On May 17, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin met in Beijing to celebrate the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and China.
During this event, the two leaders reaffirmed their political alliance and their shared goals to combat Western hegemony and the US-led world order. This has raised significant concerns from Western countries, particularly the United States, which sees this alliance as a major threat to its position as global leader.
Russia, while intimidating in its rhetoric, is incapable of reshaping the global order. We have seen from its performance in Ukraine that it lacks the economic, political, or military strength to effect significant international system change any time soon.
In contrast, China is nearing the economic capability to challenge the United States and possesses military prowess large enough to contest America at the regional level in Asia. Therefore, it is worth asking: does China really want to reshape the world order in its image, or is its ambition to become a global leader more about securing a beneficial position within the existing international system, avoiding the pressures and costs of global leadership?
The United States still stands as the pre-eminent great power of world politics, with a combination of hard power capabilities (like a $28trillion economy and a military that is unmatched, both in equipment and in spending) and soft power (cultural power such as movies and TV combined with investment in international institutions, foreign aid and diplomacy) that firmly assert it as the dominant power in global politics.
In contrast, China holds a strong second place, with an economy poised to potentially surpass the United States in the coming decades, although living standards still lag significantly behind in many aspects. Soft power, however, remains a weak point for the Chinese government.
Diplomatic and economic programs such as China’s global trade network, the Belt and Road Initiative and the New Development Bank play a leading role in pushing China’s soft power globally. Outside of trade, however, China has limited soft power avenues through which to push its agenda globally.
This would seemingly show either that China is ineffective at soft power beyond trade, or that the CCP does not want the soft power networks of a global leader, preferring to use the existing system to push its agenda rather than play the influence game on a global scale.
China stands to lose more than it gains in a collapsing rules-based order. The Chinese economy heavily depends on the stability of the international system, both to acquire the resources needed to feed its industrial base and to provide markets for the goods its businesses produce.
The United States, even with the recent moves to ‘‘decouple’’ by Presidents Trump and Biden, still represents 15% of China’s export market, by far the largest buyer of Chinese goods.
Similarly, the EU, another advocate of the current international system, imports 20% of its goods from China, highlighting China’s deep integration into the global economy.
While China seeks to reshape the global system in ways that benefit its interests, especially in regions like the South China Sea, a complete dismantling of the current global economic order to replace it with one of its own design is unlikely.
Why would China risk undermining a system that has facilitated its economic growth, providing access to export markets, trade networks and political institutions that have elevated it to the position of the world’s second-largest economy?
China is by no means content with the current system: there are a plethora of areas which are considered key issues for Xi and the Communist Party. The continuing tensions on the China-India border drive the Indian leadership closer to the US and further away from China.
The South (and East) China Sea continues to be a major geopolitical issue creating tensions and divisions between China and the regional neighbours.
Taiwan, seeing how China disrespected the ‘‘one country, two systems’’ agreement with Hong Kong, has become increasingly independent minded at the same time as China has become more aggressive towards the island state.
These issues are of national importance to China and lead the nation to assert itself in ways that run in opposition to the international rules-based order. That being said, China’s economy and the political stability that comes with it are important to the CCP: a strong, stable economy is a major source of legitimacy for the Communist Party.
Any conflict that would arise from these issues would have major ramifications to this economic stability, which in turn disincentivises the more aggressive aspects of Chinese action.
No matter what Xi says of US hegemony, the Chinese are quite happy working within the current global system.
■Daren Harvey is master of international studies student at the University of Otago.
