The Elements of the China Challenge/II. China's Conduct

II. China’s Conduct

To understand the character of the contest for supremacy launched by the CCP, it is necessary to grasp the major features of China’s conduct. These include the PRC’s brand of authoritarian governance, its use of economic might to surpass the United States in influence in every region of the world as well as in international organizations, and its development of a world-class military designed to counter and eventually surpass the U.S. military. These features have been studied in isolation and each is well-known to experts in one field or another. Their comprehensive and interlocking character, however, is not widely appreciated. Considering them together brings into focus the CCP’s paramount geopolitical aim: to achieve global preeminence by reorganizing the international order around the party’s understanding of socialism.

Authoritarianism at Home

China’s conduct in world affairs stems from the CCP’s form of authoritarian government. In line with 20th-century communist dogma and the precepts and practices of Marxist-Leninist regimes, the CCP exercises repressive, single-party rule over some 1.4 billion people. Recently, the party amended the PRC constitution to remove term limits on the presidency occupied by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping.

In the decades after the violent suppression of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the CCP intensified internal repression and fortified its control over the country by expanding the systematic use of indoctrination, censorship, disinformation, high-tech surveillance, forced disappearances, and other brutal means.13 To erase the ethnic and religious identities of Xinjiang’s nearly 11 million Turkic Muslims, the party has damaged and destroyed mosques; imprisoned more than one million Uyghurs in so-called “re-education” camps that subject prisoners to indoctrination, compulsory labor, forced sterilization, involuntary birth control, and other heinous abuses; and implemented mass surveillance, DNA collection, and other forms of coercive social control.14 As part of China’s national policy to forcibly integrate minorities, which is sometimes referred to as “stability maintenance,” the CCP has heightened repression of some 6 million Tibetans — severely restricting freedom of speech, religion, movement, association, and assembly.15 It has also curtailed the freedom of more than 4 million ethnic Mongolians living in China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region in an effort to sinicize them.16 And, as part of its crackdown on Christians in China, a population estimated to number as many as 70 million, the CCP has imprisoned pastors, shut down churches, banned online religious services, and contemplated a plan to rewrite the Bible to purge it of ideas that conflict with party dogma.17

The CCP also seeks to extend the reach of China’s sovereignty. In the months following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, China — in defiance of its promises to keep Hong Kong free and open and to maintain the territory’s high degree of autonomy under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law — imposed a national security law that destroys the territory’s autonomy and robs Hong Kong’s residents of their essential freedoms.18 Beijing also insists that Taiwan — today a free and prosperous democracy — has always been and must remain part of China and threatens reunification by military force.19 And, asserting maritime claims in the South China Sea far beyond those recognized by international law, China has shifted the balance of power in the sea by building on and militarizing disputed islands.20

The communism that the CCP professes is more than a mode of authoritarian domestic governance. It is also a theory of a globe-spanning universal society, the ultimate goal of which is to bring about a socialist international order. At the same time, the CCP proclaims hyper-nationalist aspirations with roots in Chinese cultural and political traditions — however much twisted and deformed by the party — that require the PRC to occupy the commanding position in world affairs. The party’s synthesis of 20th-century communist dogma and extreme Chinese nationalism drives the PRC’s conduct within and beyond its borders.

Economic Co-optation and Coercion

Economic power is a leading element of the CCP’s quest for preeminence in world affairs. Before modernization, China often acquired leverage over its neighbors, whom it more or less viewed as comprising the known world, through the creation of dependence in commerce.21

Today, thanks in part to globalization and to the CCP’s rapid modernization over the last forty years, the known world for China has expanded to encompass the globe. The CCP has adapted the old approach to China’s new circumstances. All major economies are vulnerable to the CCP’s economic co-optation and coercion because of their extensive commercial ties with the PRC and their desire to maintain access to China’s low-cost labor force and enormous consumer markets. America’s own economic entwinement with China dwarfs U.S. commercial relations with the former Soviet Union.22

As China reaped the benefits of modernization and accelerated economic development, the CCP set its sights on dominating the global economy by leading in the cutting-edge sciences and the high-tech revolution. On its way to building the world’s second largest economy after the United States, the party developed various initiatives and programs integral to Beijing’s long-term strategy of using a “whole-of-nation” approach to achieve — including by deceptive, corrupt, and illicit means — decisive advantage over the United States and other advanced industrial nations.

