A historical excursion into the foundations of China's foreign policy
In order to understand the modern foreign policy of the PRC, one should know the values that formed the current elite of that country. When analyzing the politics of current China, one should not rely on the assumptions that the roots of the current Chinese state go back into centuries and have something in common with Confucianism, Taoism, or the Qin and Han dynasties. The modern Communist Chinese state has no more in common with ancient China than Italy has with the Roman Empire or France with Gaul. At the same time, the Chinese people did preserve traditional national values that have been formed over many centuries.
The use of the figurative name of the Heavenly Empire for China does not seem appropriate, because it is about a country seemingly standing above all others, whose leaders possess some special wisdom that is inaccessible to mere mortals. In reality, the ideological foundations of the PRC rest on the dogmas of Marxism-Leninism, and the state system of communist China was established in 1949 on the principles of the Stalinist USSR.
The only clear difference between the Chinese political and economic model and classical Stalinism was the concept of Deng Xiaoping. It was formed in the 1980s on the principles of a market economy and transition from the personality cult of Mao Zedong to collective leadership with permanent rotation of the top state leaders. However, the main home and foreign policy goals, based on communist ideals, remained unchanged.
Historical facts show that the PRC, together with the DPRK, were created with the decisive participation of the USSR in order to secure the dominance of the Soviet Union in the Asian-Pacific region by displacing the USA, Great Britain and Japan. Without the Kremlin, the communist PRC would never have appeared on the political map of the world.
As early as in 1920s, the USSR began to play a very serious role in Chinese affairs, when the country was mired in endless internal disputes and was largely under the influence of Japan, Great Britain and rival local clans. The role of the USSR in the fate of China is evidenced by the fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was created in 1921 with the assistance of the Comintern, at that time being a branch of the Bolsheviks. Even the sixth congress of the CCP was held in 1928 near Moscow.
Stalin managed to skillfully conduct different fractions of the communist movement in China for years, and in 1937 he even managed to secure an alliance of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and the CCP in a war against Imperial Japan, which had its own plans for China. In 1930–1949, the USSR financed the CCP annually with hundreds of millions of rubles, provided volumes of weapons and military specialists.
For the USSR, China was a huge training ground for hybrid special operations. Finally, Stalin achieved his goal: thanks to his military aid, the main competitor of the CCP in the struggle for power, the Kuomintang party, was ousted, and in 1949, the PRC was formed, led by Stalin's favorite in the CCP, Mao Zedong. Without the colossal Soviet military and economic aid, the communists would have never come to power in China and hold it. Figuratively speaking, the genome of the PRC was created in Stalin's ideological laboratory, and its long-term leader, Great Helmsman Mao, was one of the "clones" of the Soviet leader.
The Soviet dictator gave himself a royal gift by setting the date for founding the People's Republic of China on his 70th birthday. This allowed him to celebrate his anniversary as the most powerful political leader in the world, under whose bloody power more than half of the entire population of the planet lived.
Mao Zedong treated Stalin as his teacher and tried to build the PRC according to his wills, but with a national specificity. The CCP acquired all the main traits of the CPSU — striving for absolute power of the party led by the cult of the leader, brainwashing, the format of party congresses, the management structure (Politburo, Central Committee, regional party bodies, etc.). All this was copied from the Stalinist party system. State-building under Mao also resembled the path of Stalinism: collectivization in agriculture, industrialization with an emphasis on heavy machinery, mass reprisals and famine.
Yes, there was a certain Chinese specificity when, for example, a whole campaign was launched to exterminate sparrows and rodents, and the development of metallurgy came down to the level of households. But all these exceptions only emphasized the unchanged course of China until Mao's death in 1979, with adaptation of Stalin's political and economic model to local conditions.
In foreign policy, Mao Zedong also adopted Stalin’s spirit of aggression against the capitalist world, for the global domination. The words of Mao at the military council of the CCP Central Committee on September 11, 1959, well describe the goals of his international policy: "We must take the Earth. We will not talk about the Sun yet".
