Kevin Rudd is the Australian Ambassador to the United States. He previously served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning briefly as Prime Minister in 2013. This essay, published with the author’s permission, is an edited chapter from his latest book, On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World (2024).

If ideology provides us with some indication of likely future trends in Chinese politics and the economy, what does Xi’s new form of Marxist Nationalism tell us about the likely shape of China’s foreign and national security policy over the 2020s and into the 2030s? This essay does not argue that China’s international policy decisions are forced by periodic, spontaneous, populist eruptions of Chinese nationalism. Rather, it argues that official nationalism, and the mass campaigns that give it effect, provide useful barometers of approved party sentiment across a wide spectrum of possible foreign policy responses. There is an observable logic to the thesis that officially sponsored nationalist campaigns can be dialed up or down depending on China’s evolving internal and external circumstances, and the strategic parameters that define the acceptable range of regime responses. The same also applies to “bottom-up” nationalist outbursts, which can readily be contained through the state’s social media and other more coercive control mechanisms.

Xi Jinping unveils the Global Governance Initiative at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in September 2025 | Source: www.scochina2025.org.cn

What we can deduce from the available evidence is that: the overall nationalist spigot has been opened far and wide for much of Xi’s first decade in office; and this has coincided with much greater and more consistent foreign policy and military assertiveness than in the past. Most importantly, there is little evidence to date that Xi’s underlying nationalist campaign is abating, however much the tone and content of individual policy responses to specific external policy challenges may vary, and despite efforts to stabilize U.S.-China relations after the 2023 San Francisco summit. In other words, the broad shift to what I have called the “nationalist right” during Xi’s first term is likely to continue. In large part, this rising specter of official nationalism is an external manifestation of an underlying change in the party’s internal ideological analysis of the real state of power in the world today. Indeed, it is within this historical materialist frame of analysis that American power, and that of the collective West, will continue to be seen as being in relative decline. Similarly, a dialectical materialist framework is likely to cause Xi’s party to conclude that the underlying “contradictions” between liberal capitalist America and socialist China will continue to sharpen, making international crises more acute, and potentially more violent, over time. There is, therefore, little evidence to date that Chinese official nationalism will abate in the future. In fact, so far nationalism has proven to be a remarkably resilient tool in Xi Jinping’s overall political and economic statecraft.

The analytical and textual cornerstone of this nationalist shift has been Xi’s ever-intensifying ideological discourse on China’s newfound national power. The 19th Party Congress narrative that “under Mao, China stood up; under Deng it became prosperous; and under Xi it had become powerful” (zhanqilai, fuqilai, qiangqilai) shows no sign of being erased. In fact, it has become all-pervasive. “National power” has also grown in importance as a source of domestic political legitimacy for Xi’s leadership. This is particularly the case as other pillars (such as rising living standards and a better quality of life) are weakened by the new ideological constraints imposed by Xi across politics and the economy. For all these reasons, however pragmatically Xi’s military and foreign policy leadership may wish to respond to Beijing’s new domestic and external challenges, there can be no international policy decision that could be allowed if it in any way reflected a weakened China. To some extent, during the Deng era, China’s relative national economic and military weakness was regarded as an acceptable basis for making compromises with America because the consensus among CCP elites was never to directly challenge the United States unless and until China had caught up in the national power stakes. But under Xi, that has changed. After a decade of bold proclamations—including an acceleration in the growth of China’s “comprehensive national power,” “the rise of the East and the decline of the West,” “changes not seen in a century,” and the country “now having moved to the center of the world stage”—the prevailing nationalist narrative has fundamentally shifted. Policy capitulation, or even significant compromise, could no longer be considered to be politically sustainable.

This underlying hardening of China’s nationalist narrative, as noted above, is reinforced by its complex inter-relationship with Xi’s Marxism-Leninism and the historical-determinist worldview that lies at its core. To restate its essential three-part argument: Marxism-Leninism holds that universal, scientific laws are given effect through a combination of historical determinism, dialectical materialism, and political and armed struggle. The CCP, as a Leninist vanguard party, has been the historical vehicle for this struggle—both to “save the nation” from foreign and domestic depredation, and to accelerate China’s transformation from a weak, feudal society into an increasingly strong, socialist state. Furthermore, this has depended on the CCP correctly divining not only China’s position along the path to communism (through the disciplines of historical materialism) but also by navigating the “principal contradictions” over which the party has needed to prevail (through dialectical materialism). Moreover, in the CCP’s official narrative, it is claimed (albeit with some deviations) that the party has accelerated the course of history by successfully struggling to resolve each of these contradictions—so much so that Xi cites the dialectical machinery of Marxism-Leninism as the party’s “weapon of thought.”

This same ideological worldview applies today with the three sets of major contradictions that the party sees for the period ahead. One of these is publicly declared, while the remaining two, so far, are not. All three, however, require focused struggle. The first will continue to be the domestic contradiction of defending socialism against the capitalist excesses of 35 years of reform and opening, thereby ensuring the emergence of a strong, modern socialist state. The second is the external imperative of deterring or defeating the United States and its allies that now stand in the road of China’s historic mission of reclaiming the territories lost to foreign forces in the past. The third is the wider international imperative of China now becoming the new incubator for the rebirthing of what Xi sees as a new age of global Marxism. This will be achieved by taking Xi’s development model to the world at large as a dialectical alternative to the existing liberal-capitalist international order. And so long as the CCP continues to accurately identify and prudently respond to changes in these central contradictions, the party will continue to prevail in these mutually reinforcing national and international missions.

