Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ongoing visit to Russia is part of an attempt by Beijing to revamp China’s international image and reshape the international community along authoritarian lines, commentators told Radio Free Asia in recent interviews and broadcasts.
Xi will have an “in-depth exchange of views” with Putin on major international and regional issues of mutual interest, with a view to boosting strategic coordination and practical cooperation, China’s Foreign Ministry said of the current trip, during the which the two leaders sign a statement that their relationship is entering “a new era,” a reference to a favorite buzzword of Xi’s.
The trip comes as Xi emerges victorious from a long power struggle for sole control of the levers of party, military and state, which saw him approved for a third indefinite term as party leader at the party congress in October 2022 and at the annual congress National Congress of People session in Beijing earlier this month.
Xi is now free to steer Chinese diplomacy into his new era, which he says will be “a shared future for humanity,” a phrase analysts say means Beijing will seek to forge stronger alliances with other authoritarian regimes to counter “American hegemony” and export China model of party-state government worldwide.
New role as mediator
Tuvia Gering, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said China’s foreign policy in recent decades has generally focused on following the example of other countries or facilitating international agreements, rather than projecting it as a global power to others. nations to follow.
“In mediating regional conflicts, China tends to play the role of follower (or) facilitator rather than leader,” Gering said. “This time it is amazing that China not only leads but also successfully mediates international disputes without the presence of the United States.”
He was referring to Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia last December, where he met all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), quickly followed by a visit to Beijing by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, followed by a trilateral declaration. on March 10, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China announcing that Riyadh and Tehran would resume diplomatic relations.
“This is a clear success for Beijing, a first in the troubled Middle East region, and could be followed by others,” columnist Marco Carnelos wrote in the March 17, middle eastern eye.
With China planning an unprecedented high-level meeting between Arab monarchs and Iranian officials in Beijing later this year, Carnelos wrote, “it would be hard to imagine a bigger slap in the face of US Middle East diplomacy.”
China’s English-language nationalist tabloid, the global timessaid that the agreement is “further proof that unipolarity no longer exists and that we are already in a in fact multipolar world order.
“The Middle East and the world are not only in a post-America order, but in a post-West order as well,” the newspaper said.
But while the deal looks like a public relations coup for Beijing, Gering said Saudi Arabia and Iran already had plenty of motivation to strike a deal on their own, and that the resumption of ties followed years of low-level dialogue between them. the two governments.
He said negotiating the final deal was a “low risk” strategy for China, which simply picked the right time to intervene, dismissing Beijing’s 12-point peace plan for Ukraine as “ridiculous.”
“Just like in the Middle East, China doesn’t really want to replace the United States because it doesn’t want to get its hands dirty,” Gerin said. “In such conflicts, (China) first considers whether it can benefit from them at very low risk, as it did with the Iran-Saudi Agreement.”
Aspiring global player and standard setter
However, Moritz Rudolf, a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said he believes China is also trying to become a serious global player and standard-setter.
“As the United States enters the presidential election season, I think we would not be surprised to see a lot more engagement with China in the next two years,” Rudolf said.
“From China’s perspective, its foreign policy direction seems to be looking towards the global south, with attempts to build coalitions with those countries and use them in pursuit of long-term goals, such as changing the international order,” he said. .
“To me, there seems to be a real strategic goal in shaping the global order through the use of law.”
The use of international treaties, laws and other binding agreements to further Beijing’s political goals will have a powerful side effect, Rudolf predicted.
“Once China becomes a global player, its legal system will also expand,” he said. “This is one of those problems that can fundamentally change how the world works.”
“It’s an incremental process, and at some point, you wake up and realize that the global order has changed. The rules have become more Chinese and the global order has also become more Chinese,” she warned.
Veteran political commentator and former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen protest Wang Dan agreed, citing the Middle East deal and Xi’s “global civilization initiative.”
“All of this shows us that Xi Jinping wants to become a world leader and spread his ideology around the world,” Wang wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, citing the Saudi-Iran deal.
“But all this is what you see on the surface,” he added. “What the rest of the world also needs to see is the way Xi Jinping is attacking… (US interests) in more secret ways (around the world).”
Gering said more international stances are likely to follow from Beijing.
“I think we are going to see China get more involved on the world stage,” he said. “Anytime there are opportunities (like the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal) they will take advantage of it.”
exporting arms
According to Wang, a key indicator that China is exporting influence and power along with rhetoric is found in recent data on international arms sales.
Central Command General Michael Kurilla told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 16 that China’s ability to rapidly advance military sales in the Middle East and South Asia could have dire consequences, which targets an 80% increase in Chinese military sales to the region. in the last decade.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US was the world’s leading arms exporter between 2018 and 2022, accounting for 40% of all arms exports. China ranked fourth, accounting for just over 5% of sales.
And China tripled its arms sales to sub-Saharan Africa between 2017 and 2020, with most of the weapons going to five countries that have signed up to Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure program.
Meanwhile, Russian entities have received around 1,000 assault rifles, 12 tons of body armor and drone parts from Chinese companies that could be used on the battlefield, since the war began in Ukraine in early 2022, Politico Europe reported. last week.
“These goods were not delivered to Russia directly at the border, but arrived in Russia after passing through Turkey,” Wang wrote.
“China, of course, is doing this to evade the supervision and sanctions of the international community, but Turkey and (other countries) are willing to actively cooperate, which shows us that China has made deep deployments in a traditional sphere of influence. from United States. actively courting allies and questioning the tone of the United States,” she said.
“These new developments are very dangerous signals, not just for the United States, but for the entire world.” Wang warned.
“If Xi Jinping has decided to fight for world hegemony, for China’s global expansion, and to solve once and for all the contention of the United States on the Taiwan issue, he will not hesitate to join the forces of Russia, Iran and North Korea meet and clash with the United States head-on, or even turn the cold war into a hot war,” he said.
“This could pose a serious threat to world peace.”
Growing reaction after the invasion of Ukraine
For David Plášek, an analyst at the European Values Center for Security Policies, there is also a growing backlash against communist and ex-communist countries, which he says stems directly from the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Everyone (in Europe) knows that China is behind Russia,” Plášek said. “The war in Ukraine has shocked Europeans a lot. People’s feelings are very personal, with Ukrainian refugees reaching every small town in Eastern European countries.”
He said that the current situation has eroded public support for Russia in Eastern Europe.
“After the war, I would say less than 10% is left,” he said of Putin’s supporters. “The political landscape is undergoing huge changes, which also affects people’s opinion of China.”
“In Eastern European countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Lithuania, people used to talk about China’s investment and job opportunities as important, but after a series of events, they realized the danger of the Communist Party. Chinese.,” he said.
“China is aggressive in diplomacy, and Xi Jinping even reminds people of figures like Mao Zedong and Stalin,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
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