First, China engages in massive intellectual-property theft.23 The PRC has perpetrated the greatest illegitimate transfer of wealth in human history, stealing technological innovation and trade secrets from companies, universities, and the defense sectors of the United States and other nations.24 According to research cited by the Office of the United States Trade Representative, China’s efforts — including forced technology transfer, cyberattacks, and a whole-of-nation approach to economic and industrial espionage — cost the U.S. economy as much as $600 billion annually.25 This staggering sum approaches the Pentagon’s annual national defense budget and exceeds the total profits of the Fortune 500’s top 50 companies. All 56 FBI field offices are conducting China-related economic-espionage investigations across nearly every industrial sector.26

Second, China pursues control over key international supply chains and essential materials and goods. Since Beijing’s controversial 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization, U.S. multinational companies have relied increasingly on the PRC’s low-cost labor force to produce and export cheaper finished goods, especially in high-technology and advanced-manufacturing sectors. This shift resulted in lower prices for U.S. consumers and higher profits for U.S. companies. Among the costs, however, was a “China Shock” that devastated small- and medium-sized manufacturing in the United States and other nations, wiping out as many as 2.4 million jobs in America alone and leaving crucial international supply chains dependent on China.27 The global pandemic has thrown this supply-chain vulnerability into sharp relief.

Third, China seeks worldwide industrial dominance, particularly in critical high-tech sectors. While manufacturing superiority proved decisive in U.S. victories in World War II and the Cold War, the United States lost that advantage in many essential industries. For example, China today accounts for 50 percent of global steel and aluminum production, 70 percent of consumer electronics manufacturing capacity, 90 percent of consumer drone production, 45 percent of shipbuilding production, and, by 2022, will likely account for 35 percent of the world’s integrated-circuit fabrication capacity.28 By 2022, China and Taiwan are set to house 70 percent of global capacity for integrated-circuit fabrication, including virtually all cutting-edge production,29 which is vital to the digital economy, advanced weapons systems, aerospace, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and other essential industries. The PRC aggressively implements industrial policy through efforts like its “Made in China 2025” initiative, which develops Chinese “national champion” companies in ten decisive areas: (1) AI, quantum computing, and next-generation information technology; (2) robotics and automation; (3) aerospace and space; (4) high-tech shipping and oceanic engineering; (5) high-speed railway; (6) energy efficiency; (7) new materials; (8) biotechnology, medical devices, and advanced pharmaceuticals; (9) next-generation energy and power generation; and (10) agricultural machinery.30 By displacing the United States and other advanced industrial nations in these vital domains, China intends not only to acquire control over global commerce, but also to support its “Military-Civil Fusion” (MCF) strategy for leveraging legally and illegally acquired advanced and emerging technologies to strengthen its armed forces. The PRC’s progress in AI poses a particular risk because the CCP, unconstrained by respect for individual liberty and human rights, exploits the massive quantities of data that it collects to refine the AI algorithms that will power the next generation of networked technology.31

Fourth, China aims to build the world’s fifth generation (5G) wireless-telecommunications physical and digital infrastructure as a steppingstone to broader dominance in emerging and next-generation information technologies. Beijing heavily subsidizes state-directed Huawei and ZTE, enabling these telecommunications behemoths to undercut rivals in the race to construct 5G networks on every continent.32 Since Huawei and ZTE are subject to China’s various national security laws that compel them to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work,” countries that use them as 5G vendors face growing threats to their network integrity, data privacy, economic stability, and national security.33 Moreover, under the guise of so-called “smart city” development projects, Huawei and ZTE can export to autocratic regimes around the world the same Orwellian tools that they provide the CCP to surveil people in China.34 Meanwhile, since military operations, espionage, and political warfare depend on information and data, China invests large sums to gain advantage in cyberspace, including physical architecture, operating systems, and hardware.35

Fifth, the CCP uses the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — originally called One Belt One Road (OBOR) and still so designated by the PRC in Chinese-language sources — and other undertakings to expand foreign markets for Chinese companies and as a means of drawing nations, particularly their political and economic elites, into Beijing’s geopolitical orbit. BRI infrastructure projects — ports, railroads, highways, dams, industrial parks, civil nuclear facilities and other energy related initiatives, and more — typically rely on imported Chinese workers rather than local labor, and sometimes involve 50- to 100-year business relationships that entrench China’s long-term access to local elites and confer power over key parts of the host country’s critical infrastructure. Because of the heavy economic and environmental costs imposed by the CCP, host countries increasingly find these BRI projects unsustainable. As a result of China’s predatory development program and debt-trap diplomacy, for example, Sri Lanka lost control of a major port after defaulting on a burdensome loan.36

