Xi Jinping’s Power Concentration And Foreign Policy Implications After The 20th Party Congress

>> Glenn Tiffert: Thank you very much for joining us for the latest installment in the Hoover Institution's project on China's Global Shark Tower speaker series. Today our speaker is Professor Suisheng Zhao, who joins us from the University of Denver. He's a professor and director of the center for China US Cooperation at the Josef Corbel School of International Studies.

He's the founder and editor of one of the top journals in the field, the Journal of Contemporary China. And the author and editor of more than two dozen books, including his latest, which is the Dragon Roars Back, transformational Leaders and Dynamics of Chinese foreign policy. Which was published by Stanford University Press last year.

He joins us again, having been a former Campbell national fellow at the Hoover institution. And he received his PhD degree in political science from the University of California at San Diego. Today he's gonna be talking to us about Xi Jinping's power concentration and the foreign policy implications after the 20th party Congress.

Suisheng, the floor is yours.

>> Suisheng Zhao: Okay, thank you, Kunan, and thank you, Larry. Thanks Hoover and China project for having me here. Back how many years before, I mean, last time here, national federal 1998. So we are really getting old now. The topic is Xi Jinping's power concentration and the implications for China's foreign policy after the 20th party congress.

Arguably, I would say that Xi Jinping reached the peak of his power during the Chinese party's congress. And became the most powerful leader since the founding of TRC. I would even argue more powerful than Mao Zedong in terms of intuitional power, intuition authority, because Mao is back and forth, first front, second front.

He is what I saw that he eliminated his potential factional rivals and filled his confidant in the Politburo and the Politburo standards leading based upon their personal loyalty, ideological line rather than meritocacy running the country at this time. And if we cannot identify credible rivals, which I think has upset long standing practice of internal power balance at the top leadership.

Mao Zedong was banished, for example, by his revolutionary comrades, Deng Xiaoping. You saw chief, other people. Deng Xiaoping was banished by Chen Yun and other elders. And Jiang Zemin was banished by Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao by Jiang Zemin who is now balancing. I really don't see. I cannot identify.

Maybe they are, but we cannot see at this time. And also the decision making process has been transformed from so called consensus building model to a Xi in command model just like Mao in command model. We talk about early years PRC. He is now positioned to rule China at least for next ten years, if not his lifetime.

So now the questions are how Xi has reached this position of intuitional power. I would say that. And what are the foreign policy implications of his power concentration? Now, because I've published these books, so I want to mention this book. This book developed what I call the leadership centered framework to trace the rise of China and also dynamics of Chinese foreign policy.

It argues that leaders matter in all political systems, but matter more in totalitarian and authoritarian systems. Elect leaders in democracies like the US are constrained by optional parties, by public opinions, by term limits. Authoritarian leaders in the PRC one party system which emphasize hierarchy and discipline, they are relatively unchecked by public opinions and there is no optional party.

And very often those most powerful leaders have held offices. All power. The PRC has enrolled by eight, what are called paramount leaders since the founding of PRC. But not every top leader has been able to chart a new course for China's foreign policy or China's direction. So that's a puzzle.

To answer this puzzle, my book distinguished Chinese leaders, these eight leaders into three types. One type is what I call transformational leaders. They are game changers, they have new visions, and also they have political wisdoms to navigate the jungle of the PRC power politics. And in that case, prevail their regions to chart new directions for Chinese foreign policy.

In fact, for overall direction of China. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping are transformational leaders. Each chart due course for China. And in Chinese official terms, Mao made China to stand up, then get China rich and Xi Jinping is now getting China strong. That's what the Chinese terms.

The second type, what I call transactional leaders, they have managed to maintain in power, but they stay on cost set by their predecessors. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are typical transactional leaders. They survived ten years each, but they all stayed on call set by Xi Jinping. The third type, what I call failed leaders, they lost powers in the jungle of power struggle in the PRC.

And Hua Guofeng, Hui Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang are typical failed leaders. They might have new visions, especially Huyabang and Zhao Ziyang, but who cares? They lost power. They cannot prevail their visions. And so, this is my books framework and my book, basically what I call leadership center framework.

Try to document how these transformational leaders have their new visions here. This is a framework, also they have a personal office authority. And also they have tried to politically shape educational environment here. What I talked. Historical memories and nationalist explorations and also restructured and used political intuitions and also exploit external environment.

Here we're talking about global distribution of power and norms, roles and intuitions at global level. And now let's go back to Xi Jinping. Before we talk about Xi Jinping's power, concentration and foreign policy implications, let's first start with foreign policy making organizational principles in China. Here there are two.

One is called leadership CCP leadership over diplomacy. Every paramount leader has an official portfolio for foreign international security policy making for sure. The second principle here is political discipline. In fact, when the Ministry of Foreign affairs was established on November 18, 1949, Premier Zhou Enlai famous told the Chinese first generation of diplomats that there's no small matters in diplomacy.

And the Chinese diplomats were just like PLA in civilian clothes, subject to disciplines and self-disciplines, and absolute compliance to the party policy. The second part I want before we talk about Xi Jinping is the foreign policy making hierarchy. I see at top is paramount leaders, but three layers in a policy, foreign policy making.