The party’s major task was to work within the grain of the “trends of the times,” as determined by the underlying laws of historical determinism; to apply its dialectical analysis to the principal challenges of the day; and then to achieve progress through the unavoidable processes of struggle.

In other words, within Xi’s Marxist-Nationalist ideological worldview, his international policy mission will not simply be about the exercise of China’s reconstituted national power (although, of course, power will remain fundamental, as the Chinese military classics had taught generations of Chinese national leaders before). The CCP, having already saved China from collapse and having made it prosperous and powerful, would now fulfil its ideological destiny by deploying its newfound national power and influence around the world, propelled forward by the determinist forces of history. Indeed, with history on its side, China under the party’s leadership was now unstoppable. The party was on track to complete its revolutionary processes at home, and then take to the world at large the new forms of twenty-first-century Marxism that it had been working on for so long. And within the eclectic ethical universe of Xi’s modernized and Sinified Marxism, whose values, concepts, and language will increasingly be drawn from a cocktail of Communist, Confucian, and even international sources, the CCP’s future mission will not only be a nationalist cause driven forward by the forces of historical determinism. In the eyes of the party, it will also be seen as pursuing a righteous, just, and morally empowered internationalist cause both at home and abroad.

For some, this may sound somewhat messianic. But on close inspection of Xi’s texts over his first decade in office—for example, his address on Marx’s bicentennial in 2018—we see an ideological worldview that unites three distinct, albeit mutually reinforcing, dynamics: the pragmatic deployment of national power; a belief in the forces of historical determinism; and a deep sense of national and international moral purpose to liberate the downtrodden from excessive capitalism at home, together with the enduring legacy of neocolonialism abroad. In this sense, Xi Jinping’s overarching Marxist-Nationalist meta-narrative is now likely to be advanced as a form of Chinese counterpoint to George Washington’s “Divine Providence” (which ordained the birth of the American republic), Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” (which projected American power into the world), and John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” (a moral beacon for the world). Indeed, it is the sheer scale of the CCP’s success in bringing a fifth of humanity out of poverty, at least within the worldview of the party’s propaganda apparatus, that means that this great national experiment in Chinese political economy now commands unprecedented respect around the world. Absolute poverty had been “eliminated” within China, and now the party’s wider definition and vision of social justice was available to the world at large, delivered through the alternative international system that China was now building. For Xi, this will be China’s “city on a hill.”

For these reasons, it is important to see China’s foreign policy ambitions for the decade ahead through all three ideological lenses—nationalist, determinist, and moralist. These, in turn, are reinforced by longstanding traditions of classical Chinese realism about the balance of power, just as they are shaped by millennia of Chinese teachings on the natural state of a Sino-centric international order with which enlightened foreigners of all hues would eventually comply if they truly understood what was best for them. By contrast, the United States, the West, and still many in the Global South see China’s international aspirations as indisputably revisionist: the recapture of its “inseparable” territories including Taiwan, the East and South China Seas, and along the Sino-Indian border; the evolution of an Eastern Hemisphere anchored in Chinese, rather than American, strategic and economic power, as broadly existed under the tribute system in previous Chinese dynasties; and the restoration of China’s status and standing as the preeminent global military and economic power as it once was, before the Opium Wars so rudely interrupted what China had previously seen as the natural order of things.

Needless to say, through its own ideological prism, Xi Jinping’s CCP does not see these as “revisionist” claims at all, but rather as the product of historical processes that are ultimately irreversible because they are being driven forward by Marx’s universal scientific laws of development. Indeed, far from representing a regressive disruption of the international status quo, China’s objectives are seen instead as embodying the ultimate progressive purposes of global Marxism. Based on these deep and radically different ideological perceptions, in the party’s view, China and the United States therefore find themselves on a political, economic, and ultimately military collision course—unless, of course, the United States were simply to capitulate peacefully to the irreversible forces of history. Moreover, this deep, historical process of geopolitical change would now be driven forward even more rapidly as a result of China’s new and increasingly uncontested claim to the leadership of the Global South as part of a much broader, fundamental realignment in the global balance of power.

 

Foreign Policy Readjustment after 2023

Over the course of 2023, despite efforts at rapprochement with the United States and its allies to “stabilize” their respective relationships with China, there is little in the Chinese domestic ideological discourse that has suggested any fundamental change. For example, Xi’s major address in February 2023 on “Chinese-Style Modernization as the Great Pathway to Building a Powerful State and National Rejuvenation,” came less than three months after Xi’s Bali summit with then U.S. President Joseph Biden and his efforts to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship. But in geopolitical terms, there was nothing conciliatory from Xi in his modernization speech at all. Instead, it baldly reasserted the ideological binary between Chinese and Western (read American) approaches to global governance. On Xi’s list of five core characteristics of China’s modernization strategy, one is his view of the wider global order:

“Adhering to peaceful development, China seeks its own development while firmly safeguarding world peace and promoting global development. Simultaneously, China’s better development contributes to maintaining world peace and development, working towards the construction of a community with a shared future for humanity. This is a prominent feature of Chinese-style modernization. The modernization path taken by Western countries is marred by bloody atrocities such as wars, slavery, colonization, and plunder, inflicting profound suffering on many devel oping countries. The Chinese nation, having experienced the tragic history of aggression and humiliation by Western powers, deeply values the importance of peace and unequivocally rejects the repetition of the old path taken by Western countries.”