The PRC took an active part in the Soviet military venture in Korea in 1950-1953 organized by Stalin shortly after the successful test of an atomic bomb at the Semipalatinsk test range in Kazakhstan in August 1949. More than 1 million Chinese servicemen took part in that war on the side of North Korea at the behest of the Soviet leadership. The goal of the CPSU General Secretary was to take advantage of a successful military and political situation.
Having achieved nuclear parity with the USA, the USSR at the beginning of 1950s had a great military advantage in Europe by the number of weapons and special personnel. Knowing Stalin's maniacal desire for world domination, there are reasons to assume that the military actions in Korea were a deceptive maneuver to divert US forces from a potential European theater of military operations with a subsequent strike on the former allies in Western Europe. The implementation of Stalin's plans was disrupted by his sudden death on March 5, 1953, probably, as a result of his poisoning by the most influential leaders of the Soviet state, who timely understood the catastrophic consequences of the planned madness.
From Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping
Mao Zedong, who died in 1976, left China in an extremely poor economic situation. Hunger and poverty in the constant struggle for a "bowl of rice" accompanied the lives of most Chinese. Stalin's socio-economic model did not take root on Chinese soil and brought serious failures. So, in 1978 the CCP Central Committee started radical political and economic reforms, the theoretical basis of which was laid by one of the party leaders, Deng Xiaoping.
To the credit of the Chinese leadership after Mao Zedong, they rejected the concept of the "Great Leap" and adopted the policy of building socialism with a Chinese character and "four modernizations" (in agriculture, industry, science and defense). This meant partial abandonment of total planning and socialization of all property, and gradual introduction of elements of a market economy, to give space for the private initiative of millions of ordinary Chinese. At the same time, in the country governance, the CCP Central Committee began limiting the personal power of the highest state leaders due to their regular rotation every 10 years.
The fate of the PRC was fundamentally changed by the 12th Party Congress, which took place in September 1982. The Mao Zedong personality cult, especially in the last years of his reign, was criticized. At the same time, the outstanding merits of the "great helmsman" in the unification of China were admitted, which allowed the politician to lead the "pantheon" of the most outstanding figures in the history of the country even now, at an official level. Such a cautious approach to the assessment of the first leader of the modern Chinese state still contributes to the preservation of political stability in the CCP.
The Congress also defined three stages of the modernization strategy:
- until 2000 — a four-fold increase in the gross output of industry and agriculture, securing the average standard of living for the people;
- until 2021 (100th anniversary of the CCP) — making China a medium-developed country;
- until 2049 (100th anniversary of the PRC) — transformation of China into a modern developed state.
In contrast to the Ukrainian realities, the consistency of the Chinese policy is impressive, because 40 years later, at the 20th CCP Congress, Xi Jinping reiterated in his program report the unchanged goal of transformation of the country into a highly developed state by 2049. The previous stages of the modernization strategy were generally successfully accomplished.
After several years, the reforms have led to impressive results in the agricultural sector. In 1984 a record crop of 400 million tons of grain was harvested, which made it possible for the first time since the founding of the PRC to provide almost the entire population with food at the minimum level necessary for life.
In 1987 more than 300,000 private enterprises and more than 20 million individual owners appeared in China. This, together with the open door policy (attracting foreign investment through free economic zones), allowed China to achieve the highest annual GDP growth rate in the world in 1980s — more than 12%. The average annual GDP growth rate of the Chinese economy in 1979-2016 was 9.6%. In 1993 China's economy ranked 7th in the world in terms of production, and since 2010 is in the 2nd place, second only to the USA.
Such a crazy pace of economic development based on certain economic freedoms, as well as perestroika in the USSR, caused inflated expectations for democratic transformations in some progressive strata of Chinese society, especially students, which reached their climax during Gorbachev's official visit to Beijing in May 1989. The unwillingness of the CCP Central Committee to carry out democratic transformations led to frustration and student demonstrations in June, which were suppressed with extreme brutality. As a result, more than 1,000 students were killed in Tiananmen Square on June 4.
Gorbachev's perestroika and the collapse of the USSR greatly horrified the Chinese state and party leadership. They feared that the PRC would repeat the fate of its former elder brother and began mass reprisals to prevent the weakening of the power of the CCP Central Committee. Human rights violations in the country increased significantly in the 1990s. According to Amnesty International, 20,000 death sentences were carried out in the PRC in 1991, and in the middle of the decade, the number of correctional labor camps reached 2,000, where 16 million prisoners were "re-educated".
