Despite this growing anti-communist movement from outside China, the CPC has much to celebrate as it reflects on its 100 years, with two presents of historical significance recently delivered by the West.
The first is what appears to be a tacit endorsement by the West, of China’s much-reviled state-capitalism. China’s state capitalism coupled with a foreign policy that successfully uses economic investment in foreign strategic industries and infrastructures to fulfil geopolitical objectives has enabled the great power to flourish in the shadow of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, whilst the West floundered. As the Serbo-American economist Branko Milanovic explained in Foreign Affairs, China’s positive performance has “undermine[ed] the West’s claim that there is a necessary link between capitalism and liberal democracy”. Similarly, The Economist commented that one of the lessons of Covid-19 in relation to China’s position within global supply chains, is that ‘change would involve upending well-established political and economic theories’.
A UK parliament report linked the concept of “cross-government” to Britain’s China policy. Whilst the government’s Integrated Review endorses the same concept in relation to defending democracy from foreign interference. The US National Authorization Act 2019 more explicitly states that the administration must implement a “whole-of-government strategy with respect to the People’s Republic of China”. Last but not least, the Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 approved on June 8, enables President Biden to pursue greater integration of all leavers of state and societal power to match societal resources to strategic aims more effectively, especially against China.
The second present for the CPC was delivered recently at the G7 in Cornwall, where it became very clear that President Biden was going to struggle to organise a unified, anti-China front. To start with, the G7 communiqué confirmed that members “will cooperate to address the challenge posed by China” but only “where it is in our mutual interest”. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that while the US was keen to make most of the G7 about China, “Britain sought to avoid framing it in those terms”. Likewise, EU diplomats revealed that the UK, Canada, and Italy advocated for a more nuanced China policy compared to Biden’s hard line and that the EU’s approach should be one of “cooperate”, “compete”, and “contest”.
The elephant in the room was the tensions bubbling under the surface in the Anglosphere stemming for the backlash of Brexit Johnson’s seemingly endless clashes with the EU, in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol but also to the US reluctance at concluding a trade agreement with the UK. Making the task of mending the diplomatic rifts caused by Trump and uniting allies against China all the harder for Biden.
All in all, with the Chinese model of capitalism seemingly being vindicated and a more fragile trans-Atlantic bloc, there is much to celebrate for the Chinese Communist Party. However, the 100th years birthday is not the end of the story for the CPC, but the beginning of a new phase, with quite a few stumbling blocks ahead.
To start with, while the Biden Administration will not succeed at reviving the sort of Atlantic alliance that existed during the Cold War, the international mood about the CPC’s domestic and foreign policies has clearly shifted, and there will be additional scrutiny over every step China takes.
In Australia, a close economic partner of China, there has been a “reality check” in recent years. In Italy, China’s propagandistic coverage on social media of medical help dispatched during the first wave of Covid-19, was described by the parliamentary committee for intelligence services as an “infodemic” campaign. This has led international relations experts and practitioners to accuse China of practising “sharp power” – a concept that captures how authoritarian countries apply soft power in an aggressive and manipulative manner to further their national interests. In the UK, meanwhile, the so-called Golden Era between London and Beijing has firmly come to an end, as evidenced in the Integrated Review, which stated that the PRC “presents the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security”.
The list of countries revising and rebalancing their economic and security interests towards China is long and growing. Perhaps, this is what led Xi Jinping on June 2 to recommend that CPC’s officials showcase an image of a “credible, loveable and respectable China” and that it is “necessary to … constantly expand the circle of friends [when it comes to] international public opinion”.
This makes the biggest obstacle the CPC faces over the next 100 years all the more challenging, as it seeks to navigate the global economy as dictated by countries of the Liberal Interntional Order (LIO) and, especially, amidst the irresolvable tension between national and transnational interests.
Western countries in their post-Cold War China policies neglected strategic thinking because they were too “busy feasting at the Chinese table”. They are now struggling to rebalance their policy priorities. Similarly, the CPC in the years to come will have to find the right balance between being open and closed, between those domestic, core, and unnegotiable interests that transformed the PRC into a great power – such as the endurance of the CPC – and the grow-or-perish pressure that capitalism imposes on every country. It’s a dilemma potentially aggravated by the West’s efforts to securitise sensitive supply chains and selectively decouple from China, with both short-term and long-term effects. Weaponised interdependence is likely to become a defining feature in future Sino-Western relations, although its implications are unpredictable at this stage.
At its 100th birthday, the Communist Party of China celebrates victory in the first round of a contest that has lasted for about half a century, during which the West has had to deal with the “blowback” of encouraging China to join the LIO, which clearly played in China’s favour. Now let the second round begin.