On 1 July 2021, 70,000 people gathered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing for the official centenary celebrations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The centenary was marked by a military parade, patriotic songs and a speech by CCP General Secretary and President of China Xi Jinping. 

Xi spoke at length about China’s national rejuvenation, a somewhat ambiguous objective for restoring Chinese national greatness that Xi has stressed since he first took the reigns as CCP head in 2012. However, it was Xi’s warning to China’s adversaries which elicited the loudest cheers from the audience and has since gathered the most attention from international media and analysts.

Xi addressed the crowd, saying: ‘we will never allow anyone to bully, oppress or subjugate China… Anyone who dares to try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of Steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people’. 

Who was this warning addressed to? Xi did not single out a specific nation, nor did he outline any sweeping changes to China’s foreign policy, so one could quite credibly argue this is just an instance of rhetoric intended to fire up a domestic audience. Indeed, the main audience of Xi’s speech was domestic and the CCP’s primary concern is to keep a firm grip on every aspect of Chinese political, social and economic life. However, China’s acceleration towards potential regional and global hegemony sometime this century has led to increasing friction between Beijing and other actors. At the very least, the uptake of more assertive rhetoric may indicate a shift away from China’s tao guang yang hui (韬光养晦), or ‘keep a low profile’ approach to diplomacy and foreign policy.  It is therefore worth considering who exactly Xi’s threats were levelled at. 

The US 

The United States is perhaps the most obvious target for Xi to have threatened, albeit not directly. Sino-American relations took a very visible turn for the worse in 2018 when the Trump administration launched a trade war against China. These tensions are not likely to dissipate easily because China’s growing power threatens to displace the US as global hegemon. Even if the Sino-American relationship does not devolve entirely into a zero-sum game, it is hard to imagine that Washington’s efforts to preserve the status quo will not be challenged by an increasingly confident Beijing.

Chinese officials have rarely criticised the US explicitly, preferring instead to voice their disapproval of the current world order. For example, speaking at the Bao Forum for Asia in April this year, Xi said: ‘the world wants justice, not hegemony’. This was quite clearly a jab at American primacy, but the Chinese premier was careful not to name the US specifically. Speaking at the centenary celebrations this month, Xi declared: ‘The people of China are not only good at destroying the old world, they have also created a new world’. This is more ambiguous and could refer to the transformation of China itself during the CCP’s rule, but it could also be taken to mean that China is reshaping the wider global order.

The inauguration of a new US president earlier this year has done little to ease Sino-American tensions. During the Biden administration’s first official meeting with China in March, diplomats from both sides criticised each other’s countries. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken opened the proceedings by expressing ‘deep concerns’ regarding China’s actions towards Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the use of cyber attacks and ‘economic coercion’ towards the US and her allies. 

Top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi was not shy to criticise the other side either and responded: ‘I think the problem is that the United States has exercised long-arm jurisdiction and suppression and overstretched the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony, and this has created obstacles for normal trade activities, and the United States has also been persuading some countries to launch attacks on China’. 

Superpower competition is not the only driving force behind a souring of relations. Xi was almost certainly alluding to the US and the West more broadly when he said that China ‘will not tolerate sanctimonious preaching from those who think they have the right to lecture us’. The CCP becomes particularly prickly when its human rights record or domestic policies are questioned. In November 2020, the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who together form the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, called on China to retract policies which would increasingly strip Hong Kong of its autonomy. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian warned that if states ‘dared harm China's sovereignty, they should beware that their eyes could be blinded’. Similarly, in March 2021, China hit back with its own sanctions against the EU, when the US, EU, UK and Canada issued economic penalties on China for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province. 

