Kevin Rudd warns in major shift in how China’s Communist Party views the United States

The former PM and new ambassador to the US has told of the “deadly serious” free-fall in US-China relations.

Australia’s incoming ambassador to Washington warned of the “deadly serious” free-fall in US-China relations as Xi Jinping became chairman for a third term, making him the country’s most powerful leader in generations.

In one of his final moves as Asia Society president, Kevin Rudd this week addressed a closed-door meeting of the Institute’s Centre for China Analysis to raise the alarm over an unprecedented escalation in the Communist Party’s attacks on the United States.

Before this week, Mr Rudd said there had not been a Chinese president, general secretary of the party, directly attack the US by name since around the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Kevin Rudd, as president of the Asia Society, warned about the Communist Party’s increasing anti-US stance. Picture: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“Mao Zedong used to do it all the time,” he said.

This week, Xi Jinping slammed the US-led “containment, encirclement and suppression” of China while new foreign Minister Qin Gang warned “conflict and confrontation” was inevitable if Washington does not change course.

“I’ve never heard that before. Inevitably end in conflict. These are new phrases,” he said.

Rorry Daniels, Asia Society Institute managing director, said China was mirroring the United States’ escalating rhetoric as the relationship between the two countries was in “free-fall” and in danger of a “full crash landing”.

Mr Rudd said that summary was “dead accurate”, and that there could be two reasons for China suddenly calling out the United States by name for the first time in about three decades.

“It could be that the Chinese are actually signalling to its own system and to the rest of the world, we have given up trying to manage the US relationship, it is now too difficult, too hard, too out of control, and we are therefore going to become more assertive than we have been before,” he said.

The other, Mr Rudd said, was aimed at a domestic audience to blame the past five years of economic turmoil and Covid mismanagement on America and its allies.

“Because we’ve been under unprecedented pressure from this US-led western coalition against us which is engaged in a strategy of containment, suppression, encirclement,” he said of their mindset.

China's President Xi Jinping swears under oath after being re-elected as president for a third term during the third plenary session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Picture: AFP

China's President Xi Jinping walks past delegates as he prepares to vote during the third plenary session of the National People's Congress (NPC). Picture: AFP

“It’s those Americans and their allies which have created these circumstances which you now have to live through.”

The 69-year-old Xi has weathered widespread protests over his zero-Covid policy and its subsequent abandonment that saw countless people die.

His rubberstamping to a third term comes after he locked in another five years as head of the Communist Party (CCP) and the military in October.

His coronation sets him up to become modern China’s longest-serving president, and will mean Xi will rule well into his seventies - if no challenger emerges.

A missile being fired during a Chinese military exercise in China. Picture: AFP

For decades China - scarred by the dictatorial reign and cult of personality of founding leader Mao Zedong - eschewed one-man rule in favour of a more consensus-based, but still autocratic, leadership.

That model imposed term limits on the largely ceremonial role of the presidency, with Xi’s predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao relinquishing power after 10 years in office.

Xi has torn up that rule book, abolishing term limits in 2018 and allowing a cult of personality to foster his all-powerful leadership.

But the beginning of his third term leading China comes as the world’s second-largest economy faces major headwinds, from slowing growth and a troubled real estate sector to a declining birthrate.

Originally published as Kevin Rudd warns in major shift in how China’s Communist Party views the United States