At top is the decision making institutions, that central committee, politburo, politic, standing committee. And the below these policymaking intuitions are what Chinese called that type of policy coordination and elaboration organizations. These OPEC party organizations normally work behind the scenes to assist the top leaders on pressing issues in the departmental manner.

The third tier at top, at the bottom here you can see are line bureaucracies in the government, party and military. Their primary functions are information gathering, policy implementation and recommendations for the top leaders. And paramount leaders are at very top of the hierarchy, but they each have different styles, leadership style to work with the bureaucracy or work with these so called coordination intuitions.

And Mao Zedong, what I put there was a crusader and he made strategic decisions on security issues top down. And it doesn't matter if there's bureaucratic assistance or nothing. He just pushed that through Korean wall, all those things you can see. And he dedicated his trust, Lieutenant Zhou Enlai to work with bureaucracies.

Deng Xiaoping is a somehow kind of consensus builder. He dedicated his authorities to his purgatives, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping people, and also to the bureaucrats. They reach consensus, he automatically, normally ratified that. He steps in only if they cannot reach consensus. So that's what my former advisor Susan Shirk's argument, delegation by consensus.

And Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, they try to continue this consensus building process through what, what's the called connective leadership process. Then Xi Jinping he has re-centralized the policymaking authorities with what he called top-level design. And in fact he has become a Michael manager and chairman of everything.

I just cannot understand how can he still sleep? He manages everything, even toilet, everything you see, he wants. Just he centralized decision making on every aspect. Here we are talking about foreign policy. We'll go further then what have triggered Xi Jinping's power concentration or consolidation? And I look at three triggers here that helped Xi Jinping to concentrate or centralize his power.

When was the elite complaints during that time? 2012 around that time, Hu Jintao was too weak. Hu Jintao's collective leadership and those kind of factional makeup was too divisive and too weak to resist those liberal ideas threatening the monopoly of the communist party. And the second trick was a series of high profile political scandals and corruptions involving his potential rivals.

We all know that cases at that time was really timely for him. Third was the rising nationalist great power exploration and confidence among the Chinese people and their frustration. On one hand, they were so kind of confident China was rising after the Olympic Games, In 28 and the financial crisis in the West countries.

But in the meantime, Chinese people also, those elites became frustrated because they find that Western countries, the US, those countries still resisted China's rise, undermined China's rise. That's what they became frustrated causes. Xi Jinping therefore consolidated his power with the consent of the political elites as ruling elites.

And also he used those scandals to centralize his power by purging to purge those potential rivals and replace them with his trust lawyers. And also Xi Jinping, in response to this environment, presented his new vision for China, so called China Dream. In fact, days after he became the party general secretary, he gave that famous speech about China Dream.

A Great Rejuvenation Dream which really matched the appetite of many people for strong leader and the mode of the time one of renewed what I call nationalism, confidence and self assertion. In the meantime, Xi Jinping restruct Policy making, the entire policymaking process, I go too fast here. Xi Jinping centralized his power and decision making intuitions this way.

I don't want go through them because he did so much intuitional changes to change the power. What I wanna concentrate is the national decision making institutional restructuring since Xin Jinping came to power. Here you can see this table is paramount leader, then we see those coordination intuitions, then we see the bureaucracies.

What Xi Jinping did was to redo the coordination level of intuitional setting and also bureaucracy here, at coordination the Central Coordination institutional organizations. For many years after 1981, the Central Foreign Affairs Leadership Small Group was the only standing foreign policy coordination organization, which in fact was funded by Mao Zedong in 1958, then disbanded during Cultural Revolution.

Xin Jinping restored that in 1981, but there were some other intuitions built in 2020. They built a National Security Leadership Small Group which came out of the embassy bombing 1999. We all knew at that time, people were talking about China was that of crisis management coordination institution. They should build America`s National Security Council, but they did National Security Leadership Small Group at that time.

And then Hu Jintao, that was Jiang Zemin did. Hu Jintao had another one in 2010. During those marine time disputes with the South China Sea and Japan head up. There are so many tuitions involved in the marine time, they called interest preservation. So he built a Protecting Maritime Rights and Interest Group.

But the problem of all those institutions were, they did not have enough or regular staff support. In fact, they all rely upon one office called the Central Foreign Affairs Office, which is right, that one is a regular office. But all these are ad hoc meetings. So in that case, they lack of capacity or ability to help the central leadership to make regular policy analysis and recommendations.

And so this handicapped China's national security and foreign policy making. And Xi Jinping came to office, he realized that. And the first thing he did was to reorganize the whole structure. The most important new institution other than all the those kinds of leadership groups reorganization, the most important institutional innovation was the creation of the State Security Commission.

At that time, people thought it's most to fall just like America National Security Council, but it's not, has a much broader power, is in charge of both internal and external security. It's not only consultation and the consult coordination tuition, it's also disembarking tuition. Xi Jinping himself had that, of course, falling a very small group also by party general secretary, but for him, this is his own child.

So he meant that a very powerful behind the scene institution and National Security Leadership was absorbed by that organization. And then in the process, this organization has shifted its focus from overall national security to internal security, more focused on the internal security. In that case, Xi Jinping upgraded the Foreign Affairs Leadership Group into the Foreign Affairs Commission, that's what they see.

Wang Yi, last week he went to Munich, his title was the office director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. That's his title, office director. But it's very powerful, very powerful organization on the foreign affairs and also Xi Jinping convent central foreign affairs work conferences much more often before him, only four times.