Despite this clear-cut, doctrinal definition of China’s strategic development path and its place within the party’s binary global worldview, Xi decided to tactically adjust to a more moderate posture in his remarks at the San Francisco Summit in November 2023. This was designed to lower the temperature, assuage global investor confidence, and dull perceptions of imminent geopolitical risk. Xi’s forensic effort to blunt the sharpest edges of his decade-long ideological assault on the United States and the West, going back to his celebrated Document Number 9 of 2013, was on full display. His central proposition at San Francisco—that the United States and China were in fact partners, not adversaries—stands in complete contrast to his ideological message to the party since 2017. Xi’s claim that China did not seek to “unseat” the United States was at odds with the strategic logic of his longstanding domestic ideological campaigns on the “decline of the West,” “changes not seen in a century” going back to when the Soviet Union first challenged Western power in 1917, and “China now entering the center of the global stage.” Nonetheless, as Xi told his American audience:

“I have found that, although our two countries are different in history, culture, and social system and have embarked on different development paths, our two peoples are both kind, friendly, hardworking, and down-to-earth. . . . It is the reaching out to each other by our peoples that has time and again brought China-US relations from a low ebb back onto the right track. I am convinced that once opened, the door of China-US relations cannot be shut again. Once started, the cause of China-US friendship cannot be derailed halfway. The tree of our peoples’ friendship has grown tall and strong; and it can surely withstand the assault of any wind or storm. . . . Friends, we are in an era of challenges and changes. It is also an era of hope. The world needs China and the United States to work together for a better future. We, the largest developing country and the largest developed country, must handle our relations well. In a world of changes and chaos, it is ever more important for us to have the mind, assume the vision, shoulder the responsibility, and play the role that come along with our status as major countries. I have always had one question on my mind: how to steer the giant ship of China-US relations clear of hidden rocks and shoals, [and] navigate it through storms and waves without getting disoriented, losing speed or even having a collision? 

In this respect, the number one question for us is: are we adversaries, or partners? This is the fundamental and overarching issue. The logic is quite simple. If one sees the other side as a primary competitor, the most con sequential geo-political challenge and a pacing threat, it will only lead to misinformed policy-making, misguided actions, and unwanted results. . . . It is wrong to view China, which is committed to peaceful development, as a threat and thus play a zero- sum game against it. China never bets against the United States, and never interferes in its internal affairs. China has no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it.”

 

Ideological Continuity in Xi’s Approach to the World

Importantly, Xi’s conciliatory message to his international audience in November 2023 was not reflected in his internal message to China’s foreign, defense, and security policy establishment the following month when he addressed the party’s Central Foreign Affairs Work Conference. This was the third such meeting held under Xi, previous conferences having been in 2014 and 2018. This equaled the total number of such conferences held by Xi’s predecessors since 1971, when Mao first began preparing the party for deep strategic change by starting to embrace America against the then Soviet threat. These conferences have been used to set the party’s strategic direction in foreign and security policy for the medium- to long term. The sheer number of these conferences since 2012 of itself reflects the degree of change in international policy settings under Xi when compared with his recent predecessors. While the full, unvarnished text of the leader’s remarks to these conferences is never released, the official readouts issued through Xinhua are nonetheless instructive when compared to previous years’ texts. And in the case of the December 2023 readout, it has been supplemented by Xi’s re marks the following day to China’s annual ambassadorial conference and by a later speech by Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered in mid-January 2024.

Indeed it was Wang Yi who launched the Chinese official commentary on the significance of the 2023 Work Conference and its embrace of Xi’s “new era” in Chinese diplomacy, underscoring the extent to which Chinese foreign policy had now fundamentally changed. Wang stated that “General Secretary Xi Jinping had delivered an important speech in which he comprehensively reviewed the historic achievements and valuable experience of great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in the new era, gave a profound exposition on the international environment and historical mission of China’s foreign affairs work in the new journey we have undertaken, and outlined comprehensive plans for China’s foreign affairs work for the present and coming periods.” Wang summarized the scope of the conference’s conclusions as follows:

“At the Central Conference on Foreign Affairs Work, the historic achievements of China’s foreign affairs work in the new era were summarized. They include the following ten points: establishing and developing Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy; showcasing the distinct Chinese characteristics, style, and ethos in China’s diplomacy; advocating the building of a community with a shared future for mankind; a new model of diplomacy under the strategic leadership of head-of-state diplomacy; fostering major-country dynamics characterized by peaceful coexistence, overall stability, and balanced development; building a comprehensive, high-quality global partnership network; promoting high-quality Belt and Road cooperation; effectively safeguarding China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests; leading the way in reforming the international system and order; and strengthening the centralized, unified leadership of the Central Committee of the CCP. To fully appreciate the extraordinary historical process of China’s diplomacy in the new era, the key is to understand the common thread and underlying logic of these ten achievements in a multidimensional, systemic, and interrelated way.”

Consistent with the theme of the underlying political and policy relevance of Xi’s ideological worldview, it is not surprising that “the establishment and development of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” was now listed as Xi’s foremost foreign policy achievement during his first decade in office. As the Xinhua report stated bluntly: “It was made clear at the conference that in the current and upcoming periods, China’s external work shall be guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era and Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy in particular.” Or, as Wang Yi added, Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy now provided “profound strategic thinking about changes of the world, of our times and of historical significance”; it was “rooted in the great practice of major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in the new era”; and it offered “a shining example of applying the basic tenets of Marxism to the practice of China’s diplomacy and fine traditional Chinese culture.” Wang once again underscores the analytical significance of a Marxist worldview and its utility in understanding current international developments:

“In making strategies and policies, it is imperative to apply systems thinking. The CCP, a Marxist party armed with the theories of dialectical and historical materialism, should know how to analyze, study, and evaluate the international situation with the understanding that things are universally connected and constantly evolving. We should be able to see the present from a historical perspective and look beyond the surface to get to the heart of the matter, to accurately recognize and analyze the laws and direction of the profoundly changing world, and make sound foreign policies.”

