Beijing's Campaign to Make Friends and Influence People as it Aspires to Commanding Heights

"A long-standing trope in the U.S. debate on that subject is that China itself doesn’t know what it seeks to achieve, that its leaders haven’t yet worked out how far Beijing’s influence should reach. Yet there is a growing body of evidence, assembled and interpreted by talented China experts, that the Chinese government is indeed aiming for global power and perhaps global primacy over the next generation — that it seeks to upend the American-led international system and create at least a competing, quasi-world order of its own."

"It doesn’t take unparalleled powers of deduction to reach this conclusion. Top Chinese officials and members of the country’s foreign policy community are becoming increasingly explicit in saying so themselves."

"President Xi Jinping more than hinted at this goal in his landmark address to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017. That speech represents one of the most authoritative statements of the party’s policy and aims; it reflects Xi’s understanding of what China has accomplished under communist rule and how it must advance in the future."

"Xi declared that China “has stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong,” and that it was now “blazing a new trail for other developing countries” and offering “Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.” By 2049, Xi promised, China would “become a global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence” and would build a “stable international order” in which China’s “national rejuvenation” could be fully achieved.

This was the statement of a leader who sees his country not just participating in global affairs but setting the terms, and it testifies to two core themes in China’s foreign policy discourse."

Hai Brands, Bloomberg

Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed that by 2049, China would “become a global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence.” | BLOOMBERG

"Out of the bottom of my heart: good riddance", stated Geng Shuang, Beijing's deputy ambassador to the United Nations after Germany's ambassador Christoph Heusgen's two-year tenure on the 15-member revolving Security Council was coming to an end and he appealed to China to release the two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, held the past two years on spurious charges of 'espionage'. It would be a goodwill gesture, he recommended. Earning him the open spite and abuse of the Chinese diplomat.

"Let me end my tenure on the Security Council by appealing to my Chinese colleagues to ask Beijing for the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Christmas is the right moment for such a gesture", offered Ambassador Heusgen on December 22nd at the council session. "I wish to say something out of the bottom of my heart: Good riddance, Ambassador Heusgen", responded Ambassador Geng. "I am hoping that the council in your absence in the year 2021 will be in a better position to fulfill the responsibilities…for maintaining international peace and security."

A man holds a sign bearing photographs of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have been detained in China for two years, outside B.C. Supreme Court where Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was attending a hearing, in Vancouver, on Jan. 21, 2020. Photo by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press/File

This is a China the rest of the world doesn't quite recognize by its past activities; a China promoting peace and security for the world order. And in its heartfelt efforts to do just that it used the festive season in its own inimitable way by placing a dozen people on trial who had been arrested in Hong Kong; their criminal act was an attempt to flee Beijing's clamp-down on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, hoping to escape the new security laws that would brand them criminals by committing a criminal act; escaping to Taiwan.

The trial for the dozen men was held in secret then adjourned with no word of its outcome. China responded when an American official criticized the event by demanding he "immediately stop interfering in China's internal affairs". It is no secret that President Xi Jinping intends to elevate China's stature in the international community, and with it his own through the personality cult he has assiduously groomed China to accept. The reasoning behind China's Communist Party's decision to forge full steam ahead on its charm offensive to attain that end, is certainly unique to China.

What other country besides the one singular geography holding the largest population in the world -- that has engineered itself skillfully into the position of a global trade and manufacturing behemoth, one that belligerently views its neighbours as obstructing its air, land and sea sovereign claims over both international and disputed areas, and which has launched an immense global investment and infrastructure campaign of dependency to widen its reach and influence -- would engage those it sees as world leaders and competitors with contemptful outpourings of scorn?

 

Beijing appears to have instructed its diplomats abroad to aggressively pursue China's interests against any and all criticism of its modus operandi. Its decades-long covert plan to dispatch agents infiltrating the political arenas, academic circles, businesses and manufacturing of competitive nations to acquire trade and military secrets has given it huge advantages over what it sees as its adversaries. China stretches its octopus arms through its mammoth communications and technology corporations investing in other countries and integrating into their networks.

 

And then came SARS-CoV-2, a virus that erupted out of the blue -- or an escapee from a biotechnology laboratory in Wuhan -- that flooded that city, crept through China, then swept onward to infest the world community. Triggering the CCP's propaganda mechanism into full swing, denying responsibility for COVID-19, hazarding it entered through a U.S. plot, that it emerged from Italy, entered China through imported frozen foods. A dictatorship experiences few problems, little resistance in clamping its population into a virtual concentration camp, starving out the virus.

But if a virus could conceivably be steered and channeled, COVID took it under advisement to strike China's number one competitor as the world's sole global powerhouse, hitting its target and thus far killing 330,000 Americans even as in China things have returned to a state of normalcy. And Beijing boasts its success in taming the virus, exiling it elsewhere around the world, ravaging continents. While Beijing gets on with its charm offensive in Australia. Which exports enormous shipments of coal to China under normal conditions, but is now blackballed by Beijing, stamped 'paid' for Australia's urging of an international commission of enquiry into COVID's China connections.

China's beneficence to its Uyghur Muslim population, extending its hand in benevolence, with free courses on how to eject Islam from their lives and live instead with Chinese Communal benefits due to all in harmonious relations, leaving splittism in the dust bin of failed aspirations, cannot help but endear China to the Turkic Uyghurs. Tibetans and Mongolians are similarly grateful to Beijing's attention in ensuring they become model Chinese citizens, abandoning unneeded culture and language for the benefits of living as Chinese in thrall to happy contentment

Threats to Taiwan and India, Vietnam and Japan? A matter of twisted perception; no threats exist; they must simply accede to Beijing's expectations of them, simple enough. Unity and respect, that's all that Beijing expects from its neighbours, who must refrain from challenging Beijing's rightful claims of sovereignty over land, sea and air. And all would be sweetness and light. Except that there are some problems with President Xi's masterpiece plan, the "belt-and-road" scheme benefiting developing countries from Africa to Europe to the Middle East.

A bit of backfire from SARS-CoV-2. Where the very countries that face mountainous debts to Beijing for its generous loans in massive infrastructure programs are now struggling to keep their heads above COVID-inspired tsunamis of financial defaults from a collapsing economic situation. Low-income countries strapped for cash are beginning to default over their mega-projects leaving China with a bit of a financial problem. "It's undeniable that the program has run into deep trouble, along with many of the associated loans", noted Bloomberg News.

Workers take down a Belt and Road Forum panel outside the venue of the forum in Beijing.  Greg Baker | AFP | Getty Images