Sixth, China leverages often unfettered access to foreign capital markets.37 In particular, U.S. stock exchanges today list over 130 Chinese companies — including Alibaba, PetroChina Company Limited, China Life Insurance Company Limited, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, Baidu, and Tencent — with a combined valuation of over $1 trillion.38 Following massive financial and accounting scandals in the early 2000s, the U.S. Congress enacted laws requiring regulators to inspect the audits of all U.S.-listed companies.39 China is the only country that invokes its state security laws to block U.S. regulators from conducting these inspections.40 Moreover, U.S. investors and pension holders unwittingly pour billions into managed funds that invest in Chinese companies that are listed on exchanges outside the United States. Moreover, some foreign-listed Chinese companies — including Hikvision, Dahua Technology, and the weapons-manufacturing subsidiaries of Aviation Industry Corporation of China — have ties to Beijing’s military modernization, espionage, and human rights abuses, and may be subject to U.S. sanctions and export controls.41

Seventh, China exploits the freedom and openness of the world’s liberal democracies to undercut their governance, prosperity, and national security. Beijing regularly threatens to cut off access to its vast markets to force foreign businesses in free countries to conform to the CCP’s political demands and speech regulations. Prominent cases include China’s efforts to compel foreign airlines to list Taiwan as part of the PRC, to silence the National Basketball Association after the Houston Rockets’ then-general manager tweeted — from U.S. soil — his support for Hong Kong protesters seeking to preserve their city’s individual freedoms and political autonomy, and to extract an apology from Mercedes-Benz for using an image of the Dalai Lama in online advertising.42 In addition, the CCP carries out massive propaganda and disinformation efforts.43 The party uses the Thousand Talents Program (TTP) and other party-run recruitment efforts to target universities and impel students and professors to obtain — lawfully or otherwise — technology, trade secrets, proprietary data, and research and development.44 It generously funds Confucius Institutes, which specialize in disseminating CCP propaganda,45 at universities in the United States and in other countries through confidential funding agreements that oblige the institutions to avoid criticism of China and to otherwise comply with CCP objectives.46 And the CCP tracks foreign government officials at the national and subnational levels, not least in the United States, to find opportunities for influence.47

By means of these and other initiatives and programs — and unconstrained by respect for international law and human rights — the PRC wields its vast economic power globally to bring countries under its sway. Increasingly, the CCP links its clout in commerce and investment to shows of advanced military capabilities, with the aim of expanding its global influence.

A World-Class Military

China’s economic might and technological prowess advance its development of a world-class military that is intended to rival and in the long-term surpass the U.S. military and those of its allies.48 The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which owes allegiance to the CCP, is central to the party’s goal of empowering China to play the decisive role on the world stage. Following his selection in 2012 as CCP General Secretary, Xi Jinping intensified the PLA’s decades-long military modernization. Also named chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi used the 2012 Defense White Paper to direct the PLA to achieve a status “commensurate with” China’s “international standing.”49 On January 1, 2016, the PLA announced a comprehensive reorganization of its force structure, setting the military on a path of expansion that paralleled China’s economic advances, and which would enable it “to combat and win battles.”50

The CCP’s extensive military transformation exhibits China’s strategic intentions. The 2016 reorganization created five theater-based joint commands — akin to the United States’ geographic commands — and two functional commands. The responsibilities of the newly formed Strategic Support Force (SSF) include cyber and space operations and electronic warfare as well as psychological-warfare operations. The SSF, along with Joint Logistics Support Force, will enable the PLA to project military power over great distances and to contest “new military strategic commanding heights.”51 The 2016 reform elevated China’s nuclear forces, which Xi emphasizes are essential to China’s major-power status, from a subordinate command to a separate stand-alone military service. Accordingly, he called upon the PLA Rocket Force “to enhance its nuclear deterrents and nuclear counterstrike capabilities.”52

Having undertaken these structural reforms, Xi used the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 to announce goals for the transformation of the PLA’s operations and capabilities. He directed the military to achieve mechanization, make strides in applying information technology, and improve its strategic capabilities. His goal is to complete the transformation of the PLA and the People’s Armed Police into “world-class forces by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the PRC’s founding.”53

China learned well from U.S. military success in the 1991 Gulf War and the military offset strategy the United States adopted in the 1970s to address the Soviet challenge.54 To counter the U.S. military’s technological advantage, PLA leadership developed an offset strategy of its own. Top officials in the U.S. Department of Defense have warned that the United States can no longer take for granted military superiority in East Asia.55

China embarked on five distinct but mutually supporting lines of effort:

• “Military-Civil Fusion” (MCF) to achieve the world’s most technologically sophisticated military by acquiring, including through illegal means, advanced and emerging technologies from the United States and from countries around the globe;
• “Systems-destruction warfare” strategy — emphasizing attacks on command and control centers — to shut down enemy operational systems;
• Vast arsenals of ground-based precision missiles to penetrate U.S. defenses;
• “Assassin’s Mace” capabilities to surprise the adversary from unexpected vectors;
• Industrial dominance to attain world leadership in artificial intelligence.56