Beyond its methodological utility, however, it was Xi’s Marxist world view that also formed the basis of China’s new claim to international moral leadership, which was why “on major issues concerning the future of humanity and the direction of the world, we must take a clear and firm position, hold the international moral high ground, and unite and rally the overwhelming majority in our world.” That was also why, according to Wang, “on major issues of right and wrong, it is imperative to uphold principles.” And further, it was why China “as a socialist country under the leadership of the CCP, should take a clear position by standing on the progressive side of history, on the side of fairness and justice, work actively to meet the common aspirations and legitimate concerns of the peoples of all countries, and demonstrate the people-centeredness of the CCP and the commitment to serving the people in China’s foreign policy.” This way, Wang claimed, “we will always rally abundant support for the just cause, hold the high ground of justice and take the strategic initiative.” When applying this to the Global South, Wang became even more direct in linking a Marxist theory of development to the needs of the world’s emerging economies:

“As the largest developing country and a major country, it is incumbent on China to uphold justice in a world undergoing profound changes and turbulence, to shoulder responsibility at critical moments, and thus to be a staunch defender of world peace and a champion of global development. At the same time, through China’s modernization, we are willing to support the efforts of other developing countries which want to achieve development while maintaining their independence, so that all countries can take the right path of modernization through peaceful development.”

As for Xi’s analysis of the actual state of contemporary international relations, together with China’s continuing determination to bring about significant change in the existing U.S.-led order, there is a significant difference between Xi’s remarks at the Foreign Affairs conference in December and those reflected at the San Francisco summit in November. According to the Xinhua readout:

“It was noted at the conference that great transformation is accelerating across the world. Changes of the world, of our times, and of historical significance are unfolding like never before, and the world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation. Yet the overall direction of human development and progress will not change, the overall dynamics of world history moving forward amidst twists and turns will not change, and the overall trend toward a shared future for the international community will not change. We must have full confidence in these trends of historical impact.”

According to the December conference, this meant that China now faced “new strategic opportunities” and its diplomacy would enter “a new stage where much more can be accomplished”. This meant that “the central task” of the party and the country was to “explore new frontiers in China’s diplomatic theory and practice, foster new dynamics in the relations between China and the world, and raise China’s international influence, appeal and power to shape events to a new level.” Together this would “create a more favorable international environment and provide more solid strategic support for building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through the Chinese path to modernization.” And in a clear reference to U.S. policy, the conference noted: “It is important to resolutely oppose the attempt to roll back globalization and abuse the concept of security, oppose all forms of unilateralism and protectionism, firmly promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, overcome the structural problems hindering the healthy development of the world economy, and make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all.”

To this Wang Yi added that “these important conclusions are based on an in-depth analysis of the major changes in the international balance of power, the transformation and reshaping of the international system and order, and the interplay between different concepts and ideas on a global scale, providing important guidance for our understanding of the international situation.” And in a call to arms for the country’s diplomatic establishment to rise to the challenges and opportunities of Xi Jinping’s proclaimed new era, Wang concluded that “on the new journey, great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics will enter a new stage where much more can be accomplished; China must not be complacent about its past achievements, nor be intimidated by strong winds and choppy waters in the external environment.” This, in turn, would “promote new dynamics in China’s relations with the world, and raise China’s international influence, attractiveness and ability to shape events to a new level.” These were hardly messages designed to encourage the maintenance of the international status quo. Indeed, they reflect a determination to use the current period of strategic instability to bring about rapid and more fundamental changes to the international order. And all this would be accommodated by the underlying determinist forces of history that were driving China forward.

What appears to be new from the 2023 Foreign Affairs Work Conference and onward is the party’s formal and emphatic embrace of China’s “great power diplomacy” and the critical role that Xi Jinping as leader now personally played within it through “head-of-state diplomacy.” This is a substantial step-up from the 2014 and 2018 Foreign Affairs Work Conferences. It stood also in clear contrast to his three most immediate predecessors. After the 2014 Conference, it will be recalled that the concept of “a new type of great power relations” was first promoted as a framework for U.S.-China relations and then, more loosely, for China’s relations with other “major powers.” Four years later, Xi called on the conference to “break new ground” in China’s great power diplomacy to contribute to China’s domestic prosperity. A decade on, it had evolved into a concept of China now being confident in its great power status, together with the new pattern of international relationships that were emerging between Beijing and the rest of the world. This is a significant evolution as China increasingly identified itself less as a fellow traveler with the rest of the developing world and more as a leader. It had now become, in its own estimation, a significant, new geopolitical and geo-economic fulcrum of the emerging global order.

