plans he might have to seize Taiwan by force. They might cite Xi’s reported denial, when talking to US President Joe Biden, that China plans to use force against Taiwan in 2027 or 2035, as well as his request for the US to “support peaceful reunification.”
However, Chinese coast guard vessels have conducted patrols in the territorial waters around the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) and sent radio messages warning aircraft of the Japan Self-Defense Forces to stay clear. In the South China Sea, Chinese ships have driven away Philippine coast guard vessels and fishing boats, even using water cannons and military-grade lasers to do so. In the wake of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections last month, China bought off Nauru and persuaded it to switch diplomatic ties. It has also announced that it would resume use of the M503 flight route, which runs very close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait — a line that Beijing previously claimed does not exist. Would anyone describe this as all quiet in the western Pacific?
Furthermore, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has declared that the US, Japan and South Korea are forming an Asian version of NATO, so his nation needs to more quickly upgrade its nuclear weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin says that he has a personal relationship with former US president Donald Trump. Xi says that relations between China and Russia are facing new opportunities for development. It seems that Xi and his allies are waiting for the right time, the right place and the right people to make their next move.
Another thing that China has done as we enter the Year of the Dragon is that some of its state-run media have led the way in replacing the English word “dragon” with the term “loong,” which is a romanized version of the mythical creature’s Chinese name. The intended message is that the loong is a symbol of good fortune, unlike the supposedly negative image of the dragon in Western culture. This is particularly ironic in view of China’s notorious “wolf warrior” diplomats. Can their ferocious features be hidden just by changing dragon to loong?
Shortly before the Lunar New Year, a pianist playing in a London railway station was asked by a group of people claiming to be the staff of a Chinese TV station to respect their image rights by not recording their faces “because Chinese law does not allow it.” Such a demand is baffling for people from other nations. Last year, a Chinese art student sprayed a wall on Brick Lane in London’s east end with 24 of the Chinese government’s favorite slogans. While done in the name of art, this was really an example of China’s “grand external propaganda.”
Elon Musk, who goes out of his way to curry favor with China, posted a greeting for the Year of the Dragon, but he could not escape being “corrected” by Chinese Internet users for using the “wrong” word. As can be seen, the so-called Chinese loong is no more than a paper mask for China’s wolf warriors.
When people look back on this period, perhaps they will see it more clearly. From 2020 to 2022, a novel coronavirus that apparently originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated lives, health, economies and supply chains all around the world. At the same time, Xi’s shift from the policies of former leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) and back to those of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), along with China’s zero COVID-19 policy and the leftist notion of “common prosperity,” has come to resemble a new Cultural Revolution and has set China’s national power on a downward trajectory.
The potential challenge of Xi’s China to the world is no longer a 100-year marathon of “rising in the East and sinking in the West,” but a question of whether the CCP, on the brink of a volcanic eruption in China, would take the path of overseas invasions to divert attention from China’s internal contradictions and keep a firm hold on power.
Meanwhile, there are those in Taiwan who echo China’s Taiwan Affairs Office by saying that only when there is peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait can Taiwanese live and work in peace and contentment. However, they avoid any mention of Beijing’s “one China” precondition.
This kind of narrative is a continuation of the combative arguments heard during the election campaign, and it falls far behind the international mainstream trend toward de-risking with regard to China. Furthermore, it ignores Taiwan’s successful record of shielding itself from China’s economic decline and the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fact that this was achieved thanks to Taiwan having taken the lead in de-risking its relations with China after the Democratic Progressive Party returned to power in 2016.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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