The first five years, he convents two. He also called back all those ambassadors, Chinese top diplomats to Beijing to listen to his speeches much more often to make sure they follow his policy line. He didn't know what's going on in his mind. Another thing Xi Jinping did was tightening control of foreign policy bureaucracies in the state party and the military.

And for many years, starting from the Xiaoping's years, Chinese diplomats saw themselves primarily as professionals. The individual at least try to become professionals and recognize as professionals. But this development produced what is interesting, paradoxical transformation of their political status, especially for the military. The more professionalized the Chinese diplomats, the less important their political status.

A senior diplomat hardly made it to the top level of political hierarchy, we knew for 20 years the highest level they reached. The foreign minister retired was state councilor. But before that was Politburo, Politburo's vice premier, all those kind of important positions. So their political status deigned. And while they became professionalized, Xi Jinping has reversed the trends he advanced political status of Chinese diplomats and allocate more resources.

2028 we all know ,Yan Yeqi was promoted to the Politburo and Wang Yi, seating foreign minister became state councilor. That big promotion for them in political status. But here, the price you have political status, the price is that you. The emphasis is no longer on the professionalism, political loyalty to the party.

And to me, that becomes the top, top priority for the Chinese diplomats. Xi Jinping also expanded the CCP party diplomacy here, the Central Propaganda Department, Central Liaison Department and the Central United Front Department. They have given much more resources from behind the scenes to the forefront to tell China stories.

Military diplomacy has also been tightened. In fact, before Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin somehow lost control of military diplomacy. So he not only tried has established chairman responsibility system to control overall military, but also elevated military diplomacy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense used to have a foreign affairs office.

Now that office is upgraded and evaluated to the Central Military Commission as the office of International Military Cooperation. You go to China talking to those military conference. They all told you CMC Central Military commission, not from the Ministry of Defense. That's also upgrade and also something to make them more under Xi Jinping's control.

Xi Jinping's power concentration has very important foreign policy implications. The most important consequence is the change in the incentive structure of Chinese diplomats. They used to be professionals, so they followed professional loans. No longer, now their incentives. They get promoted, they survived. They have to show political loyalty to the party and for Xi Jinping's himself.

So in that case, they have become enthusiastically to implement Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy here, what I call big power diplomacy in my book. And to support his initiatives such as Bell Road Initiative. All those ridiculous, sometimes from outside ridiculous. But most importantly here, their behavior change is that they have responded to Xi Jinping's call for fighting spread.

Dou Zenjianzen, Chinese said so to have a best mind thinking. D Xian Sui, Chinese call that. So they have pursued so called core national interest. What's called national interest defined as bottom line of national survival. We cannot negotiate, we cannot compromise. So they became wealth warriors. That's the context, intuitional context of China's wealth warrior behavior.

We all know Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For many years, they were criticized as no backbone. They received tabernacles. But now they recast themselves as a ministry of a wolf warrior ministry. The defender of Xi Jinping's policy. We can see the behavior change. Yang Jie Shi and Wang Yi, we all know these two people under Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin.

They were so polite courtesy. You met them, they were professionals. And Yang Yie Shi spoke English. He was a little tiger family. People thought this class, you can work with them no longer. I just wonder if they are same people now. They are not same people. They are same people, same faces, but they behave totally different.

I mean, the first meeting between Yang Ye Shi, Wang Yi on one side, and Tony Blinking and the American side, these same people.

>> Suisheng Zhao: And you saw him sitting there. You can no longer talk to America, can no longer talk to us. From the position of strength, you cannot teach us of democracy.

You're democracy in big trouble. And Wang Yi said no. And you have to change your bad behavior. Old bad behavior, you have to change them. So these same people. Last week we saw Wang Yi, the same person. People talk of China. I mean, after the COVID zero failure, Xi Jinping wanted to work with the United States.

But when he's in Munich, he not only apologize for the violation of the balloon, but he accused America. You used to force to shut down our balloon.

>> Suisheng Zhao: He is so kind of what he called unbelievable. That's his word, almost hysterical. That's one of his words last week.

And his abuse or false, that's what he said is that same person I met, I did not meet him many times, but only twice. That was many years ago. He was at that time. You sit with him, smart guy, polite, and he want to learn about America at that time.

But now he knew everything. He showed to his boss. He not only knew everything, he just stand up. So this behavior changed from the structural intuitional change and another change of foreign policy implication. I see, because this kind of assertive behavior Xi Jinping has put his diplomats, put his military officers and put the party workers.

China has fast increasing pushback back niche and resistance from the US and other countries. So Xi in that context has become increasingly, I would say, insecure. Insecurity is in his mind. And so he has advanced security to the level of development. Deng Xiaoping emphasized economic development. For him, economic development is still important, but security is more important.

So he has a new term called an integrated approach to development and security. And this new concept reflects his insecurity in his mind. In the 20th party congress report, you can see he dropped two very important key phases. One was peace and development as a theme of the time, no longer there.

The second was a period of important window of opportunity for China, development no longer there. So here, peace and development and economic development for him is no longer the most important things in his mind. So he has emphasized national security. And this national security is expressed in his own term called I tries that holistic national security outlook.

You can try people use the overall national security, comprehensive national security. They basically try to have a host of national security threats. But here, what I see is most from national security or external security has been through the lens of internal security, regime security. He has a term called political security, that's a code word for regime security.

