security for many Chinese people. For a culture with a history stretching back thousands of years—much of it spent as one of the most powerful and advanced civilizations in the world—nationalist appeals to restore China's greatness are deeply rooted. The threads of national renewal can be traced to China's reformers and nationalist revolutionary leaders in the late Qing Dynasty and emerged as a common nationalist theme in the fractured politics of China's Republican Era. This resonance is crucial to understanding why the CCP portrays the PRC's rejuvenation as a nationalist project that the Party "shoulders" for the country.
The PRC's Strategy and the CCP. The Party's leaders frame "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and the CCP as indispensable to the PRC overcoming its historical circumstances and attaining national rejuvenation. Xi stated in a speech to the CCP Central Committee in 2013, "Which ideological system a country implements depends on one crucial issue: can this ideology resolve the historical problems facing the country?" From the Party's perspective, its leadership and systems are uniquely able to restore the PRC's strength, prosperity, and prestige—underscored with the implicit warning that any deviation from socialism's path would result in "chaos" and China falling behind on its "historic mission." As Xi stated, "...only socialism can save China—and only Socialism with Chinese Characteristics can develop China."
CCP leaders flatly reject the notion that the Party has abandoned its socialist ideology in recent decades with the introduction of market features into the PRC's economy or drifted towards a non-ideological form of governance. The Party asserts that the PRC remains on the path of "socialist modernization" but it seeks to advance the country gradually as a lesson painfully learned from the Mao-era catastrophes that aimed for rapid progress. Accordingly, the Party claims that to perform its decisive role in guiding the PRC's development into a "great modern socialist country," it must ensure that the country advances in line with "the Four Cardinal Principles (四项基本原则)." First stated by Deng Xiaoping and later written into the CCP Constitution, these principles mandate the Party "to keep to the path of socialism, to uphold the people’s democratic dictatorship, to uphold the leadership of the CCP, and to uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought." The Four Cardinal Principles are the basis for political and governance reforms pursued by the Party and the outer boundaries of its efforts to "reform" and "open up" the country.
Xi told Party cadres in 2014, "promoting the modernization of the national governance system and capacity is definitely not Westernization or capitalism." In addition to cultivating ideological discipline and fighting corruption within the Party, Xi has sought to advance the PRC's strategy by strengthening the Party's primacy across China's governance systems and making the Party more effective at managing China’s political, economic and social problems. Xi's emphasis on building the CCP's institutional capacity and promoting internal unity—which he views as the means for the Party to perform its strategic role—has become a prominent feature of his tenure.
Competition Between Systems. PRC leaders believe that structural changes in the international system and an increasingly confrontational United States are the root causes of intensifying strategic competition between China and the United States. The PRC's leadership has long viewed China as embroiled in a major international strategic competition with other states. Throughout
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