Moreover, the beating heart of China’s new great power status and its unfolding great power diplomacy had now become Xi Jinping’s very own brand of “head-of-state diplomacy.” As the official readout starkly states, China follows “the strategic guidance of the head-of-state” enabling it to play “an increasingly important and constructive role in international affairs.” Once again, however, it was left to Wang Yi to provide a more definitive rendition of what was now meant by this formal addition to China’s official repertoire of diplomatic statecraft:

“General Secretary Xi Jinping is the core of the Central Committee and the entire party, and the top decision-maker and chief architect of our foreign affairs work. As the highest form of China’s diplomacy, head-of-state diplomacy has played an important and irreplaceable role in major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in the new era, achieving exemplary and groundbreaking diplomatic results, and fully reflecting China’s image as a confident, open, and responsible great power. It is due to the great foresight and statesmanship of General Secretary Xi Jinping that China has been able to pursue its diplomacy against all odds amidst the great transformation of the world, and remain calm, confident, and proactive in the context of a changing international landscape.”

In other words, notwithstanding Xi’s apparent re-embrace at the San Francisco summit of the importance of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship and continuing American leadership of the current international order, Xi himself would now be a driving force for bringing about fundamental global change. And this would be done through a new and potent combination of “great power” and “head-of-state” diplomacy. This would become particularly evident in the prosecution of Xi’s signature foreign policy enterprise—the community of common destiny for all humankind (CCD). Unsurprisingly, Xi’s great meta-concept and mega-project to rewrite the entire international system was the single greatest focus of attention at the 2023 Foreign Affairs conference of the party center. Indeed, after “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy,” it is listed second out of Xi’s ten major achievements over his first decade in office. And it was driven by a symbiotic relationship with the first:

“It was pointed out at the conference that building a community with a shared future for mankind is the core tenet of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy. It is how China proposes to solve the questions of what kind of world to build and how to build it based on our deepening understanding of the laws governing the development of human society. It reflects the Chinese Communists’ worldview, perception of order, and values, accords with the common aspiration of people in all countries, and points the direction for the progress of world civilizations. It is also the noble goal pursued by China in conducting major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics for the new era.”

Properly deciphered, the Foreign Affairs Work Conference had explicitly acknowledged that the CCD concept had been built on a Marxist, historical-materialist analytical foundation. It reflected a prospective international system that was anchored in a Marxist concept of global order. And it was an order that embodied universal Marxist values. At least in the Communist Party’s telling of it, the CCD had now developed into a fully “scientific system” (in Marxist parlance, an initiative fully consistent with the socialist laws of development). And it had also already secured global political support: “Since the dawn of this new era, building a community with a shared future for mankind has developed from a Chinese initiative to an international consensus, from a promising vision to substantive actions, and from a conceptual proposition to a scientific system. It has served as a glorious banner leading the progress of the times.”

The Marxist caliber of the CCD is, for the first time, clearly defined in the December 2023 official readout. It was now part of Xi’s ongoing efforts to provide a totalizing ideology that embraced both the foreign and the domestic. The development of CCD was but one part of the three great questions that Xi had now posed to the Communist Party for the future: what sort of party would remain a ruling party for the long-term future, and how would it be built; what sort of China was to be built, and how to build it; and now what sort of world order was to be built, and how to achieve that through a community of common destiny? Beyond ideological abstractions, however, the real-world policy content of the CCD concept continues to be explained in terms of Xi’s four existing global mega-initiatives: “the strategic guidance comes from the implementation of the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative, and the platform for action is high- quality Belt and Road cooperation.” Each of these, in turn, was seeing the gradual rollout of more specific policies over time. However, if there was one clear common denominator across all four, it was the continuing centrality of the Chinese Communist party-state—in delivering “balanced development”; in advancing common civilizational values against the ravages of Western modernization; and, most critically, serving as the geopolitical anchor of a new international order of so-called common security. There is a certain messianic, almost Augustinian, and certainly universalist ambition to Xi’s ideological vision of a new form of Marxist global order. But it was a Leninist party, rather than the established church, that was now the indispensable vehicle for sustaining ideological orthodoxy, maintaining institutional discipline, and bringing about necessary political change. This totalizing dimension of Xi’s concept of order was underscored by Wang Yi in January 2024:

“A country’s foreign policy is closely linked to its domestic agenda as its external and internal imperatives correlate and interplay with each other. At a fundamental level, we should handle the relationship between the three well: a community with a shared future for mankind, global transformation, and Chinese modernization. Building a great modern socialist country in all respects and achieving national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization is the top political priority on the new journey of the new era. To accomplish this central task of the party and the country, we must hold high the banner of building a community with a shared future for mankind to steer global transformation in the right direction. We must pursue China’s development in the context of the overall development of the world and advance the interests of both the Chinese people and people of the world.”

However, beyond ideology and the almost mechanical listing of the GCI, the GDI, the GSI, and the BRI, the real-world policy content of a “community of common destiny” continued to be elusive. Wang Yi’s 2024 address, while arguably the most effusive official paean of praise for CCD since its launch, provides some additional insight on where the Chinese system may take this proposal in the future. According to Wang, “the conference made a systematic elaboration on and comprehensive summary of the essential praxis of building a community with a shared future for mankind over the past decade, and established the pillars for building such a community as a scientific system” for the future. In addition to fully deploying the BRI, GSI, GDI, and GCI as CCD platforms, the party would now engage in “comprehensive consultation” around the world “where the guiding principle was to apply the common values of mankind” in order to establish “the basic foundation of building a new type of international relations.” In doing so, Xi himself in his 2023 address to Chinese ambassadors enjoined his diplomats to “skillfully utilize the multilateral mechanisms and rules to seek more understanding and support from the international community.” The international community should therefore prepare itself for a fresh wave of CCD diplomatic activity as Xi’s foreign policy juggernaut in support of a new concept of global order continues to be rolled out from the center.