However, the top of the Chinese Communists did not abandon the formula of success of economic reforms, presuming economic liberalization with the leading role of the CCP in the state governance and complete absence of political freedoms, civil rights and suppression of sprouts of any grassroots democratic movement. Therefore, the decisions of the 14th Party Congress (October 1992) regarding the transition to a socialist market economy and deeper integration in the world economy against the background of political repression was not unexpected. The CCP Central Committee clearly realized the need to sacrifice Marxist dogmatic postulates in the economy without hesitation for the sake of sustainable economic development, which guaranteed the party leadership a reliable hold on power.
With time, the strategic mistake of Western democracies regarding the PRC is becoming evident. Despite the obvious authoritarianism, flagrant violation of human rights and imperial ambitions, they invested huge funds in communist China over the past 30 years and gave it advanced technologies. The temptation to get the largest market in the world and to use cheap labor outweighed the reasonable arguments about the danger of strengthening the communist authoritarian regime for the future of the free democratic world. Hopes for the convergence of socialist China, as well as of the USSR and its legal successor, the Russian Federation, with the leading capitalist countries of the West also failed.
An eloquent example of how threatening the situation can be for humanity when modern technologies fall into the hands of a closed and autocratic regime was the COVID-19 pandemic, which was most likely caused by an incident in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Formation of the Beijing-Moscow axis at the current stage
In my report at the Atlantic Council round table in November 2018, I produced a forecast regarding the future influence of the Beijing-Moscow axis on Euro-Atlantic security and the role of the Ukrainian factor in this process. In particular, at that time a scenario was presented in Washington according to which, before 2030, a cruel but not intelligent enough Russian bear turns into a vassal, so to say, of a kind Chinese panda, which will use it as an icebreaker of Euro-Atlantic unity to achieve China's global leadership.
In this context, I expressed my view that Ukraine could play an extremely important deterrent to China's expansionism, as it was the main obstacle for the Chinese vassal (Russia) aiming to destroy the basic foundations of security in Europe and undermine the role of the US as its guarantor, the leading country of the North Atlantic military alliance. In the issue of its dismantling, the interests of Beijing and Moscow fully coincide. After all, NATO, as the most powerful security alliance in the world, as long as it exists, will never allow authoritarian regimes to dominate the world.
The thesis put forward in my report at the Atlantic Council regarding Ukraine’s transformation into a bulwark of the global West to contain the Beijing-Moscow axis by accelerating Ukraine's accession to NATO and the EU and radically increasing investments in the Ukrainian economy found understanding among some leading international policy experts in Washington.
Four years ago, most of the North Atlantic Alliance member countries, first of all, old Europe, were not yet fully aware of the joint Chinese-Russian behind-the-scenes game on the borders of the defensive bloc and did not give Ukraine a proper role in the confrontation with the eastern autocracies. So, unfortunately, the forecast of the West's strategic mistake regarding efforts to shake the Euro-Atlantic unity through the Russian military aggression against Ukraine came true. On February 24, 2022 the icebreaker of the Russian military machine was put into action at full steam.
Relations between the Chinese and Russian leaders with the election of Xi Jinping in 2013 the head of the PRC became the closest since the time of Stalin and Mao, but this time Russia turned out to be the younger brother. It may be reasonably assumed that at the negotiations on February 4, 2022 in Beijing Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin finally agreed on an action plan aimed at eliminating the global West led by the USA as the main figure on the world political chessboard.
This plan could rest on the assumption that Russia would quickly occupy Ukraine and after that create a real military threat to the entire eastern flank of NATO, which would force Washington to concentrate maximum efforts on the protection of its European allies. At the same time, the PRC could begin implementing its strategic goal of seizing Taiwan, because it would be too difficult for the US to counter aggression on two fronts in the format of a blitzkrieg. Thus, after the failure in Afghanistan, as well as the expected failures under a pessimistic scenario in Ukraine, Taiwan, and probably in Central Europe, the US risked losing its position of the world leader, ceding it to the PRC.
