China's primary strategic goal is to be the leading power in East Asia and the Western Pacific. While it lacks a current plan for global domination, its appetite could grow with success, and controlling this economically vital region provides a de facto form of global preeminence.
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While Xi looms large, his foreign policy is largely consistent with the path set by his predecessors. He has capitalized on China's increased power to pursue established goals more intensely, but he has not radically changed the overall direction. Focusing only on him as an individual misses this continuity.
Historically, Russia and China's strategy as continental empires involves avoiding two-front wars and actively destabilizing neighboring states. This creates buffer zones and prevents any single power from becoming a threat on their borders, ensuring their own security through regional instability.
Unlike the US's focus on quarterly results and election cycles, China's leadership operates on a civilizational timescale. From their perspective, the US is a recent phenomenon, and losing the US market is an acceptable short-term cost in a much longer game of survival and dominance. This fundamental difference in strategic thinking is often missed.
The strategic competition with China is often viewed through a high-tech military lens, but its true power lies in dominating the low-tech supply chain. China can cripple other economies by simply withholding basic components like nuts, bolts, and screws, proving that industrial basics are a key geopolitical weapon.
China's showcase of advanced military hardware, like its new aircraft carrier, is primarily a psychological tool. The strategy is to build a military so 'forbiddingly huge' that the US would hesitate to engage, allowing China to achieve goals like reabsorbing Taiwan without fighting. This suggests their focus is on perceived power to deter intervention.
Unlike the Soviet Union's missionary zeal to spread communism, China does not want other nations to become Chinese. Its worldview is centered on being the 'Middle Kingdom'—the sun which others orbit. It desires respect and a preeminent position, not to export its political system.
Unlike pragmatic predecessors, Xi Jinping operates from a quasi-religious belief that China is divinely intended to be the "middle kingdom"—the world's dominant power. This ideological North Star explains his confrontational approach to geopolitics, even when it seems economically irrational.
Viewing China as a "rising" power is incorrect; it's a "reascending" one. For 70% of the years since 1500, China had the world's largest GDP. Its current trajectory is a return to its historical dominance, a framing that fundamentally alters the understanding of its global ambitions.
President Xi Jinping used a phone call with President Trump not just for bilateral issues, but to strategically signal displeasure with Japan's hawkish stance on Taiwan. This "shadow play" diplomacy shows China leveraging its relationship with the U.S. to indirectly manage and warn other nations, making the U.S. a channel for its geopolitical messaging.
While China supports institutions like the UN, its primary strategy for global influence is creating new, economically-focused organizations like the BRICS Bank and regional summits (e.g., China-Africa). This approach builds alternative power centers and economic interdependence with the Global South, supplementing rather than directly challenging the post-war Western order.