So in that case, we see all the laws passed by since he came, 2024, especially Hong Kong National Security Law, all reflect this kind of security. First, security, internal security linkage to external security approach. To look at Chinese foreign policy, these emphasis on security or education of security to the level of national economic development has very important for important implications.

Because that will increase his risk tolerance of the economic back niche, economic pushback. And he became more risk, I mean, averse, leading to economic risk. So that's why last couple of months people were talking about if Xi Jinping was softening his tone for the economic sack. But I have not seen that, I don't think that could happen.

And it's in the near future on that Chinese economy collapse, which I don't know if it could happen. So in conclusion, I think I talked too much already.

>> Suisheng Zhao: Let me ask three questions here. First, is CDM power diplomacy premature? Has China overreached? Has China's future increasingly uncertain?

My answer to all three questions are positive, meaning yes, why? Let me briefly on the last flight, the slide. Xi Jinping is not through strategies, he's not Mao Zedong, he was not as strategic as Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong try to play the strategic games with the Soviet Union, the United States really well, to China's advantage.

Chi Minh has elevated all his possible valuable partners and united his rivals. So that's what Xi Jinping's strategic position today. Second, China's Xi Jinping's policy has really met the Chinese economy in a big trouble. And what it talks to people in China now, the most famous term is run away, Ren.

In Chinese case, Ren, run away as fast as you can, that's what the Chinese need, Chinese in actuals. And the most importantly to answer these kind of uncertainties is that the Xi Jinping power concentration has methadone Chinese foreign policy incoherent, irrational, and unpredictable. Chi Minh does not have modesto charisma, although I say Xi is more powerful, but he does not have that kind of charisma.

Why he's powerful? His power is kind of coercive power, not his personal quality. He has last ten years, what he has competition, really has not accomplished almost nothing. But he has accomplished using author coercive power to establish fears among the Chinese people, among Chinese elites. So in that context, nobody dares to tell him truth, all try to disagree with his policy.

If whoever disagree with him, he said, you are absolutely commenting. The central policy, Wang Yi Songyang, that's a new term he created then now becomes more, even more personal. He said, maliciously slandering party and state leaders. So he minimized the opportunity for any of his mistakes to be corrected.

And so he has plunged the country into a virtuous cycle, he will make mistakes, he made mistakes. Zero-COVID and then open a U-turn, those have consequences, increase his fear. Then he'll make more mistakes then eventually to get to some kind of adventures of no return, including foreign policy adventure.

And if he decided to attack Taiwan, I hope he will not in the future, and many people think he will not in the future. But if he did, he just like pulled it, he lives in a bubble. People thought he's irrational, I really think he's increasingly irrational. And if he made that decision, nobody can stop him, so that's why China has entered a very uncertain future, I don't know where China will go from here.

Thank you.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Excellent, thank you very much. I know we have a very distinguished group of people in the room, so I'll start the discussion with only one question. And I encourage you all to line up your questions, and I'll take a roster, depending on which hands I see.

First, you rightly point out that Xi Jinping has become the chairman of everything. But, of course, the chairman of everything, with that comes tremendous risk, right? By putting yourself in charge of everything, including the toilets, as you say. When there's plumbing problems, even minor problems, then there's no way to escape the culpability that comes with that.

And you rightly point out, for example, that China's experiencing pushback on the foreign policy frontier. It's alienating even countries that were hedging between the United States and China particularly, look at the Philippines. Look at Europe in light of the war in Ukraine, there's an increase in insecurity as a result of this.

Look at the demographic challenges China is facing down the road, the economy is slowing. And so I'm wondering if you could give your projection about how Xi Jinping has perhaps backed himself into a corner by making himself chairman of everything. While all of these things are going wrong and what you see ahead of us, in light of that.

 

>> Suisheng Zhao: I don't think I can make any reliable prediction. Xi Jinping, that all we know is he's unpredictable now at this time. And indeed, I think he's, as you said, not only he is chairman of everything in charge of too many things make him crazy. But also he indeed made increasing more mistakes so from that perspective, he's coming to a corner at this time.

In fact, I thought last December was cornered, he came to the corner I don't know how he came out of that corner. In fact, I also thought I in the last 20 years there are several watt shits in Chinese politics. 2008, 2009 was a wattage wattage, and 2012 Xi Jinping came to power was one.

Then he came, I mean, the auto change of Chinese political, Dynamics, then 2022, last year, was another one, because that's why I argued that the 20th party congress was the peak of his power, and his power will come down from then on. Indeed, I think he has lost trust of the Chinese people, not Chinese people I'm not saying Chinese people, Chinese educated elites.

Most people still don't know much about what's going on in the power politics and Chinese policy direction. But a lot of educated people have really lost their trust including those what I call the little pinks, Xiao Feng Hong, those young nationalists, and they suffered so much, so I thought they were lost trust on Xi Jinping.

But Xi Jinping has not backed off at all since last December and in fact, he's doubled down his efforts. You can see what he did at his speech at Central Party school last month. He still tried to promote so called China's path of modernization and first time he used the term the Chinese style modernization.

And so clear contrast between the westernization and China's path of modernization in other words, China would never go to the western path. And so he will push even further on his, what I think, disastrous past for China. So he came to the corner at this point, I think he already came to the corner, but he will not admit that and so he will continue to push China to the cliff.

