In China, Xi Risks Overconfidence That Could Stoke Taiwan Tensions

During China’s decade in power, Xi Jinping has tried to instill confidence in the people, telling them the country is doing very well against the chaotic West.

He told the younger generation that China could finally see the world as an equal. “It’s not outdated anymore,” he speak last year.

“The East is rising and the West is declining, at a time when the United States and other Western countries seem mired in high Covid infection rates, racial tensions and other problems,” he declared.

Mr. Xi told China’s 1.4 billion people to be proud of its culture, governance and future as a great power, all of which add to its signature political philosophy. his, is sometimes called “self-confidence theory. “

While much of that pride is well placed, it also breeds conceit. It gives Xi justification for adopting the open-minded policies that have helped China break free from international isolation and eradicate poverty under Mao. It has also given an impetus to the ultra-nationalists, who have fanned China’s supremacy, and who are now urge military confrontation with Taiwan following the visit of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Their tough rhetoric shows how little they think about American power and how easily they think China will win in a great power competition with the United States. It is making more moderate nationalists uncomfortable, raising concerns that Beijing may feel compelled to act tough.

Such steadfast sentiments and nationalism increase the risk of war, especially when China establishes a new status quo with Taiwanannounced on Tuesday that it would resume air and sea exercises around the democracy island.

And in the face of confrontation between the US and China, this tendency to overconfidence could also be a weakness for Beijing, blinding Beijing to its own challenges. It could be a stroke of luck for the United States, if they can act together.

The Chinese people, not the government, have every reason to feel proud and confident in their achievements over the past four decades.

They have lifted themselves out of poverty and created some of the most successful companies on earth. They have turned their country into a giant manufacturing company and the largest consumer market for cars, smartphones and many luxury brands. They have built new skyscrapers, subways, highways, and high-speed rail, some of the finest in the world.

The United States, on the other hand, seems to be caught up in many domestic problems and is often too paralyzed to deal with its own.

Before the pandemic, I was used to Chinese people returning from trips to the United States and telling me how outdated, shabby and bad it was.

Some of them refuse to ride the New York subway system, saying it’s dirty, smelly and rife with service interruptions. They are appalled by the lack of public transportation in Los Angeles and poor highway conditions in Silicon Valley. They don’t understand why wealthy San Francisco is experiencing homelessness. They are extremely worried about gun violence and the law’s failure to control it.

Most of those people are not nationalists. They are the educated class who grew up in poverty, benefited from China’s opening, and saw the United States as an ideal. The United States was simultaneously worried and frustrated for them.

But for many other Chinese, especially young people, the idea of ​​a rising East and a declining West is an accepted fact. News and social media programs are filled with such dogma and political science classes, at urge of Mr. Xi, is teaching it.

Yan Xuetong, a professor of international studies at Tsinghua University with a nationalist leaning, speak at a conference in Beijing in January that Chinese university students needed to learn more about the world. They often have a binary view, believing that “only China is fair and innocent while all other countries, especially Western countries, are ‘evil’ and Westerners are bound to hate. China,” he said. Students “often have a strong sense of superiority and confidence” in international relations, he said, and often “treat other countries with a condescending mindset”.

“They use ‘dream thinking’ in international affairs, believing that China is easy to achieve its foreign policy goals,” said Professor Yan. He added that they also tend to believe in conspiracy theories and other unfounded opinions found online.

Many young people in turn criticized him, accusing him of condescension.

Chinese propaganda has always tried to highlight China’s achievements and the failures of the West. On December 30, 1958, as China entered a period of the Great Famine that left millions of people starving to death, the front page of People’s Daily reported that the country was successful in industrial and agricultural production. In the international news section, stories about socialist countries like Vietnam and North Korea are celebrated, while stories about the capitalist West are about the economic and political woes of China. surname.

Growing up I read a newspaper titled “Socialism is good. Capitalism is Bad. “Every week, millions of young readers like me will read biased news stories about a starving American girl or a North Korean boy living a happy life. We believed them, until China. opened the door and we realized that our socialist country was being impoverished.

That changed to some extent in the 1990s and 2000s, when the Chinese Communist Party allowed some online critical and investigative reports to be made public. But under Xi, everything about China exudes “positive energy,” including economic projections, while the West, especially the United States, is increasingly portrayed as evil or bad. is decaying.

State broadcaster China Central Television, wishing to credit the party for the country’s successes, made a documentary called “Great ChinaIn 2018. In a section on poverty reduction achievements, the film shows Mr. Xi sitting among farmers, talking about how their income has increased twentyfold in 20 years.

“Who else could have done this?” he asked eloquently. “Only the Communist Party can do this. Only our socialist system can do this. It cannot be done anywhere else. “

But capitalist countries such as Japan and South Korea had undergone similar economic transformations in the decades before that.

Over the past two years, many state newsletters and theory essay contrasted China’s orderly management with the “messy West”, citing the US’ mishandling of the pandemic, widespread protests against racism, and numerous mass shootings. series. As the United States and several other Western countries grapple with their Covid responses, state media and many Chinese social media influencers have urged them to.copy Chinese homework. “

Wang Jisi, professor of international studies at Peking University and a leading expert on US-China relations, complain At a peace forum in July, CCTV’s main news program ran at least two stories about the United States every night, and both were negative. “They talk about the US having another mass shooting, another example of racial tension or their messy handling of the pandemic,” he said. “Why can’t we talk about what’s happening in Africa or Latin America and not talk about what’s bad in America?”

In an interview with an academic journal this year, Mr. Wang attempted to correct the idea that the United States was in decline. He argues that while the US’s international position has declined relative to that from 1995 to 2011, its share of global output has increased in the decade following 2011. There is not enough evidence to conclude. that the US economy is in irreversible decline, he said, though he acknowledged that America’s Soft Power has diminished.

For China, the danger in drinking its own Kool-Aid propaganda is that it stops looking at its own problems while exaggerating America’s weaknesses.

The Communist Party’s distaste for the truth and its obsession with control is backfired. Mr. Xi’s zero-Covid policy, which relies on mass testing and lockdowns, is taking a huge toll on the Chinese economy. But since criticism is not allowed, the country is largely subject to strict restrictions while much of the world is in the process of returning to normal.

Despite all its problems, America’s democratic system still seems to work, with its checks and balances allowing for divergent views and strategic approaches. just appeared. The 2020 presidential election is an example, with Democrats back in power. Kansas’s too vote to protect her Constitutional abortion rights, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Parliament passed CHIPS and the Science Act recently to help global semiconductor manufacturers establish domestic operations to better compete with China. And the Biden administration works better with allies than its predecessor.

“As people stop queuing for visas in front of US consulates,” said the professor, Mr. Wang, “the United States is in decline. “