All this may still seem to be deliberately vague. That’s because, consistent with longstanding Chinese diplomatic statecraft, it is. The established practice is to advance a general and innocuous concept and then gradually populate it with content and meaning once international coalitions are built around the original proposition. Reduced to their essentials, the Global Development Initiative is a repudiation of the “Washington Consensus” that favors development via free- market capitalism over other forms of state-capitalism; the Global Civilization Initiative is the repudiation of universal human rights as outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration in favor of culture-specific “rights”; while the Global Security Initiative is the repudiation of U.S. alliance structures in favor of so-called “common security” concepts. What the last decade has made clear is that with CCD, Xi has constructed a comprehensive conceptual policy, and now diplomatic ecosystem from what began a decade ago as a single phrase. Furthermore, it was now routinely put forward as the alternative to the current U.S.-led international rules-based order. Moreover, Wang Yi made clear that these mega and meta initiatives represent “the top-level design of China’s diplomatic strategy for the new journey.” Here the architect-in-chief remained Xi Jinping himself. Just as Xi remained the single decisive actor in bringing about changes to the current system through his new type of “head-of-state diplomacy,” anchored in his “new type of great power diplomacy” and as he builds his “new type of international relations.” None of this, however, sits comfortably with Xi’s assurances to his U.S. audience in November 2023 that China had “no intention to challenge the United States or to unseat it.”

Beyond ideological frameworks and future policy content, the Foreign Affairs Work Conference also dedicated considerable attention to the style of Chinese diplomacy to be adopted for Xi’s new era. Here there appeared to be subtle changes from the recent past in outlining a more judicious balance between the ideology of “struggle” and the need, in the tradition of Dale Carnegie, to win friends and influence people. There is clear celebration in the text of China’s “greater strategic autonomy,” greater capacity for “diplomatic initiatives,” “stronger capacity to steer new endeavors,” more “self-confidence and self-reliance,” and, intriguingly after many years of “wolf warrior diplomacy,” a claim to “greater moral appeal.” Xi Jinping, however, in his remarks to the Chinese ambassadorial conference, emphasized that “it was essential to be adept at making more friends and extending friendship” and “the work of winning public support should reach not only governments but also ordinary people.” Xi also emphasized that a “globalized way of communication should be used to better tell China’s stories, [and] promote understanding between China and the world through linking the country’s past with the present, so that the world will know better about China in the new era.” This also meant “making good use of the effective instrument of United Front activities.”

Sustaining the spirit of “struggle” in the party’s international policy efforts, however, is never far from the surface in Xi’s and Wang’s authoritative statements in late 2023 and early 2024. As Wang stated: “In dealing with risks and challenges, it is imperative to maintain our fighting spirit. The CCP has never been deterred by intimidation, swayed by deception, or cowed by pressure. Only with the courage and ability to continue our struggle can we overcome various difficulties and obstacles. In the future, we will face an even more difficult international situation and more complex external environment. We must forge ahead with an indomitable spirit and persistent efforts to open new horizons in our foreign affairs work.” Indeed, Xi’s remarks at the same conference appear to be equally uncompromising: “Envoys must have the courage and ability to carry on our fight and act as defenders of our national interests. It is necessary for them to enhance their confidence and determination, be strategically sober-minded, firmly keep a worst-case scenario mindset, and, with combat preparedness and a firm determination, never yield to coercive power so as to resolutely defend the country’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.” Once again, notwithstanding the spirit of the San Francisco summit, neither Xi nor Wang appeared to be sending out messages to their foreign and security policy establishment that a new spirit of compromise should govern Chinese diplomacy for the period ahead—least of all with the United States. There was now a world of difference between China’s diplomatic orthodoxy of a decade earlier, when Deng’s “diplomatic guidance” of “never taking the lead” still carried the day.

The last and most important element of the 2023 Foreign Affairs Work Conference, at least from a diplomatic practitioners’ perspective, was what the meeting and its surrounding documents said about the absolute centrality of the party now driving Chinese foreign policy forward under Xi Jinping. This was listed as the tenth of Xi’s list of ten achievements during his first decade: “We have strengthened the centralized, unified leadership of the CCP Central Committee, and brought about greater coordination in China’s external work.” This was also necessary to build “a contingent of personnel involved in foreign affairs and continue to make our external work more science-based (i.e. more mindful of Marxist methodologies), forward-looking, proactive and innovative.” Wang Yi was even more explicit on the new role of the party in shaping the future of Chinese foreign policy: “The CCP’s leadership is our greatest political strength and the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. It is also the most fundamental principle and greatest source of strength for China’s diplomacy. Since the 18th CCP National Congress in 2012, three Central Foreign Affairs Work Conferences and a symposium on neighborhood diplomacy have been convened; the system and mechanisms for the Party Central Committee’s leadership of foreign affairs work have been improved; and the Foreign Relations Law and the Regulations on the Party’s Leadership over Foreign Affairs have been promulgated. All these have ensured better coordination among various departments under the unified stewardship of the CCP central leadership, thus providing strong political and organizational safeguards for China’s diplomacy in the new era.” The concluding injunctions to the nation’s diplomats should, however, be left to Xi Jinping himself, including his telling reminder of their need to remain politically and ideologically loyal to the party—in addition to their responsibility on behalf of the Central Committee towards the 60 million members of the Chinese diaspora around the world:

“It’s necessary for them [Chinese diplomats] to enrich their thinking with the party’s innovative theories, sharpen their eyes to tell right from wrong, and always keep to the correct political direction. It’s essential for them to have a deep understanding of where the supreme interests of the party and the country lie, and understand and implement the foreign policy of the CCP Central Committee well. . . . [They are] urged to take “diplomacy for the people” as their commitment, and pass on the CCP Central Committee’s care and concern to every overseas Chinese.”