However, due to the unexpected heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, this plan failed. Ukraine, supported by its allies, did not allow the map of the planet to be redrawn in favor of the Chinese communist regime. We are not talking about the interests of Russia here, because in this scenario it was assigned only the role of a pawn, sacrificed by the king in order to gain a strategic advantage in the big game with the West.
The return of the former British colony of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997 and Portuguese Aomin on December 20, 1999, was an extraordinary event in the life of China, after which special administrative districts were created according to the principle of "one state - two systems". This principle was proclaimed by Deng Xiaoping and provides for the return of all historical Chinese territories to the PRC. Xi Jinping consistently continues to defend this principle in the international scene regarding Taiwan, and also uses it as a strong argument in domestic politics to win support in the Central Committee apparatus and among the population.
China's "dove of peace" foreign policy
Since the beginning of 2023 the PRC has started an active campaign to position itself as the most peaceful country in the world that can be an effective mediator in solving global problems in international relations. In this way, China took another step towards becoming the number one superpower.
China's successful mediation efforts to restore diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which brought the result on March 10, 2023, at a conference in Jordan with the conclusion of a peace agreement between Tehran and Riyadh, should be seen as a landmark diplomatic achievement of China.
This success allowed Beijing to strengthen its key narrative that it is ready to solve world conflicts much better than the US, because it can take into account the interests of all interested parties better than Washington, which is allegedly responsible for the instability created in the world in the field of security and international relations. Of course, the role of an influential moderator is not enough for Beijing — by 2050, it sees itself the most powerful state in the world, without which no important international problem can be solved.
The so-called Peace Plan (China's position on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis) presented by the PRC on the anniversary of the large-scale Russian armed aggression against Ukraine raises more questions than answers. First of all, it is based on an unreliable foundation - direct Russian aggression is called the Ukrainian conflict, not distinguishing between the aggressor and the victim of aggression.
Only paragraph 1 of the document regarding preservation of sovereignty and territorial integrity found support in Ukraine, while paragraph 2, manipulating the concept of "Cold War mentality", is aimed at the destruction of the security system in Europe shaped after World War II. The proposals of this paragraph encourage the aggressor not only to continue this war but also to incite new dangerous hot conflicts.
Also, in paragraphs 3 and 4, under the guise of peaceful calls to stop hostilities and resume peace negotiations, the Russian interest is clearly visible, which consists of temporarily freezing the war, not demanding the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the entire territory of Ukraine in its internationally recognized borders. As a matter of fact, these paragraphs allow the Russian army on Ukrainian territory to have a break in order to renew its military power and launch a new strike.
Evident contradictions between these paragraphs and concealed encouragement of Russian aggressive plans in some of them make the Chinese Peace Plan unrealistic, since its implementation will encourage Moscow to begin a new war on an even larger scale, this time, beyond the borders of Ukraine. At the same time, a direct rejection of this plan will allow Beijing to preserve the image of a "dove of peace" by spreading the message of provoking Ukraine to the continuation of the war by the United States, despite "peaceful" Chinese initiatives and Russia's desire to achieve peace.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, A. Bärbock, reacted very aptly to the Chinese Peace Plan, noting that the peace plan already exists — it is the UN Charter, you just need to adhere to this document.
The Peace Plan for Ukraine (10-point formula of Ukraine’s President of V. Zelenskyy) adopted by the UN General Assembly by 141 votes on February 23, 2023, unlike the Chinese document, provides practical and absolutely concrete steps towards a just peace in Ukraine and fully complies with the norms of international law. However, Beijing did not support it, and instead proposed its own plan, woven from correct slogans, blurred and contradictory provisions, some of which coincide with the interests of the aggressor country.
This shows that China actually advocates a "peaceful" settlement that satisfies only its personal geopolitical ambitions and gives the aggressor a free hand to act according to its interpretation of international law, staying immune from responsibility for the committed mass crimes.
It would be wrong for Ukraine to flatly reject Beijing's peace plan — it would give China and Russia strong arguments, which they would not hesitate to use. It seems more reasonable to support those points that talk about sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-admission of the use of nuclear weapons and safety of the ZNPP. Items that do not meet the norms of international law and contradict the Peace Plan of Ukraine should be either revised or rejected.