China’s offset strategy has resulted in a form of asymmetric arms racing. Beijing has invested in large numbers of ground-based theater missiles, third- and fourth-generation aircraft carrying advanced standoff missiles, diesel submarines capable of dominating regional waters, counterspace and cyber capabilities, and an increasingly advanced nuclear arsenal. The PLA’s rapid progress in producing and deploying hypersonic missiles — designed to defeat U.S. and allied missile defenses — underscores Beijing’s determination to achieve asymmetric advantages.57 It does not appear that China is mirroring Soviet behavior by sprinting to quantitative nuclear parity, but evidence mounts that Beijing seeks to at least double the size of its nuclear forces and achieve a form of qualitative equivalence with the United States.58

Meanwhile, China has placed more satellites in space than any country other than the United States.59 Beijing is also working on a range of counter-space and anti-satellite capabilities designed to threaten U.S. nuclear and critical military command and control assets.60 The PLA demonstrated its progress in 2007 when it conducted a successful anti-satellite test, destroying a Chinese satellite operating in the same low-earth orbit as U.S. military-imaging satellites.

The PRC has also adopted non-military stratagems to complicate U.S. military operations. Previous administrations cited nonproliferation as a bright spot in U.S.-China cooperation, but the evidence belies the rosy assessments. Despite Chinese commitments, Iran, North Korea and Syria continue to obtain WMD material and technology from Chinese entities while using Chinese territory as a transshipment point.61 According to the State Department’s annual report on international compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements, China “has failed to adhere to its November 2000 commitment to the United States not to assist ‘in any way, any country in the development of ballistic missiles that can be used to deliver nuclear weapons (i.e., missiles capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kilograms to a distance of at least 300 kilometers).’”62 The report went on to note, “This failure to adhere to its November 2000 commitment is reflected in Chinese entities’ continued supply of items to missile programs of proliferation concern.”63 Beijing’s direct assistance to WMD proliferators declined after it signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992. Yet China continues to support, or at least condone, the proliferation of WMD and missile capabilities in order to undermine the security of those whom the PRC considers regional or global adversaries.64

While the PRC uses an offset strategy to advance its objectives in the first island chain — stretching from Japan to Taiwan to the northern Philippines to northern Borneo to the Malay Peninsula — CCP leadership and military strategists believe that AI and other emerging technologies will drive a revolution in military affairs that culminates in what they call “intelligent warfare.”65 By implementing a whole-of-system strategy and driving this revolution, the CCP hopes the PLA will achieve military dominance within the next 25 years.

In the near-to-medium term, China will use its military capabilities, operational concepts, and overall doctrine to turn the U.S. military’s technological strengths in the Indo-Pacific into weaknesses by credibly threatening to deliver massive punishment against American power-projection forces while thwarting the United States’ ability to provide reinforcement. This would signal to regional powers a fait accompli too costly to overturn. The PRC’s strategy is not only to prevail but also to demoralize America’s friends and partners by demonstrating that the United States cannot meet its security commitments in the region — at least not quickly or at an acceptable cost. This strategy is especially pertinent to Taiwan.

China’s Long March to Global Preeminence: Increasing Region-by-Region Influence and Reshaping International Organizations

China’s quest for preeminence — powered by economic might, cutting-edge technology, and an increasingly powerful military — proceeds outward through the Indo-Pacific to encompass the globe. It includes the reshaping of international organizations, a domain critical to the CCP’s efforts to remake the norms and standards of global governance.

The Indo-Pacific

After World War II, the United States helped to develop the Indo-Pacific’s free and open order. The PRC seeks to diminish U.S. influence by fostering a sense in the region’s nations that China’s dominance is inevitable. Prime targets include U.S. treaty-based allies — Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines — as well as emerging strategic partners such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan. The PRC is also undermining the security, autonomy, and economic interests of many others in the region — such as member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including those in the vital Mekong Region, as well as the nations of the Pacific Islands. Moreover, China perceives rising India as a rival and seeks to impel it to accommodate Beijing’s ambitions by engaging economically while constraining New Delhi’s strategic partnership with the United States, Japan, Australia, and its relations with other democracies.