A sense of victimhood and grievance caused by the West predates these present tensions as a part of Chinese strategic culture. Xi invoked these grievances with references to the century of humiliation in his centenary speech, saying ‘we overcame subversion, sabotage, and armed provocation by imperialist and hegemonic powers’. In the Chinese strategic imagination, leading members of the CCP may trace a continuity between the Chinese Qing dynasty’s capitulation to Great Britain’s gunboat diplomacy in the Opium Wars of the 19^th century, and Washington’s efforts to constrain China’s ambitions for regional hegemony in the Indo-Pacific in the present day. For the Chinese leadership, the century of humiliation, in which the once proud Qing dynasty was forced to yield to a successive list of foreign powers, could come to pass again if the US can successfully contain and constrain China’s ambitions. Symbolically then, Xi’s national rejuvenation is about restoring China to greatness after this bitter century of humiliation. 

Taiwan

Xi’s warning could also have been levelled at Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC). The CCP and ROC have been at odds since the Chinese Civil War which in 1949 culminated in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ruled on the mainland by the CCP and the flight of the Nationalist ROC government to Taiwan. Since then, the CCP has sought to absorb - or ‘reunify’ – Taiwan as a part of the PRC. 

Beijing’s official policy towards Taipei has been for ‘peaceful unification’ and ‘one country, two systems.’  However, following Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and legislative efforts to limit the latter’s autonomy, opinion in Taiwan has moved even further against unification with China. Both the population and politicians in Taiwan alike are more sceptical than ever towards claims by the CCP that Taiwan’s autonomy would be respected following unification.

Xi did comment explicitly on the Taiwan issue during his speech, saying: ‘all sons and daughters of China, including compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, must work together and move forward in solidarity, resolutely smashing any Taiwan independence plots.’ Xi’s comments on Taiwan did not indicate a shift in policy. It remains essentially the same; the preferable scenario for the CCP is a peaceful unification between Taiwan and China, but Taiwan’s independence would cross a red line.

However, two trends may push a shift in Chinese foreign policy. Firstly, support for independence in Taiwan is by no means unanimous, but it is growing. Secondly, China’s means to exert pressure on Taiwan are expanding. These factors may encourage Beijing to adopt a more aggressive stance towards Taiwan. 

China’s rhetoric has certainly become more barbed. In January, Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said ‘We warn those 'Taiwan independence' elements - those who play with fire will burn themselves, and Taiwan independence means war’. More importantly, Beijing has demonstrated a growing willingness to flex its military muscles in Taiwan’s backyard. In April, a total of 25 Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ); specifically, 18 fighter jets, four bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, two anti-submarine aircraft and one early warning aircraft. 

Does this mean the CCP is seriously contemplating an invasion of Taiwan? Probably not, although it remains a very distant possibility. Instead, China is more likely to adopt a long-term strategy of hybrid warfare to demoralise and weaken Taiwan. This would involve application of the Three Warfares: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare to undermine the foundations of Taiwanese security and society. China is already doing this. For example, during Taiwanese elections last year, Beijing sought to mould the way information is produced, disseminated and consumed in Taiwan in order to shape public opinion. As Xi strives towards his goal of national rejuvenation, to which reunification with Taiwan is an essential part, China will only intensify the commitment of its combined military, economic, diplomatic and informational means towards this objective.

China’s Neighbours

China may possess the unenviable accolade of ‘country with the most territorial disputes.’ China has ongoing territorial disputes with India, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Bhutan, Laos, Mongolia and Myanmar.  Evidently, any combination of these states could be the subject of Xi’s warning.

It is with India that a territorial dispute has the greatest potential to turn deadly, as it did on 15 June 2020 when Indian and Chinese troops clashed over a contested border in the Galwan River valley, resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese. The disputed borders are located around Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Clashes between the two sides in 2020 and 2021 reportedly occurred as almost medieval style melees because of an agreement made in 1996 prohibiting the use of firearms and explosives in contested areas, in a bid to limit escalation.