I don't know if eventually China would collapse, that's what I don't know, but I think that's the direction he's pushing China called.

>> Male Speaker 1: I have a question, you mentioned that he emphasized more on security issue than economic issue and also you mentioned he has been trying to institutionalize everything.

So if we combine these two together, then we have observation that he purged heavily within military and also within finance. So he purged the loss of top finance people but how about foreign affairs? So I didn't know any important purge occurred in that area.

>> Suisheng Zhao: You're right.

>> Male Speaker 1: What is the explanation, why?

 

>> Suisheng Zhao: Because I went to China talking to the Chinese colleagues, I found most open minded are economists and legal profession, and I don't know if I can say military in that category. Military is not that category, so his purge of legal profession and economic financial sectors are predictable.

But his purge of military, not because of their liberal mind because of their power the power. For him, this security apparatus, not only the military, but I entire security apparatus, the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, these are what he tried to control and also he saw potential threat.

So he pushed in those sectors and those people he thought could become a threat in those sectors for sure. As you say financial, legal, economic, security apparatus but foreign ministry, foreign ministry is for quite a while. As I said, I will not say they are liberal, but they were professionals and they did not do their job the way he hoped but these people changed so quickly.

As I said, these top people, Yan Ye Shi and Wang Yi, these people, they changed so quickly and they also gave them, I mean, you can see the budget of foreign ministry increased a lot. During COVID that two years little bit cut but increased and their political status increased and they quickly became his, I mean, foreign soldiers.

And so I don't think he needed in that case to purge them, have used them really well. These people, I think, worth his trust they did a good job for him.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Larry.

>> Larry Diamond: I have a comment and then a provocative question. The comment is that a lot, I don't think everything but a lot of the scenario you've been describing, I think has haunting parallels to Russia with the concentration of power of both foreign policy and the whole concept of political security and so on.

Increasingly in one man who's increasingly controlling power, aggrandizing and so on. Moreover, I understand that a psychological portrait that's been done of Xi Jinping by a quite experienced psychological profiler delivers a very chilling portrait of an individual who is not only megalomaniacal. But truly, clinically absolutely lacking in any trace of empathy, which means an immense capacity for cruelty and infliction of destruction on a large level, who cares?

I can't say in this session, we'll talk later.

>> Larry Diamond: But in any case, now, the provocative question. Okay, as with Putin, there's an immense potential for miscalculation because he's in a bubble. He's not getting diverse information, it's self selected and so on. But, if you play this out, he's embarked on an extraordinarily intense pace of military modernization.

It's expected to reach its culmination by 2027, maybe even sooner. Maybe then he will decide, it's really, if you extrapolate what you're saying, it's kind of likely that he will decide if something doesn't change, to attack Taiwan in one way or another, and it could turn out like Ukraine and ultimately, I think, lead him to fall from power but maybe it won't.

Will the US intervene? We don't fully know. Will it intervene in time? Will it do what it needs to do to militarily modernize and forward deploy so that it can deter and repel a chinese invasion? Will Japan come in in a decisive way? Will Australia come in in a decisive way?

Will Taiwan summon the will to fight? All of these, it seems to me, are open ended questions now. So, yes, there's an element of irrationality to what he's doing, and potentially catastrophically so. But you could argue it's not that irrational if all you care about is conquest and power aggrandizement.

 

>> Suisheng Zhao: I agree with that. In fact, from his perspective, all his decisions or actions are rational. Outside could seem irrational. But his people, that's my sense in Chinese. In his inner circle, everybody is guessing what he thinks. Then tell him what they think he thinks. That's the way, nobody will tell him at this kind of environment what he does not like.

So every decision in that context he made is based upon the information he received, which from his perspective, is rational. For example, on the Taiwan issue, as you mentioned, his people would, if you decide to take Taiwan, nobody would be able to stop you. The United States cannot do it.

Although we are military, we prepare plan b for US involvement. But if we decisively looking at the Chinese military, those stories, they said we can take Taiwan in a week, just like Putin thought they could take Ukraine in a week. And they thought we could use all the missiles to destroy all those strategic a military base and totally destroyed Taiwan's resistance capacities.

That's what the military told him. Although it's not the case, to attack Taiwan you cannot simply use missiles. You have to land the troops. But his military officer would definitely try to tell him what he wanted to hear. And in that context, if he made decision to takeTaiwan could be a disaster for China, for sure.

But from his perspective, no, it's not irrational. It's rational. We can win. We don't know. What is outside of his circle is uncertain. So everything has two sides, positive and negative. So he heard only positive side, which is not wrong. It's also truth. So that's the decision making mechanism in China- And also that's how dangerous it is proactive.

 

>> Glenn Tiffert: Tom.

>> Tom Fingar: Thank you my jumping off point is where you ended up on the characterization of China's foreign policy behavior as unpredictable as which I agree, inconsistent. And Larry's observation about Putin and Xi, I think it's fundamentally different. I fundamentally disagree with.

>> Larry Diamond: That's good. We need to, that's what I was saying.

 

>> Tom Fingar: And it goes back to something you said early on, which I do agree with, that Xi's elevation was a consensus decision of the leadership with Putin in power to do certain things predicated on the description that you give of the concern about outside. Because outside interference could stir up the internal instability which threatens the continued power of the Putin.