Beijing provides digital technology and physical infrastructure to advance the CCP’s authoritarian objectives throughout the region, including Northeast Asia, the South China Sea, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. In addition to efforts to become the region’s 5G vendor of choice, China pursues deals on airports and seaports and other infrastructure for strategic purposes — for example, a 99-year lease on Australia’s Port Darwin, a $10-billion deal to build the Philippines’s Sangley Point International Airport outside Manila, and a $1.3-billion project to construct Burma’s Kyaukphyu deep-sea port.66

China has employed campaigns of disinformation, and even interference and malign influence, against in democracies across the Indo-Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. These and other undertakings erode democratic institutions and norms, not least through intimidation designed to compel the adoption of policies that advance China’s interests.67

In South and Central Asia, the PRC invests heavily in transportation infrastructure to expand trade routes to Eurasia and Europe and to secure the flow of energy, raw materials, and other resources. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) serves as the Belt and Road Initiative’s Central Asia flagship. CPEC also connects to the BRI’s “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” greatly enhancing China’s access to the Middle East through Pakistan’s Gwadar port and linking to PRC projects at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, Bangladesh’s Chittagong port, and the Maldives’s Feydhoo Finolhu Port.68 Through Chinese companies that are often untrustworthy vendors, the CCP offers public-security solutions — featuring “command centers, CCTV cameras, intelligent video surveillance, facial and license plate recognition technology, crowd monitoring, situational awareness detection, noise monitoring or detection, abandoned object detection, and social media monitoring”69 — to countries across the region.

China supplements economic power in the Indo-Pacific with demonstrations of military capability. The PLA Air Force regularly conducts long-range bomber patrols out to the second island chain70 (stretching from Japan through the Mariana Islands and Micronesia) while the PLA Navy operates surface and sub-surface naval forces from Southeast Asia to the Indian Ocean, and challenges naval and law enforcement vessels in the South China Sea and East China Sea. The PLA recently provoked skirmishes along its disputed border with India, which killed dozens on both sides, and remains in a tense standoff with India’s military. Beijing menaces democratic Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, intending to reunify Taiwan with the Mainland — by force if necessary.71 And the PLA Navy and Chinese Coast Guard increasingly challenge Japan’s administrative control of the Senkaku Islands.72

China flexes its muscles in the Indo-Pacific in open defiance of international law. For example, since seizing administrative control of the Scarborough Shoal following a 2012 standoff with the Philippines, China has used PLA naval and civilian patrols to assert sovereignty over the shoal. Beijing dismissed the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling, which rejects the PRC’s so-called “nine-dash line” historical claims to the South China Sea and upholds the Philippines’s claim to the shoal.73 The PRC also ignored the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling that the Mischief Reef in the South China Sea belongs to the Philippines’s continental shelf and falls under its Exclusive Economic Zone. In defiance of the legal judgment, China maintains a military base, harbor, and runway on the atoll.74 By deploying anti-ship cruise missiles, long-range surface-to-air missiles, and other military systems in the Spratly Islands, moreover, the PRC blatantly violates Xi’s 2015 public pledge that “China does not intend to pursue militarization” in the disputed areas.75 China intensified its maritime militarization by provoking a dispute in December 2019, over the sovereignty of Indonesia’s Natuna Islands. In June 2020, China sank a Vietnamese fishing trawler, and, also this year, engaged in a six-month standoff with Malaysia over hydrocarbon resources in the latter’s Exclusive Economic Zone.76 Finally, while China has voted for all ten rounds of United Nations sanctions against North Korea, Beijing has watered down each resolution and continues to aid the dictatorial regime in Pyongyang through the provision of food, oil, and investment.77 By reducing pressure on North Korea, China’s uneven enforcement of the sanctions regime has enabled Pyongyang to develop its nuclear weapons program.78

Russia

China finds a strategic partner in Russia, a fellow authoritarian power. In recent months, U.S. government officials and other international observers have noted Beijing’s growing efforts to coordinate with Moscow to spread disinformation around the world on COVID-19.79 The current version of China’s and Russia’s strategic partnership, however, long predates the global pandemic.80 While neither a formal military alliance nor devoid of tension, this partnership is grounded in shared interests — most notably weakening U.S. power and influence — and in recent years Beijing and Moscow have substantially expanded it.81

China has intensified economic, energy, and technological ties with Russia — especially after the United States and European nations imposed sanctions in response to Moscow’s illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continuing aggression in the eastern Ukraine. The PRC worked with Russia to increase use of the Chinese yuan and Russian ruble over the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade, in part to insulate both nations from U.S.-led financial sanctions.82 China remains Russia’s biggest trading partner,83 and Russia has emerged as one of Beijing’s top oil suppliers: Moscow dropped to number two in 2019 after Saudi Arabia’s record 83.3 million tonnes of annual oil exports to the PRC slightly eclipsed Russia’s previous record of 77.6 million tonnes.84 Beijing and Moscow also initiated a “Power of Siberia” natural gas pipeline to the PRC, a $55 billion project over the next three decades that forms part of a larger $400 billion development deal for Russian natural gas.85 In addition, Russia and China cooperate in pursuit of energy in the Arctic, though Moscow and other Arctic nations eye with varying degrees of wariness the PRC’s efforts to establish itself as a “near-Arctic state.”86