China’s ends here are difficult to discern. Escalation remains a frightening possibility, not least because both actors possess nuclear weapons. The two sides even went to war in 1962 over the same contested Himalayan border region. However, China - and India for that matter – have little to gain from a full-blown conflict. The two emerging powers share a complex blend of competing and complimentary interests which complicate their relationship. Sino-Indian competition in the Indian Ocean is likely to increase in addition to the Himalayan border contest but the two sides will continue to be bound by economic interdependency. The CCP leadership may reason that occasionally injuring the Indians below the threshold of open warfare may encourage the latter to accept their place as second fiddle to China and abandon any dreams of regional hegemony. 

Sino-Japanese relations have rarely been entirely free from tensions. During the centenary speech, Xi was keen to stress China’s struggle against the ‘imperialist and hegemonic powers’, which could just as easily have been a reference to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the First and Second Sino-Japanese Wars (1894-1895 and 1937-1945), as it could to the Western powers’ machinations during the century of humiliation.

Both states perceive each other as a threat. According to a 2016 Pew Research Center report, only 11% of Japanese people surveyed hold a positive view of China, and only 14% of Chinese possess a positive view of Japan. Furthermore, a whopping 74% of Chinese perceive the Japanese to be violent. It is probable that many in the audience at the centenary celebrations thought of Japan when Xi spoke about bullies and oppressors.

At the strategic level, China and Japan have reasons to be wary of one another. Generally, the Chinese are suspicious that Tokyo is collaborating with Washington to contain Beijing’s ambitions in the region. Meanwhile, the Japanese are concerned that China’s grasp at regional hegemony will undermine their own interests, particularly regarding the status of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which are claimed by both sides. A Japanese defence white paper published this month, which explicitly highlighted China as a threat to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, Taiwan and the region as a whole, reflects the poor state of relations between the two. China’s decision to send a fleet of four coast guard vessels to patrol the waters surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands not long after the publication of Japan’s defence white paper hints at a growing willingness in Beijing to test Tokyo’s nerve.

It is harder to imagine that Beijing’s smaller neighbours could credibly ‘bully, oppress or enslave’ China given the huge disparity in power between say, China and Vietnam. However, a deeper dive into Chinese strategic culture reveals that Xi’s warning could also have been directed against the smaller players in the region.

China’s old name for itself, the ‘Middle Kingdom’ or ‘Central Kingdom’ implies a lot about its historically formed self-perception. As the Middle Kingdom, China has long seen itself as being at the very centre of the universe with a moral authority to rule Tianxia, or ‘all under heaven’. China’s successive ruling dynasties viewed civilization as emanating outwards to all corners of the Earth from China itself. China’s closet neighbours historically fulfilled the role of vassals and tributary states; that some of them today fail to defer to China is seen as a deviation from the natural order of things. Xi’s national rejuvenation project may very well be complete when China is restored to its status as hegemonic Middle Kingdom.

What does any of this mean in terms of actual foreign policy? Quite simply that Beijing has very little respect for the concept of sovereign equality among nations or international law. For example, in July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled that China’s activities within the Philippines’ economic exclusive zone (EEZ), such as illegal fishing, were an infringement upon Filipino sovereignty. The PCA’s ruling was flatly rejected by Beijing and in recent years a growing number of complaints have risen amongst Filipino fishermen that Chinese enforcement vessels have rammed their boats or turned water cannons on them.

From Beijing’s point of view, the efforts of smaller regional actors to constrain or contain China, oppose China’s territorial claims, or hedge against Chinese hegemony are acts of bullying and oppression intended to prevent China’s inevitable national rejuvenation.

Conclusion

Under Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, Beijing was at pains to assure the world that China’s rise would be a peaceful one. Xi’s government is still keen to communicate that message to the international community, but the uptake of more confrontational rhetoric is telling of the changing times. China’s neighbours are increasingly nervous at what Beijing may do next to erode their sovereignty and an optimistic attitude towards China’s ascent has rapidly evaporated in the West. Should Beijing deem its interests to be unfairly threatened, its adversaries will have more to worry about than bombastic rhetoric.