But my experience in dealing with Chinese leaders in that system, these are on a bunch of pansies. This is a tough system to make it to the top. You're not gonna roll over and play dead and they're patriots. So you're opting out or copying out, it's unpredictable. I can't make a prediction.

I think you've got to, because there's a logic to your analysis and either the logic will turn out to be accurate or inaccurate, but you need a statement to know whether you're right or wrong here. And where that is, if this is a consensual course of action which he implements and he made all those changes that you described to turn the organs and instruments in foreign affairs into transmission belts.

These aren't decision making, these aren't an analytical, these are not develop options. It's carry out mechanism. I have difficulty seeing the rest of the top leadership of the party following Xi over the edge. This is headed to disaster. The policy over the last, I would say dozen years, certainly the last three years has failed tremendously, internal and external, continuing along the same course, because that's what Xi wants to do.

I can't see him staying in power. I just can't see it. I don't know exactly how he's gonna be, but if the choice is China goes in the toilet or we stick with Xi Jinping because we're afraid he might purge him, he's expendable. Preserving the party leadership and China's place in the world, I think Trump's personal aspiration.

Therefore, where I'm going is what I think the implication of your analysis is that this chaotic situation is already being challenged within the top leadership. We're gonna re-engage with the Americans, we're not gonna re-engage with the Americans in here. How much of it is relative power persuasiveness of the argument?

I think the economy is gonna be the deciding factor here, that they've got to have a better international environment relationship to bolster the economy, to maintain stability. Just sort of go back to Dong choking. I think the logic of the situation is very strong in that direction. And I think the others in the leadership will push that way whether she goes willingly or has to be removed.

But anyway, what's wrong with what I just said? Extrapolating from your analysis.

>> Suisheng Zhao: I think you're absolutely right. Here, they should have internal divisions, but we don't know. That's the problem to understand Chinese elite politics. We don't know. We assume in this situation some people would defect and we're not been winning to see the communist party regime collapse.

He is the best destroyer of the Chinese Communist Party. At least from outside, we see that. And I think that people inside China, they could see that too clearly, they are smart. If you look at Dom, just follow him, yes, all those people. But that's what they performed, that's not real though.

The Chinese top leaders, even Wang Yi, I don't know if he believes what he talked about or everything he talked about. He's a smart person, but he has to perform the way he did. So the ultimately, as you said, I agree also with what you said, Ultimate test is economy.

Xi Jinping so far has not proposed workable economic recovery programs yet at this time. So Chinese economy could be in big trouble in next five years. If that happens, I think we'll see as you said, he could be disposable and some of his own people will come after him.

But the problem here is that he has controlled so well over the security apparatus, the military, the coercive part of the system. So nobody could be successfully or easy, it's not easy, so difficult much more difficult than more time even to have a coup d'etat or to get rid of him.

That's the problem today, these people perform because of fear, because they know they cannot successful. So that's what I'm concerned. If economy collapsed, we still have a similar situation, I don't know, I really don't know. It is such a mess in China in terms of the policymaking process, inconsistency, and it's a moving part disaster.

But how to stop that, we don't know, I really don't know. Internally, we don't know, we can only guess.

>> Erin Baggott Carter: I think this is a fascinating talk, I've admired your work for a long time, so I'm excited to read the new book, congratulations on that. So I have a question about the integrated development and security concept that you mentioned.

So in particular, you write that she has elevated security, sort of, to this co-equal status of development. But actually, in some internal speeches, he's gone further than that. So in the Li Xinjiang papers, he has one really interesting speech where he's talking to CCP members, and he says that the Baltic states are a really interesting example, right?

So he said, particularly when you're thinking about trade-offs between development security, this example shows that you can become quite developed and still break away from the Soviet Union, the historical example there. So what he took from that historical example is that it's really important to privilege security ahead of economic development.

So my question for you is how far do you think Xi is willing to go in taking that concept? I mean, you see domestically in China, his prioritizing consolidating power over the tech sector, reindustrializing or sort of going back towards this sort of state management of the economy.

So how far do you think he's willing to go in privileging both domestic security and also international security over China's economic development?

>> Suisheng Zhao: So here, I think you are definitely right here. If security and economic development are not in conflict, he will put them in the paranormal and depending on the circumstances, he would just go while emphasize security, still go with economic development.

But if there is a conflict, the choice is security. Definitely he will sacrifice economic development for security. Here, when we say security, we are talking another concept here is internal security versus external security. And the internal security is also above external security. In fact, maybe put it that way, he always see internal security in a linkage to external security, Xinjiang issue, Tibetan issue, Hong Kong issue.

These are typical examples of linkage between internal security and external security. And he saw actuarial threats from internal nets then using internal instruments and ways to resist external threats. That's what he's called dynamic between security and development. And how far he will go, I don't know, I would say how far he can go at this time.

If economy, as Tom Fingar talked about, economy is uttermost test. If economy is going to collapse at that point, what he would do. He might want to save economy, but I don't think he knows how to do that, that's the problem for him. I mean, I don't think Nico Chiang is a good, competent leader for sure, but he has a sense of economic responsibility that he's Lexi, that's his job.