In summary, the December 2023 Foreign Affairs Work Conference was a sobering reminder of the center of ideological gravity that continues to underpin China’s foreign policy trajectory for the 2020s. Based on precedent, there may not be another such conference before the end of the decade. As Wang Yi has said: “The Conference [in 2023] has drawn up the blueprint for China’s foreign affairs work for the present and coming periods, and all of us engaged in foreign-related work must keenly study the important address by General Secretary Xi Jinping and remain guided by its principles in our thinking and actions.” Xi’s address was deeply Marxist in both its ideological description of current international relations and in prescribing China’s optimal policy path for the future. It asserted that the party would now be able to make even greater strides in the international domain despite the great turbulence that lay ahead. It claimed that China’s new form of great power diplomacy driven by Xi’s head-of-state diplomacy would now be deployed to achieve changes in the international order that would advance China’s national interests and values. Furthermore, Xi’s “community of common destiny” proposal was rapidly evolving into an umbrella concept representing an opposing ideological, political, and policy narrative to the U.S.-led liberal international order. Moreover, this significant change agenda would be driven forward by a new diplomatic establishment answerable to the party’s ideological discipline rather than an independent and professional foreign service ethos—a discipline that combined a relentless Marxist-Nationalist spirit of struggle with the pragmatic need to expand China’s international influence by peaceful means. Importantly, none of these attributes sits well with Xi’s assurance to his American audience in November 2023 that China had “no intention to challenge . . . or to unseat” the United States. Tactics may well have changed, but China’s strategic intention, it seemed, had not. This was entirely consistent with Xi’s earlier expositions of the fundamental ideological difference between the two.

 

Ideology as a Precursor for Foreign Policy in the 2020s

Based on Xi’s new ideology of Marxist Nationalism, what trajectory can we therefore identify for Chinese foreign and strategic policy for the decade ahead? The uncomfortable truth is that whatever Xi may say about the future of U.S.-China relations, and however that may accord with Beijing’s recent shifts in tactical diplomacy, his underlying ideology still calls for maximum preparedness for the real-world possibility of confrontation and conflict with America. It is also the product of Xi’s related injunction to the party to engage in “extreme scenario” planning. This deeply held ideological (and therefore strategic) view is therefore likely to be reflected across the full spectrum of China’s regional and global foreign policy and military posture for the decade ahead. Therefore, while the future is always unwritten, we can draw some reasonable conclusions about the most likely course of Chinese policy.

First, despite the resumption of U.S.-China military-to-military dialogue in late 2023, China has shown negligible interest in any nuclear talks that would modify its policy of modernizing, diversifying, and expanding its strategic arsenal. A new nuclear arms race between China and the United States is therefore increasingly probable, as is a redefinition of Chinese nuclear doctrine which, until now, has publicly pledged to “never at any time and under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapon.” It seems that, from Xi’s perspective, nuclear forces are no longer seen purely as instruments of strategic deterrence. There is an emerging debate about whether Xi would integrate his nuclear forces into regional war-fighting scenarios given advances in U.S. ballistic missile defense technology and the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems in the East Asian theatre. While the detail may be unclear, it can be assumed that the nuclear dimension of Chinese defense policy, having remained static for decades, will be re-evaluated during the decade ahead.

Second, by contrast, China will actively seek to engage the United States on the future of artificial intelligence in warfare. Whereas China appears confident of its future nuclear capabilities, it seems anxious about its competitiveness on AI, including its capacity to undermine the conventional military balance that Beijing has striven to achieve over many decades. U.S.-China strategic competition is therefore likely to be dominated in the decade ahead by the military application of rapidly unfolding, exponentially evolving, AI capabilities across manned and unmanned platforms, nuclear and conventional forces, on earth, in the skies, and in cyberspace. Xi, for good or for ill, sees AI as a strategic game-changer.

Third, whatever diplomacy occurs over Taiwan, Xi’s worldview is resolute that the island must be returned to Chinese sovereignty. What remains unclear is his timetable (or whether, in fact, he even has one). What we do know is that Xi has shifted focus away from objective red lines (such as Taipei unilaterally declaring independence) to subjective red lines around Taiwan’s perceived “progress” towards national reunification. The outcome of the 2024 Taiwanese national elections have been largely irrelevant to these calculations given that neither side of Taiwanese politics is capable of delivering the type of voluntary re unification that Xi seeks. Driven both by the injunctions of Chinese national history and the imperatives of Marxist historical determinism, Xi will continue preparing militarily to take Taiwan by force, and hardening the Chinese economy to withstand the international sanctions that would inevitably flow. In doing so, he will seek to deter future U.S. administrations from defending Taiwan militarily. Xi will be electric to possible opportunities in relation to Taiwan, if, for example, the U.S. president were to withdraw military support for Ukraine’s defense against his ally, Vladimir Putin of Russia, thereby signaling a new and more isolationist American worldview. If possible, Xi would want to have secured Taiwan’s return without a war with the United States by the end of his fourth term in 2032. The only thing that would prevent him would be effective and credible U.S., Taiwanese, and allied military deterrence—and Xi’s belief that there was a real risk of China losing any such engagement.

