China’s Leaders Seek to Raise Global Clout to ‘A New Level’
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(Bloomberg) -- China will escalate its challenge to the US-led world order, using a rare Communist Party conference this week to map out a strategy to raise its profile and power on the global stage.
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President Xi Jinping and other senior leaders pledged to raise China’s influence on world events “to a new level,” according to a government statement issued late Thursday after the conference.
“We must reject all acts of power politics and bullying, and vigorously defend our national interests and dignity,” it said, an allusion to what it sees as the US’ anti-China lobbying.
Xi has presided over an aggressive foreign policy agenda designed to bolster China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests — and to position itself as an alternative to the US and other Western democracies, using aid, trade and foreign direct investment to build goodwill and expand its political clout.
See: Xi Touts Alternative to Western Capitalism in Speech on Mao
This is just the fourth instance of the Party conference, following the inaugural meeting in 2006 and follow-ups in 2014 and 2018. It’s the foreign policy equivalent of the twice-a-decade financial policy meeting China held in October.
“We must take a clear and firm position, hold the international moral high ground, and unite and rally the overwhelming majority in our world,” according to the statement.
Underscoring Xi’s determination to challenge the US, he used a speech on Tuesday intended to remember the nation’s founder, Mao Zedong, to instead laud “Chinese modernization.” Xi has promoted that vaguely defined concept since 2021, adding this week that is now “the solemn historical responsibility of today’s Chinese Communists.”
Since Xi started abandoning his stringent approach to curbing Covid-19 in late 2022 — one that cut his nation off from the rest of the world for some three years — he has made a flurry of diplomatic efforts aimed at building China’s global standing.
A special feature of that has been portraying his nation as the champion of emerging economies known as the Global South, mostly through groups in which Beijing has a big say. In August, he called for the BRICS bloc to fasttrack a plan to expand its members, a move that would give his policies and ideas a bigger audience.
Then in October he hosted the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing — an event for his signature infrastructure initiative that has become a club for Global South nations as Europe largely opts out.
Xi has also been building up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as more important regional security grouping. That group helps China forge closer ties with Russia and Iran, two major foes of the US.
And he’s seeking to deepen Beijing’s influence in Central Asia, as Russia focuses on its war in Ukraine. In May, Xi hosted a summit with leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to discuss closer trade and security links.
Xi’s vision of a more influential China even includes the southern Pacific. In a sign of Beijing’s greater interest in the region, this year it appointed its inaugural special envoy for the Pacific islands.
There are indications Beijing is trying to revamp international organizations like the United Nations to better suit its view of the world. It is also stepping up efforts to have a bigger voice on bodies around the world that set technical standards, both to move its manufacturing up the global value chain and grow its influence.
China says the moves are necessary because it deserves a voice to match its economic clout, though critics say it is undermining the bodies, for example by shifting the UN’s focus away from human rights that protect the individual.
The diplomacy meeting Xi attended this week signaled China intends to forge ahead with these projects in the coming years. The nation “faces new strategic opportunities in its development,” the statement said, adding that the country will “foster new dynamics in the relations between China and the world.”
--With assistance from Josh Xiao, Ocean Hou, Evelyn Yu and Janet Paskin.
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