Such a constructive reaction of the Ukrainian side would critically complicate the Sino-Russian game of "peacekeepers" by timely disrupting a potentially dangerous global company of disinformation against NATO and Ukraine, which allegedly do not want the war to stop. At the same time, one must always keep in mind that a political and legal solution to end the war on fair terms does not exist at this stage due to Moscow's unstoppable desire to destroy Ukraine's sovereignty at any cost. The "peaceful" maneuvers of the Beijing-Moscow axis are not about the end of aggression, but about the way to destroy Euro-Atlantic unity by hybrid methods, to strengthen the influence of modern autocracies on the world chessboard.
Xi Jinping's historic visit to Moscow
Xi Jinping's first official visit to Moscow on March 20-22, 2023 took place almost immediately after his unanimous election by the National People's Congress as the PRC head for a third term. This clearly testifies to the importance for China of relations with the Russian Federation and diplomatic support for Moscow's aggressive actions. Even the issue of an arrest warrant for Putin by the International Criminal Court for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children did not prevent his visit. These facts show the huge value gap between the PRC and the world of democracy in the perception of the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Although the two countries are united by the rejection of democratic values and efforts to reduce the role of the global West in the world processes, the visit of the Chinese leader revealed the difference not only in the approaches to achieving the set goals but also in the political weight and views between Beijing and Moscow. As the Chinese proverb says, "you can sleep in the same bed but see different dreams." Never before has it been so noticeable that relations between countries have shifted to the "suzerain-vassal" format, as this time.
Xi Jinping mainly focused on obtaining the necessary tools to boost China's role in global politics based on a strategic vision — cheap resources, development of the territories of East Siberia and Transbaikalia, scientific and technical development, and wider use of the yuan in international settlements. Instead, Putin focused on solving tactical problems of preserving his power by obtaining weapons, dual-purpose goods, financial assistance, and sales markets for energy and agricultural products from his senior partner.
For China, economic relations with Russia are not critically important because Russia’s share in total exports of goods of the PRC in 2022 was only 2.1%, while for the Russian Federation this figure was about 20%. At the same time, China strongly depends on trade with the USA and the EU — their aggregate share in the country's exports is about 31.8%. It is extremely important for Beijing to receive high-tech products from Ukraine's main allies, which it is unable to manufacture. As a result, the Chinese leadership, wary of crossing the "red line", is in no hurry to provide Moscow with weapons to continue its aggression in Ukraine.
Beijing's assistance to Moscow in the war with Ukraine is different: diplomatic support, increased purchases of energy carriers, grey exports, circumventing sanctions, increasing the share of the yuan in trade and financial transactions, which has already reached 65%.
Deliveries of Russian oil to China in January-February this year increased to 1.94 million bar/day, or by 23.8%, compared to the same period last year. Also in January 2023, gas exports to Chinese consumers reached record high 2.7 BCM, which allowed Russia to become the world leader in terms of supplies to the Chinese market, significantly overtaking Qatar, Turkmenistan and Australia. Supplies through the Power of Siberia gas pipeline alone in 2022 increased by 50%, compared to 2021, and reached 15 BCM. Beijing's increased imports of Russian hydrocarbons significantly help Moscow offset losses from sanctions and continue to finance the war in Ukraine.
At the negotiations between the heads of state, the discussion of China's Peace Plan for Ukraine, which, according to Putin’s words at the press conference, can be taken as a basis when the West and Kyiv are ready for it, did not go unnoticed. This manipulation once again shows the desire to shift responsibility for his crimes to others and the Russian president's unwillingness to end the military aggression.
In turn, Xi Jinping once again repeated his mantra that Beijing is guided by the principles of the UN Charter for settling the "Ukrainian crisis" and takes an impartial position, advocating peace and dialogue. From what has been said, it may be concluded that the Chinese leader was not very keen, despite all the rhetoric about the UN principles, to force the main country responsible for the outbreak of a large-scale war in Europe to adhere to the international principles that he so fervently urges to follow those countries that, even without these appeals, sought above all to avoid this war.