Fourth, in the South China Sea, China will continue to intensify its military and paramilitary build-up, forward-leaning deployments, and regional economic diplomacy in order to make the region’s eventual acceptance of Chinese maritime and territorial claims a foregone conclusion. China will remain alert to the Philippines’ claim in particular, given it is the only U.S. treaty ally among the five ASEAN claimant states and it has been the most forward-leaning. China’s strategy will be to isolate Vietnam and the Philippines by engineering separate bilateral agreements with the other three—Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei—promising new levels of economic engagement as a reward. Having amicably resolved those three by 2032, Xi would hope to leave China’s disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines unresolved until it makes a final judgement about U.S. longer-term political and military resolve in East and Southeast Asia.

Fifth, in the East China Sea, Xi will be reluctant to push the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over Senkaku/Diaoyudao to a crisis point given the importance the United States attaches to its defense treaty with Tokyo. Although China will continue applying military pressure to Japan, it remains deeply cautious about Japanese military capabilities, Tokyo’s commitment to ramp-up military spending by two-thirds, and the near-automaticity of U.S. military support for Japan given the preponderance of U.S. bases there. Xi could be expected to undertake extreme political and economic efforts to cleave the Republic of Korea away from Japan, to roll back U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral strategic cooperation, and work the center-left of South Korean domestic politics towards a posture more accommodating of China’s strategic interests. In doing so, Beijing may offer itself as a more believable security guarantor for the South against a nuclear-armed North Korea than the U.S. strategic nuclear umbrella.

Sixth, Xi will try to stabilize the Sino-Indian border without surrendering an inch of territory gained by China during recent border skirmishes. Xi would be disturbed by the growing military relationship between India and the United States, as well as India’s increasingly activist membership of the Quad. For these reasons, Xi will likely seek to put a floor under the China-India relationship until such time as America’s future military posture in, and long-term political commitment to, the Indo-Pacific is much clearer. As with many other core foreign and strategic policy decisions, Xi will want to know what any future U.S. administration would be likely to change in relation to its global commitments.

Seventh, Xi will continue to leverage China’s regional and global economic footprint to China’s foreign policy and strategic advantage. He will want China to be the indispensable economic partner of every region of the world except the United States itself, where de-risking and decoupling has already begun. Xi will continue to drive wedges between the United States and Europe where it can, by making Europe more dependent on the China market over time, while trying to induce collective European amnesia over China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Xi will more aggressively seek to use China’s economic presence across East Asia and the Western Pacific (including Pacific Island countries) to undermine the political and strategic rationale for continuing U.S. military alliances and partnerships. In a decade’s time, he would want Beijing regarded as the undisputed economic capital of East Asia, which he would view as a strategic precondition for eroding the political underpinnings of U.S. regional military arrangements. And in all this, he sees the current bipartisan sentiment in Washington for trade protectionism and latent isolationism as his best strategic ally, whichever party happens to control the presidency or the Congress.

Finally, Xi will continue seeking to leverage China as the indispensable economic partner of Africa, Latin America, and the rest of Asia, transforming the Global South into the political support base for its new international order. This will be reinforced by a global network of civilian ports, PLA naval bases, and airfields to provide China with global military and logistical reach. Xi will continue his efforts to build support for a reformed international order through the existing UN system. In doing so, China will draw on the power of its budgetary presence and the size of its voting-bloc support to deliver changes to the existing normative and institutional structure of the international system. But it will also seek to do so independently of the UN through the BRICS group, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and—their newest cousin—the Global Civilization Initiative. We should also be ready for Xi to develop a new global narrative for the latter three in particular, based on his concept of a “community of common destiny for all hu mankind,” and animated by his existing statements on the global impact of the new “Marxism of the twenty-first century.” Reminiscent of the Third World experience of the last Cold War, we are likely to see the emergence of a new and much sharper ideological cleavage between the Global North and the Global South, this time driven by a combination of Chinese international socialist theory, and the praxis of modern Chinese economic and military statecraft.

There will be many twists and turns in Chinese politics and foreign and domestic policy during Xi’s next decade in office. But these are still likely to occur within the overall parameters of the ideological framework of Marxist Nationalism that he has systematically developed during his first decade. By 2032, Chinese politics is likely to become more Leninist rather than less as Xi’s requirement for political control becomes more absolute the longer he stays in power—and as the number of his domestic political opponents, both real and imagined, grows larger. The Chinese economy will be a more complex proposition, with Xi unlikely to de part from the Marxist economic framework he has laid down since the 19th Congress in 2017. But the demands for greater policy flexibility will continue, meaning that double-messaging will also continue, with at best mixed consequences for the all-important Chinese private sector. The Chinese economy can be expected to continue growing because of untapped consumer demand, but not at the rate it did before 2017 because of the combined impact of demography, the drag of ideology, and the constraints of national debt which has already doubled to 288 percent of GDP between 2008 and 2023. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign and strategic policy will continue to be driven forward by the nationalist and determinist imperatives of Xi’s ideology of Marxist Nationalism. Xi will continue to push hard to change the status quo to his advantage—whether over outstanding territorial claims, China’s claim to regional preeminence, or Chinese diplomacy gradually advancing the norms and structures of an alternative international system. Nonetheless, Xi will be tactically constrained by the continuing reality and presence of American military and financial power. And he will continue to assess the core question of the long-term capacity and credibility of U.S. military and economic deterrence and, most important, evolving U.S. political resolve—as the security guarantor for its allies and strategic partners, and as the geostrategic anchor of the current international system. And that, in turn, will largely determine the future of Taiwan.

Back to Table of Contents