Beijing and Moscow share a strong interest in the race for advanced technologies, with Russian President Vladimir Putin describing the U.S.-led international campaign against China’s telecommunications giant Huawei as “the first technological war of the coming digital era.”87 Authoritarian powers deeply distrustful of their own peoples, the PRC and Russia cooperate on surveillance and artificial intelligence for security and strategic applications.88

The convergence in their extensive use of propaganda and disinformation reflects the growing strategic alignment between Russia and China. Like Russia, the PRC finds fertile opportunities for expanding influence in European countries that are struggling to fight endemic corruption as they build sturdy, transparent, and accountable political institutions. Both China and Russia use strategic corruption — that is, the weaponization for strategic ends of corrupt individuals, organizations, and government bodies — to weaken freedom and democracy.89 Chinese influence operations in Europe, which have accelerated amid the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly resemble those of Russia in their aggressive use of disinformation, manipulation of social divisions, and propagation of conspiracies.

The renewed Sino-Russian partnership involves a consequential military component. Having long served as China’s principal arms supplier and exercise partner, Russia recently enhanced the types of weapons — including the S-400 air-defense system and Sovremenny-class destroyers and advanced cruise missiles for anti-ship warfare — that it sells to China.90 The partnership also has resulted in more sophisticated joint military exercises aimed at preparing for encounters with the United States and its allies and partners.91 Cooperation between Beijing and Moscow extends beyond the operational military level to include nuclear and strategic issues. In June 2019, Xi and Putin released a joint statement pledging to work together on nuclear arms-control issues and committing to maintain global strategic stability.92 A short time later, the two nations marked a new stage of strategic cooperation by conducting a joint long-range bomber patrol with nuclear-capable aircraft that violated South Korean and Japanese airspace.93

While the PRC and Russia operate as strategic partners, growing power disparities — along with the inevitable distrust that marks relations among authoritarian powers — make the establishment of a formal alliance unlikely.94 As the U.S. Economic and Security Review Commission has observed, “There are a number of areas where Beijing’s and Moscow’s national interests do not align, such as territorial claims and partnerships with countries that Russia or China consider regional rivals.”95 Moreover, Russia’s economic decline and China’s global rise — the PRC’s GDP is about eight times that of Russia’s economy, which suffers from stagnant growth and onerous sanctions96 — render Moscow the “junior partner,” raising Russian concerns that the PLA will become a military threat.97

Europe and the UK

With their advanced economies and considerable diplomatic influence, Europe and the UK have emerged as an important front in the strategic competition between the United States and China. Knowing that a united transatlantic alliance would provide great advantages to the United States and allies and partners in the struggle over the shape of world order, the PRC wields its economic power to divide Europe and the UK from the United States and pull European nations and the British toward Beijing. Beijing does not necessarily seek allies in Europe and the UK; rather, it seeks to dissuade nations in the region from aligning with the United States and to limit the ability of Europe and the UK to unify against China. The PRC wants to convince Europe and the UK that their political future lies not in the free, open, and rules-based international order, but in a new multipolar arrangement that respects geopolitical spheres of influence and regards allegations of internal repression as infringements on national sovereignty.

As early as 2013, China identified Europe as a core component of the Belt and Road Initiative. That year, Xi introduced the Silk Road Economic Belt to “forge closer ties, deepen cooperation, and expand the development space in the Eurasian region.”98 The PRC later announced a New Eurasian Land Bridge traversing Kazakhstan, Russia, and Belarus and ending in Rotterdam. Beijing also proposed a China-Arctic Ocean-Europe Blue Economic passage, one of three maritime passages.99 Beyond the economic, political, and technological benefits, the PRC sees a BRI-forged direct line from Beijing to Europe as a counter to what it describe as U.S. encirclement efforts and as a way to balance against U.S. or Western encroachment in the Indo-Pacific.100

Striving to persuade Europeans to pursue economic opportunities in the East, China is conducting negotiations with Brussels over an EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement. Between 2014 and 2019, China leveraged its initial investment in Europe’s eastern and southern periphery through a series of Memorandums of Understanding. Beijing develops these investments through what was originally called its “16+1 cooperation framework,” the nominal purpose of which was greater regional economic integration. In 2019, in the face of growing EU skepticism toward BRI, China turned the 16+1 into the 17+1 by incorporating Greece into the framework. The CCP viewed Athens’ inclusion as a victory, especially given China’s substantial investment in the port of Piraeus and the potential for greater access stemming from other investments in European ports and railroads. With a symbolic nod to the ancient Silk Road connecting the empires of Han and Rome, Italy recently became the first G7 country to sign a BRI MOU.

