China’s vision for the world finally unleashed
Xi Jinping’s true intention was laid bare this week, and Donald Trump is doing all he can to help him make it happen.
Dictators thrive on mass displays of power. The optics this week recalled Germany in the late 1930s but such an analogy underestimates Xi’s grasp of the complex nature of national rivalry in the 2020s. There is an ominous reality to be confronted – every sign is that Xi is too clever and too tough for Donald Trump.
The US President with his obsessive and inward-looking Make America Great Again credo is playing into China’s hands. America is still number one – but the trend isn’t good. While Xi would know Trump is unpredictable and that’s reason to be wary, he would know something far more important – Trump is severing the arteries of American authority with his tariff wars, his disdain for allies, his infatuation with autocrats, his rejection of US strategic leadership, and his failure to offer any inspiring narrative of America’s role in the contemporary world.
Xi stands for a totalitarian politics, conceived in Marxist theory, soulless in its view of human nature and driven by a fusion of technological superiority and state capitalism. His ultimate quest is publicly announced: to prove that China’s political model is superior to that of America’s liberal democracy.
China’s rise, America’s decline
On display this week in China is far more than Beijing’s military arsenal – it is about China’s claim to a governance system that will outmuscle the US and ferment across the world the idea of China’s rise and American decline. The stakes for many nations, including Australia, could not be greater.
The bizarre aspect is that Xi outsells Trump in presenting a great power narrative to the world – he celebrated this week’s 80th anniversary of the end of World War II by casting the story as a triumph for China’s resilience – Trump, by contrast, seeks to dismantle the US engineered post-war order and denigrates this achievement, claiming it as a time when America was robbed and exploited by all and sundry.
Trump’s leadership is short on hope and inept in standing up to dictators. He lacks any comprehension of that long American moral narrative delivering to the world in various ways; witness John Kennedy pledging to “bear any burden”, Ronald Reagan demanding the Soviets “tear down this wall” and Madeleine Albright calling America the “indispensable” power to light the post-Cold War world.
This week the dictators came together in Beijing – Xi, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – in a display of authoritarian power rarely matched since World War II. The vast military display featured nuclear-capable missiles, undersea vehicles, the latest drones, fighter jets, anti-ship missiles and long-range bombers reinforced by thousands of troops goose-stepping in almost perfect co-ordination.
For many Australians watching the TV images, it would have looked frightening. This was the intent. Xi’s message is that China’s military dominance of the Asian region will be irresistible, but don’t worry because, as he said, China sought “a common prosperity for all humankind”. What a relief.
Xi’s speech
There were three big themes in Xi’s speech: the “unstoppable” rise of China; its historical role in the victory of World War II; and China’s vision for a new global order – decoded, a united China will reclaim Taiwan and replace America as the dominant nation reshaping world governance.
Xi said the world faced a choice of “peace or war” and “dialogue or confrontation”.
He said the Chinese people “firmly stand on the right side of history and on the side of human civilisation and progress”.
Xi recruits nationalism to buttress Communist Party control. In this parade he invokes a revolutionary past to inoculate the Chinese people to the future sacrifices they must make to resurrect China’s dominance.
It is easy to forget the cracks in China’s edifice: slowing growth, high debt, massive corruption, a demographic crisis, and a system where the control by the Communist Party exceeds any other principle or interest. Yet this week’s optics undercut Western claims that China is short of friends and partners. Xi’s financial sway and military clout guarantee an audience, along with the weakness of the democratic model.
Anthony Albanese dissociated his government from the event. No minister attended. But Albanese declined to criticise former ALP premiers Bob Carr and Dan Andrews for attending. Carr ducked the parade but Andrews met Xi and was photographed with the dictators. The standing of Carr and Andrews in the ALP points to equivocation in the party about how close to get to China.
Xi’s event only highlights the profound dilemma for Australia. XI invested heavily in Albanese during his recent six-day visit to China where it was obvious Labor’s formula of “stabilisation” of bilateral relations is now obsolete. China’s wants far more from Australia. Its charm comes with new demands.
Xi’s strategy is to break American influence in the region – a vision that Labor won’t endorse, that strikes at Australia’s national interest, and that our acquisition of US nuclear-powered submarines is designed to resist.