As a result of the negotiations, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping signed 14 documents and 2 joint statements: "On deepening relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between the Russian Federation and China" and "On the development of key areas of Russian-Chinese economic cooperation until 2030", in the Kremlin’s Faceted Chamber, where in 1949 the cruelest dictators in the 20th century, Stalin and Mao, raised their glasses for friendship between the USSR and the PRC. It also clearly indicates what values are actually close to the current leaders of both countries.
Noteworthy, the PRC leader reacted coolly to Putin's proposal to implement a new giant gas transportation project, Power of Siberia 2, to deliver gas from Yamal via Mongolia to the Chinese market. Beijing does not want to repeat the EU's mistake of becoming critically dependent on Russian energy carriers. But even if this project is implemented, it will not happen before 2035, and only on the condition that all financial costs and price risks will be borne by the Russian side.
The issue of Beijing's supply of weapons was of most concern to Kyiv and its allies during the visit of the Chinese leader. However, Beijing, wary of Washington’s sanctions, most likely did not risk satisfying the Kremlin's main wishes — to supply lethal weapons, although it is not ruled out that some types of non-lethal weapons and the element base for them may be supplied in small quantities, including via third countries.
The main conclusion of Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow is that the current Russian leadership has finally decided to turn their country into a Chinese raw material colony with the prospect of losing a significant part of political independence in exchange for supporting Putin clan's in power. Inadequate intentions of Putin's group to turn back the wheel of history and restore the USSR by military aggression was like a boomerang turning the Russian Federation not into a superpower, but a miserable vassal of Beijing. Putin did not realize that "the yellow waters of the Yangtze cannot flow in the opposite direction."
A look into the future
The 20th CCP Congress held on October 16-22, 2022, in Beijing, where Xi Jinping was elected the CCP General Secretary for the third time in a row, which traditionally meant his automatic appointment in March 2023 to the highest state position — the Head of the People's Republic of China, was another milestone for China’s development. The basic principle of Deng Xiaoping's reforms regarding the maximum tenure in the highest positions of the Party and the government — two terms of 5 years each — was broken.
As a result of the Congress, two amendments were made to the CCP statutes, giving Xi Jinping a personal role of "the main core of the CCP Central Committee" and the supremacy of his ideas in the party. The ideological justification for such a decision referred to the grave international situation and the need to transform the army into a world-class armed force, in particular, for a decisive fight against the "pro-independence" forces in Taiwan.
In terms of his official status and authority in the party and state hierarchy, Xi Jinping equaled the communist dictator of the PRC, Mao Zedong. Xi Jinping laid the basis for achieving such a position during his first term, when he used the popular anti-corruption slogan to remove about 100 high-ranking party officials who could hinder his bid for a third term. Currently, all members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the CCP Central Committee, which includes 7 of the party's highest officials, are Xi Jinping's protégés. An associate of General Secretary Li Qiang, who previously held the position of the Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Party, was elected to the second most important position of the PRC Prime Minister.
Concise review of Xi Jinping's program speech at the 20th CCP Congress
In his speech at the 20th CCP Congress "Hold high the great banner of socialism with a Chinese specificity, fight unitedly for the comprehensive construction of a modernized socialist state", Xi Jinping emphasized that Marxism with a Chinese specificity, based on dialectical and historical materialism, would remain the main ideological platform of the PRC.
Regarding the PRC ambitions in the world through 2050, the CCP General Secretary has emphasized that the goal of the Chinese Communists is "to transform China into a modernized socialist state that will lead the world in terms of overall national power and international influence by the middle of this century." At the same time, the Central Committee of the CCP should care not only about the Chinese people, but also about the progress and unity of all mankind.
Among the key tools of economic development, Xi Jinping mentioned improving the socialist market economy and its openness to the world. China plans to achieve leading positions in the field of science and technology, as well as education, including through the attraction of the best personnel from different countries of the world to work in the PRC. The human resources policy will be carried out in the name of the party and the state. The party sets a goal to reach the level of a society of average wealth by 2035.
The Secretary General attached great importance to restoring unity between the PRC and Taiwan under the principle of "one country, two systems". This is an absolute priority for the CCP Central Committee, which plans to solve it, first of all, peacefully, but the military option of Taiwan's political merger with mainland China with the formation of one state governed from Beijing is not ruled out.