Despite skepticism in the European core, the UK, France, and Germany remain open to Chinese foreign direct investment, both to achieve greater independence from the United States and as a path out of the Eurozone’s economic struggles. The PRC has greatly increased investment in Europe — from less than $1 billion in 2008 to a high of approximately $42 billion in 2017.101 These large sums promote PRC military and technology interests and include investments in robotics, biotechnology, real estate, financial services, and infrastructure. Beijing uses its enhanced leverage to stifle meaningful criticism of its policies.

Huawei is keen to build Europe’s 5G networks. To the extent that this Chinese “national champion” succeeds, Beijing would obtain access to European states’ information flows, achieve a fuller understanding of their telecommunications vulnerabilities, acquire the ability to disrupt critical infrastructure and intercept sensitive transmissions, and accumulate enormous amounts of data crucial to refining AI algorithms.

Likewise, China pursues opportunities in the civil nuclear markets across Europe, hoping to benefit from long-term partnerships, not least by obtaining control of important elements of European energy infrastructure.102 Backed by state financing, Chinese nuclear companies distort the market and undercut European and U.S. companies. The CCP has openly threatened governments in Europe that have merely paused to consider the economic and national-security costs of cooperating with China on key critical infrastructure projects.103

The Middle East and Africa

In the near term, China aims to enhance its energy security in the Middle East and obtain market access to extend the Belt and Road Initiative and other PRC interests. Beijing also actively engages with the Iranian regime and Syria’s Assad regime, both of which face significant U.S. and international sanctions and also are U.S.-designated State Sponsors of Terrorism, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, and egregious abusers of human rights. At the same time, the PRC’s brutal repression of millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang raises profound questions of conscience in particular for Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and around the world. In the long term, China seeks to increase its economic and security influence in the region at the expense of the United States.104

Beijing’s reliance on oil imports from the Middle East has grown tremendously in the last two decades, rising from 0.33 million barrels per day in 1998 to just over 4 million barrels per day in 2018.105 Meanwhile, the PLA Navy visits the region with an eye to developing deep-water ports like that of Salalah in Oman. China also wants to expand military sales — for example, Chinese defense companies sell unmanned aerial vehicles at cut-rate prices with little-to-no regard for nonproliferation106 — and expand security cooperation with regional states in other ways. This undermines U.S. defense companies. It also endangers regional partners’ access to U.S. military networks, eroding U.S. military interoperability and other forms of cooperation with regional partners.

China sees a particularly appealing target for the Belt and Road Initiative in Israel, which possesses an innovative high-tech economy with few barriers to entry.107 Perhaps the most controversial of several projects underway is the Shanghai International Port Group’s partial construction and operation of a new terminal at the Haifa port, which also serves as the strategic port for the U.S. Navy 6th Fleet. If Chinese workers obtain “high levels of access to potentially sensitive commercial or military information,” the United States will face surveillance and cyber-espionage risks.108

In Africa, the PRC is bent on acquiring vast amounts of the continent’s abundant raw materials and mineral wealth to provide Chinese manufacturing with key components while disadvantaging companies in the United States and allied countries. Largely debt-financed, China’s projects in Africa often fail to meet reasonable international standards of sustainability and transparency, and burden local economies with heavy debt and other problems.109 China also expands its influence in African states by aggressively cultivating high-level relationships. General Secretary Xi, China’s premier, and the PRC’s foreign minister, for example, collectively made 79 visits to Africa between 2007 and 2017.110 At the same time, nationals from African countries who work in the PRC frequently face racism and discrimination, a problem that drew international outrage amid Beijing’s domestic reaction to the novel coronavirus.111

In 2017, China established in Djibouti its first foreign military base. The base looks out on the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits in the Gulf of Aden, through which passes nearly 10 percent of the world’s total seaborne-traded petroleum. This comprises 6.2 billion barrels per day of crude oil, condensate, and refined petroleum.112 Together with China’s anti-piracy activities in the Gulf of Aden and growing presence in the Gulf of Guinea, the base has extended China’s military reach off Africa’s coasts and into the Indian Ocean.113

Western Hemisphere

China’s geopolitical influence stretches deep into America’s backyard. Beijing accelerated bilateral trade investment in Latin America after the 2008 financial crisis to acquire extensive stakes in the region’s petroleum, mining, and energy sectors. China’s Huawei and ZTE are among the region’s top providers of telecommunications equipment and networks as well as of surveillance architectures — all of which pose espionage risks.114 In addition, Beijing pursues nuclear contracts in Brazil and Argentina, not only furnishing preliminary financing but also, in Argentina’s case, offering a slush fund of more than $2 billion for use as the government sees fit.115 Meanwhile, poorer Latin American countries export commodities and foodstuffs to the PRC while importing increasingly high-value Chinese manufacturing and technology goods. Loaning far more than it invests, the PRC often requires Latin American countries to repay in commodities, yielding resource security for China while incentivizing corruption abroad.