But he wasn't allowed to do his job at all. That's 10,000 people meeting to say every company won't even at the front page of the People's Daily at all. And this last meeting, I mean, for next month, March for the Yang Hui, the National People's Congress, for Zheng Fu, Bao Gao, the government report he cement, he called that state council meeting, only deputy ministers were there.

Those ministers were not there at all. He tried to work on economy and did not really care. And also, I think what he tried, I mean, in the central economic work conference last, I think December, and that conference really did not produce anything new at all. So that's the problem for the balance between the development and security.

So that's why I think China is really, I'm very pessimistic about China's future in that case.

>> Glenn Tiffert: So we have Paul and then Gopal.

>> Suisheng Zhao: Okay, Gopal, hi.

>> Paul Peterson: I guess small disagreement with Tom in the sense that I don't think it's kind of a principled issue of whether you push for a more precise prediction or whether you look at some range of possibilities.

And I think if you're making policy, you have to prepare for different possibilities. But on one point, I'm in strong agreement, and that is, I think Xi Jinping has backed himself into two corners. One is the one that you described, but the other is the appearance of being emperor for life, the violation Of the two term rules, so to speak, and it certainly encourages more people to think about, well, maybe I can do the same thing.

There's this marvelous soliloquy in King Richard IV, Henry Shakespeare's play, Henry IV, Part 2, where he says, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. He compares himself to a sailor on top of a mast in the middle of a storm who can go to sleep. And the poor king can't go to sleep, not because of the burdens of office, but because of, I think it's Lord Cumberland who got him in power and is now chasing him to get out of power.

And it's an inevitable sort of thing, I think. I know this is somewhat debatable, but to me it's pretty clear, the reason Mao started the cultural revolution was, in fact, all these people are beginning to say, his time has come, he's mismanaged, and he got rid of Liu Shaqi.

That's better than I.

>> Paul Peterson: Most of the successors were gone-

>> Suisheng Zhao: In beyond, yeah, everybody, yeah.

>> Paul Peterson: So I think that's a huge dynamic in operation here, and I just wanna suggest a couple of comparative politics examples. Of course, every country is different, every historical timeframe is different, you have to remember that.

But it does seem to me that it's interesting that Stalin, who consolidated power as much as Xi Jinping and is ruthlessly and is much based entirely on fear and not on greed. Because he didn't have money to pass out the way Xi Jinping his hat, he couldn't make billionaires, but he could kill you.

So that's pretty, pretty potent. He misjudged the American willingness to fight in Korea. After turning Kim Il Sung down for a year, he finally gave him the go ahead after, basically the US did nothing to take over in China. But he had an insurance policy, which is, if the Americans do intervene, Mao has to promise to take care of you, cuz I'm not going to.

So he got a double when he almost took Korea, but he certainly put a 20 year walk in US, China relations, which may have been his real goal. I don't know whether that indicates prudence, but he did become prudent after that. And certainly to me, the parallels between Berlin and Taiwan are pretty striking.

And in the case of all these guys are different, I'm trying to sit now trying to say that Xi Jinping will behave the way Stalin did. I sort of hope he will, because it seemed to me Stalin showed a great deal of prudence during his lifetime over Berlin.

Success is largely over Berlin as well. And I think that's partly my view, it's because the US managed to be credible without credible military option, credible about deterrence, and that's difficult. Anyway, sorry, so two other examples that are maybe worth thinking about. One is, Saddam Hussein became arrogant after what he considered his victory over Iran, and after the end of the Cold War.

Well, he could grab Kuwait and miscalculated again, Stalin is sort of about Korea, miscalculated the American reaction, which it seems to me is a distinct possibility here with respect to Taiwan. And his clock cleaned, as we would say in slang, but he managed through sheer fear and brutality to survive another 12 years, until he was actually finally evicted by force.

Then a third one, which I had symphony personally, was Suwarto, which might be more interesting here, although the differences between Suharto and Xi Jinping are this wide. I mean, Suharto was a dictator, but a pretty mild one, like. But his difficulties began sort of toward the end of my time there as ambassador, when there was a split between him and the military, which is a much more important elite institution than the government party.

He purged the top general and anyone he thought was one of the top general's followers. The basic issue was these military guys were complaining about the corruption of Suharto's family, but it took ten years for that, it's the ten years that strikes me. You can have a split in the elite that eventually brought down Suharto in that case, but it took a world economic financial crisis.

You say that Xi Jinping connects security and foreign policy, he ought to connect security and economic success. Because it seems to me his downfall will really come if the economy comes grinding down, and that's a real possibility. Sorry, I've gone on too long, but it seems, where do I come out on all of this?

It is that I think if I were in Washington trying to make policy, which I'm sort of glad I'm not, because this is a really hard one, and we've got one of the worst possible wars in history on the doorstep, if it's done wrong. I would certainly be thinking as a deterrent about what our capability is to cut off energy supplies from the Persian Gulf, which ought to give Xi Jinping pause.

And we're not thinking enough about that. But I would, in terms of longer term policy and what I think is a serious danger if he succeeds or his successor succeeds in making China the dominant global power by 2049. Then we should be looking to try in any way we can to create splits between him and the party.

Not to try to undermine the party, which may be the longer term goal, but try to show the party that their survival actually is at risk. By the way he's behaving. Do you agree, is the question.

>> Glenn Tiffert: Did you want to reflect on that?

>> Suisheng Zhao: I think the party knows, I mean, his colleagues know what he's doing, the damage he's doing.