Xi Jinping's speech is permeated with ideological dogmatism and by its style resembles the speeches of the CPSU general secretaries. It clearly bears the expansionist features of global communist influence, which was characteristic of the era of Mao Zedong and the communist leaders of the USSR. Unlike its predecessors, the current PRC leadership, in order to achieve its goals in the international scene, possesses incomparably greater economic might and "soft" power, which by 2035 will create not fewer challenges for the leadership of the USA and its allies than the Soviet Union that has gone to the "realm of the dead".
The Marxist rhetoric of the CCP General Secretary has little to do with Chinese realities and is rather part of a party ritual. Modern China has long since moved away from Marxism and is building a market economy based on private property — 70% of the country's GDP is produced by private enterprises that employ 80% of the entire workforce. As Deng Xiaoping said: "It doesn't matter what color the cat is, the main thing is that it catches the mice."
The rejection of the archaic principles of the socialist economy by the CCP Central Committee and transition to the market after a series of failed experiments allowed China to achieve its sustainable development goals with high growth rates over the past 45 years. However, the main drivers of China's economic growth — cheap labor and investment in housing construction — are gradually running out. The Covid-19 pandemic and the mortgage crisis dealt a severe blow to the PRC economy, reducing the GDP growth in 2022 to 3% — the lowest rate since 1976.
China’s gross debt (of the government, enterprises and households) in 2022 exceeded 300% of the GDP and was caused, first of all, by excessive and poorly calculated lending: the mortgage market; construction under national infrastructure projects; development of provinces; implementation of capital construction projects abroad.
In addition to the political goal of increasing the state's influence in the world through the implementation of plans to promote goods on world markets and expand investment opportunities, the global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by the PRC also brings enormous financial problems. According to the Finance Center of the Shanghai Fudan University, loans for the BRI project helped the country become the largest bilateral lender in the world — $932 billion. At the same time, according to Mary's AidData Lab, 60% of loans are given to countries in financial distress, so $52 of loans became problematic in 2020–2021 — 35% of all BRI investment projects are at risk.
The PRC economic problems are to grow by 2035, due to the exhaustion of the main growth factors and the increase in public debt. One should also take into account the growing contradictions between the one-party political system built on Stalinist principles, which is based on a dogmatic ideology, and the interests of the private capital and progressive strata of society, which will increasingly seek to reduce the party's interference in the economy and to democratize social processes.
These trends will not allow the PRC to maintain economic growth over the next 10 years at a level of at least 5% per year, which will further exacerbate the contradictions between the archaic political system and the needs of society. In order to divert public attention from them and to peep all the power, the CCP Central Committee will try by all means, including the military, to annex Taiwan to the PRC.
In the international scene, China will try to prepare for a tougher confrontation with the US by strengthening the Minsk-Tehran-Moscow-Pyongyang-Beijing axis, with the possible involvement of Riyadh to it. In addition, the PRC will gradually group the countries of the global South under its wing, and try to dominate the South China Sea with the prospect of rivalry with the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean. This sea is of geostrategic importance — trade cargos worth up to $5 trillion pass through it annually. The economy of South Korea, the PRC, Taiwan, Japan and other countries of the region depends on their movement.
However, until 2035 the PRC will not be ready for a large-scale military-political confrontation with the US and will try to use hybrid methods, by:
- strengthening financial and technological dependence of African, Asian and Pacific, Latin American countries and the Russian Federation;
- promoting the BRI project, strengthening the influence of the BRICS and SCO international organizations;
- strengthening the role of the yuan in international trade transactions;
- strengthening anti-American propaganda in the countries of the Global South and defaming NATO and AUKUS;
- making mineral-rich countries its raw-material appendages.
These activities will pursue the goal set by the 20th CCP Congress — to make the PRC the most powerful and influential country in the world by 2050. This means that Beijing plans not only to achieve economic leadership but also to rewrite the global rules of the game in line with its values. The PRC will try to implement its plans in an evolutionary way, using soft power, but in the event of a direct threat to the power of the CCP, it may also resort to military tools.
