Now that the sound and fury around the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party is over, it is worth looking beyond both laudatory analyses and critics’ exaggerated assessments of the threat posed by the corporate state which is the People’s Republic of China.

The view of seasoned China-watchers is that Beijing’s diplomacy is limiting its own ambitions and its self-imposed problems make it a less threatening challenger for global dominance.

Advertisement

This does not, of course, take away from China’s increasing heft. The White House’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance recently concluded that Beijing “is the only competitor (of the USA) potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system”.

Indeed, China is more central to the global economy than it ever was with the International Monetary Fund projecting it will grow 8.4 per cent this year and 5.6 per cent in 2022.

Beijing’s strategy of simultaneously entrenching itself within core post-WW II institutions including the United Nations while pursuing extra-system efforts such as the Belt and Road Initiative is helping it shape the global governance architecture. China has upped the game in security terms too by adopting increasingly robust positions in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

Lastly, China is well on its way to owning the technology eco-system, pumping in billions of dollars of state-directed capital.

Yet, the gap between Beijing’s undoubted strength and its lack of diplomatic finesse is likely to limit its potential influence. “It is possible to imagine a scenario where China possesses the world’s largest economy, by a considerable margin, yet finds itself even more estranged from the advanced industrial democracies that will still collectively account for the preponderance of economic power and military capacity,” writes a Brookings scholar.

The overtly hyper-nationalistic messaging from Beijing, often referred to as “Wolf Warrior diplomacy”, does not help.

The issue has been compounded by the knee-jerk reaction of Chinese diplomats in response to the international criticism of Beijing’s early response to the Covid-19 outbreak; they pushed back rather crudely against critiques by highlighting other countries’ shortcomings and touting China’s accomplishments.

Chinese diplomats are clearly under instructions to adopt this approach. China got away with this abrasive approach over the past few years at least in part due to the Donald Trump presidency which provided it cover, as it were, by its arguably even more obnoxious behaviour internationally.

But the US Administration has changed tack significantly under President Joe Biden whose calling card has been a conciliatory manner and desire for rapprochement with estranged allies as well as fence-sitters.

As a result, China’s regional adversaries including India, Japan, and Australia have taken heart and begun flagging Chinese overreach on issues which impact them adversely.

The European Union has also adopted a tougher line towards Beijing with its parliament voting in May to freeze its review of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) until China lifts sanctions on European parliamentarians and think-tanks. Crucially, Taiwan’s wariness of the mainland has risen even as it attracts greater international support as a consequence of China throwing its weight around.