But the issue here is that what they want to do or if they can do anything to stop him, that's the problem. It's at a separate party. And several points I think you mentioned should be interesting. Now Xi Jinping has become one man leadership, one man decision making, and the whole system now has changed to action.

I talked to colleagues from China recently, I met several. I did not go to China now, but I met some people from for this book, I don't think I can go.

>> Suisheng Zhao: And they altered me in every level of the government, the e basil, the number one person, all centralized can control all the decision making, all the resources, and become so corrupted.

The corruption is so deep now in the Chinese system. So the whole system is in big trouble today because of he's at the top, one man decision making process, and the whole system has been followed that direction. Second point I think you talked about is that this kind of policymaking process has donned to fail for sure, eventually, how to deal with, you talk from American perspective.

But you compare him with Staliun, Mao, they know those people. I think that's good comparison, because you said most non-confrontation, because there were resistant and he tried to defend himself even at the expenses of the whole party and state operations. Destroyed everything. And I think that might be also the result of Xi Jinping eventually he will do.

If he discovered there are resistance, he would destroy them. And whatever he has to do in order to destroy them. And so that will be very moment, I think Mao Zedong's mistake started from Grady forward, if you can say the anti-riots campaign in 1957. But most important in 1959, then all his political actions, the social education campaign, cultural revolution was trying to defend his mistakes.

So Xi Jinping already made mistakes. The zero COVID is big mistake, and Yutan is also another big mistake. Now everything he's doing now is to try to avoid mentioning those mistakes and try to prove he can go beyond that. But he's what he tried to prove, in fact that moving China further toward a dangerous direction at this time.

Because I don't think he, before this COVID mistakes, I thought he was a power hunger, but he at least could be a competent leader. But now I really don't think he is competent in his job. Now, you said that now all he see behind is that how to stay in power, how to get rid of those who want to assassinate him.

I mean, those purge in the security apparatus. There are so good examples there. They talked about there are more than 300 assassination attempts in that several years against him. He went to Hong Kong, even did not want a day or to stay overnight. He had come back to Simpson that evening.

He's so scared on this. When you are scared, the decision-making process could be really based upon paranoia. And it's so horrible, very horrible, as you said.

>> Paul Peterson: Who seems to suffer from the same insecurity.

>> Suisheng Zhao: Yeah.

>> Glenn Tiffert: We have just a few minutes left. I wonder, but, so, Guo Gang, you can close it out for us.

 

>> Male Speaker 2: Thank you. It's actually a quick question to follow colleagues questions regarding rationality of Chinese foreign policy making. So generally, I agree with you, your analysis is really right and insightful. But still we can observe something, maybe not so many cases, not very much flexibility, but still there is case of flexibility policy adjustment.

A prominent case is China's Russian policy following Russian invasion to Ukraine. Before that, China advocated relationship with Russia without the limit. So after that, they changed the tone to say something about the bottom line policy. So we have a bottom line, but not really as high as possible, no higher limit.

So this kind of, I mean, I would say that there is a rationality for China's interest in terms of foreign relations. So my question is basically, so how can we interpret the mechanism behind this kinda policy adjustment? So that's basically solely Xi Jinping's calculation, smart calculation of situation.

I think that basically, he doesn't want to give up. He's pro Russian. He didn't want to promote relationship in so-called with us upper limit. But anyway, he has strategic adjustment. So why this kind of strategic adjustment happen? So what are those forces behind these kind of adjustments taking place?

So bureaucratic rationality, Priest came to do that, or his own calculation of international politics, or maybe, some kind of a feedback mechanism within the policymaking process? Yeah, that's basically my question.

>> Suisheng Zhao: I really don't know if there is a clear feedback or maybe not clear, honest feedback system, and I would, because I don't know.

I don't have internal information. My hunch is that the decision you talk to, so-called adjustments, is his instinct and his personal reactions to what he got information, which most time incomplete information he got. But also he has his own clear mind, what he wants to do. He has such a personal passion for Russian.

My generation, I don't know, he's one year older than me. We grew up to sing Russian songs and watch Russian movies and read Russian novels. Having such a personal attachment to Russia, I think that's his personal feeling about Russia.

>> Orville Schell: So he really went abroad, and he did nothing.

 

>> Suisheng Zhao: If I did not go to abroad, I would be him.

>> Suisheng Zhao: I'll be evil.

>> Larry Diamond: You would not be.

>> Larry Diamond: His personality does matter.

>> Suisheng Zhao: So that's what he has to know, he knows what he wants. But then he heard, maybe I should have a second thought.

Then when he got opposite, he went back. So at this time, he sent Wangi to Russia. At this time, he's going to Russia. It's totally disaster decisions. But that reflects his own thinking. Doesn't matter it's the kind of bottom line or whatever. That's what I want to do.

That's him. Disasters go to Russia at this time?

>> Glenn Tiffert: Well, thank you for a very rich discussion, one and all. And we very much thank you for coming to us and sharing your new book and talking to us about these extremely important issues. I want to alert everyone that on April 11, our next talk will be introduced to the China in the World Project, which is the first attempt to do a global survey of China's influence activities around the world.

And we'll be getting a survey and a snapshot of various people's work on that in Latin America, in the caucuses, and elsewhere. So please join us for that, and thank you again for sure. It's been a pleasure.