Implementation of these hegemonic plans, based on the fusion of the dogmas of Marxism, Stalinism and Maoism and nostalgia for the great imperial past of ancient China, is an unrealistic task. These overly ambitious plans do not take into account Beijing's economic and military capabilities and the determination of Washington and its allies to confront it. One may recall the Chinese saying: "the best battle is the one that never begins."
If the CCP Central Committee does not renounce its archaic views, this will mean the end for the PRC by 2040, repeating the fate of the USSR. The only possible strategic path that will ensure stability of Chinese society in a difficult period of change is the CCP's gradual rejection of the dogmas of communist ideology, evolutionary political transformations through democratization of the political system with account of the national specificity and, as a result, realism in international politics.
Conclusions for Ukraine
- At the current stage, Ukraine and China have opposing values, which does not allow us to hope for a strategic partnership between the countries at least until 2030. While Ukraine chose a path of further democratic transformations and strengthening its security through integration in the EU and NATO, the PRC remains in the webs of Marxist dogmas and a hostile attitude towards the North Atlantic Alliance;
- The PRC leadership led by Xi Jinping does not view Ukraine as a full-fledged state and believes that its policy is fully subordinated to the interests of the USA and the EU, which are Beijing's strategic rivals. For this reason, the Ukrainian state leadership should not count on equal and mutually beneficial cooperation with the PRC or its consideration of the Ukrainian position regarding lasting and just peace within the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine.
- Despite the ideological and value differences between the two countries, it is advisable for the Ukrainian leadership to refrain from confrontation with the PRC and to try to develop economic and cultural relations with it, not conditioned by political demands. Restoration of normal diplomatic contacts is also a very important task. At the same time, it is necessary to prevent critical dependence on China in trade and investment, to bar Chinese investments in military enterprises and privatization and lease of farming land. These issues fall within the sphere of national security and must be under permanent strict state control.
- After negotiations with the Russian President, Xi Jinping significantly weakened his interest in promoting China's Peace Plan, as he realized that Russia is incapable of any reasonable compromises. Therefore, the PRC is unlikely to risk its reputation in the future without guarantees of a positive result for it. If, after all, the talks between V. Zelenskyy and Xi Jinping will take place, the Ukrainian side should politely defend its position within the framework of the Ukrainian peace formula approved by the UN General Assembly. At the same time, it is advisable not to reject Beijing's peace initiatives as a whole, but to declare support for those points that do not contradict the mentioned formula and to remind about the commitments made by the PRC to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum.
- During his visit to Moscow, the Chinese leader called Putin his friend, and the joint statement said that the strategic partnership between the countries reached the highest level in history. This eloquently testifies that despite peaceful rhetoric and references to the UN charter, Beijing has decided whose side it is on in the war started by Russia, and international law for it is in fact only a tool for expanding global influence. The invitation of the Russian President to officially visit China this year only confirms this thesis.
- The joint Sino-Russian statement says that nuclear weapons shall not be used, since there can be no winners in a nuclear conflict. In addition, the parties called on nuclear countries to refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in countries that do not possess them. However, the ink on the joint document had not yet dried when Putin announced his intentions to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, once again confirming the correctness of Otto von Bismarck saying that a documents signed with Russia is not worth the paper on which it is written. This plan of the Russian Federation grossly violates the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Budapest Memorandum.
- In its security strategy, Ukraine should take into account that the current PRC leadership is ready to pay a high price for the preservation of Putin’s regime for a long time ahead — firstly, it creates favorable conditions for the creeping colonization of Russia by China, and secondly, it serves as an icebreaker for breaking the Euro-Atlantic unity. In this context, any security initiatives by Beijing must be treated with utmost caution.
- It is important for Ukraine to convey the message to its allies that the protraction of the war in Ukraine raises the chances of Putin’s regime retaining power and will contribute to the colonization of the Russian Federation by China, which will significantly strengthen it in its confrontation with the USA and the entire democratic world. Instead, the victory of Ukraine in 2023 will create a reliable basis for the termination of this dangerous process for world security, as a prerequisite for the removal of Putin's group from the administration of Russia. Therefore, the rapid defeat of Russian troops in Ukraine, which requires accelerated deliveries of lethal weapons, is also in the interests of all responsible NATO members, not only for stabilization of the situation in Europe but also for containing China.