As the world’s biggest oil importer, China regards Venezuela — possessor of the world’s largest oil reserves — as an important partner. The PRC began lending to Venezuela to obtain oil, signing “loans-for-oil” agreements with former President Hugo Chavez.116 The largest recipient in South America of Chinese official finance, Venezuela has accepted more than $60 billion in loans from the China Development Bank (CDB) since 2007 in exchange for future oil shipments.117

In addition, Beijing takes advantage of the Western Hemisphere to further its ambitions in outer space. China has conducted nearly a dozen satellite launches from Latin American states and operates space observatories in Chile and a deep-space radar in Argentina.118

The United States and Canada are by no means exempt from China’s influence operations.119 The PRC targets key U.S. technological and economic sectors — at the national, state, and local levels — using cyberattacks, theft, and other methods to transfer to China valuable information, data, and technology. In Canada, where the government has yet to make a final decision on 5G vendors, Huawei partners with companies to bring high-speed internet access to remote communities. The United States and Canada also rely on China as a supplier for a number of critical minerals. At the same time, China’s state-owned and state-directed companies — including those sanctioned by the United States and linked to China’s military modernization, espionage, and human rights abuses — enjoy active and passive investment from a number of the public pension funds in various U.S. states.120 As the price of doing business in China, the CCP demands that American and Canadian businesses — from finance and industry to media and professional sports — toe the party line, which companies often do. And the PRC exploits consulates in the United States as platforms to steal American intellectual property.121

The PRC commits serious abuses in American higher education. Although in many cases China obtains technological knowledge from the United States through legitimate and productive academic exchanges, it also acquires such expertise illegally through the Thousand Talents Program and other state-run or party-run recruitment efforts. Recent cases at the University of Kansas and Harvard illustrate the dangers.122 Furthermore, while the United States welcomes Chinese students to introduce them to the blessings of political freedom, the CCP has an interest in conscripting Chinese nationals studying abroad to advance the interests of communist dictatorship. Indeed, the PRC punishes Chinese students studying in the United States for dissenting from official CCP views and for otherwise speaking freely.123 Universities’ financial dependence on tuition dollars from China complicates matters: in recent years, American universities have intentionally admitted more Chinese nationals because they, unlike many American students, pay ballooning tuition costs in full.124 At the graduate and undergraduate level, China sends more students to the United States than any other country.125 And Beijing uses Confucius Institutes not only to promulgate CCP-approved views about China and the world but also to press U.S. universities to censor discussion, curtail inquiry, and generally conform to CCP dogma and political objectives.126

Transforming International Organizations from Within

Beijing continues to throw its weight around at the United Nations and in other international organizations to align these institutions with China’s transformative ambitions. China generally delivers higher levels of development assistance to countries voting with it in the UN General Assembly.127 As a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, the PRC — in cooperation with Russia — has frustrated significant measures proposed by the United States and European nations to address challenges in Syria, Ukraine, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, and elsewhere. To advance its revisionist agenda and counter U.S. efforts to promote transparency and accountability, the PRC vigorously pursues leadership positions, using its voting advantages as a member of the Group of 77 at the United Nations and in the NonAligned Movement.128 A growing number of PRC citizens now serve as heads of international organizations — including the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — and in other top-level leadership and management positions at such organizations.129 China tries to insert into multilateral documents communist language derived from so-called Xi Jinping Thought and references to the Belt and Road Initiative and other signature efforts to give China’s communist propaganda a UN imprimatur.130 Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, China provided a dramatic illustration of abuse of the international system, compelling the World Health Organization to comply with Beijing’s self-serving preferences — including the exclusion of Taiwan.

Over the long run, the CCP views international organizations as an opportunity — to shield its abusive development practices and egregious human rights record from criticism, and to gradually adjust global norms, standards, and institutions to socialism’s tenets.

Conclusion

Viewed as a whole, the major components of China’s conduct — preservation of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship; leveraging of the country’s wealth to produce economic dependence and political subordination abroad and to reorient international organizations from within around CCP criteria and goals; and development of a world-class military — reveal a great power that sees the transformation of international order as critical to its plans to dominate world affairs. The PRC’s interests and ambitions have not developed accidentally, nor do they simply reflect China’s geopolitical circumstances. They give expression to ideas rooted in 20th-century communist ideology and the party’s extreme interpretation of Chinese nationalism. These ideas are the intellectual sources of China’s conduct.