But the stronger China looks, the deeper is the Australian contradiction. While Albanese told China that Australia wants “greater engagement”, Beijing will leverage that engagement to pressure Australia to genuflect before China’s self-assumed regional dominance. Australia is being squeezed between economics and strategy – sooner or later it must shift in one direction or another.
The signs are obvious – Albanese praises the US alliance but is frightened to say anything mildly critical of China.
The world has just witnessed the most powerful symbolic display of China’s military aspirations with their intimidating logic for Australia. What did our government have to say? Nothing – or nothing of any note. We cannot even find the language to address the events transforming the world that pose the most serious challenge for our country and people.
Australia out if its depth
It reminds me of the late, great Max Walsh, who called Australia “a poor little rich country” in his book on our 1970s predicament. The situation today is different but the parallels are similar – an Australia out of its depth, irresolute and unsure of how to respond to the challenges.
There is no sense our elites – political, corporate, academic – have any convincing view on how Australia should best manage the intensifying China-America regional power struggle with its potential to diminish Australian sovereignty, even to bring us into China’s orbit with the reduced independence that involves. Meanwhile, Penny Wong’s formula that Australia doesn’t want any power to have regional primacy seems a decisive step towards recognising the shift against the US.
More than two dozen leaders went to China. Iran’s President, Masoud Pezeshkian, was there, Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto attended despite riots at home, India’s Narendra Modi attended the first stage – the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Tianjin but not the Beijing parade. There was a strong representation from South East Asia, where most leaders navigate between China and America.
The event highlighted the growing fracture between China and the West and the deepening alignment between Xi and Putin, yet a relationship dominated by China. Trump seemed unsure about how to respond, asking whether XI would recognise the US role in ending WWII and then saying: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
Trump and the dictators
It is a reminder that in his first term Trump failed in his diplomatic campaign with Kim and in his second term, so far, has been played for a mug by Putin who continues his war against Ukraine and seems impervious to Trump’s efforts to secure a settlement.
Russia aside, China remains weak in terms of proven allied relationships built over time, as opposed to America whose allied partnerships have been an immeasurable source of Western strength over many decades, a point unappreciated by Trump.
Americans alert to the power realities have no option but to focus on Trump – running a tariff agenda that alienates friend and foe alike, irresponsible in his hostile treatment of India’s Modi, cavalier in his apparent disregard of the Quad – the four-power US, Japan, India and Australia regional group – and failing properly to invest in the US military while undermining core institutions of US polity, from the intelligence community to the Federal Reserve.
As The Wall Street Journal editorialised in frustration: “Mr Trump keeps bragging about the great American military while doing little to make it even all that good again. If Mr Trump doesn’t get serious, he’s putting the US in a position to lose a shooting war that this axis of adversaries seems increasingly willing to entertain. This week’s parade in Beijing is an opening for the Commander in Chief to tell Americans that putting serious money toward the US military is a better option than ceding the world to Messrs, Xi, Putin and Kim.”
A related warning in the Journal came from former Bill Clinton aide, former US ambassador to Japan and Democratic political aspirant Rahm Emanuel, saying: “The China threat is both real and potent. The US has never before been asked to face down a country that has three times our population, is fuelled by an advanced economy and is capable, as its leaders intend, of replacing us atop the global hierarchy. Failing a broad reorientation, the question won’t be ‘Who lost China?’ but ‘Who lost to China?’ Yet Washington has yet to mobilise in full against a real threat.”
A new global order
In Xi’s speech at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, his aspirations to lead a new global order were paramount. While Western leaders see the hypocrisy between China’s assertive use of power and its language of upholding “the common values of humanity” – many politicians in the global south are more concerned about tangible benefits they get from China.
XI said “global governance has come to a new crossroads”, and the correct approach was to “advance in line with the trend of history”. This means adhering to “sovereign equality”, promoting “greater democracy in international relations”, abiding by the “international rule of law”, upholding the “status and authority” of the UN, practising multilateralism, opposing unilateralism, and narrowing the North-South gap in living standards.
He said it was time to “promote a correct historical perspective on World War II” by commemorating “the Chinese’s Peoples War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression”. This resistance against terrible Japanese atrocities is a historical truth of deep importance in China.
But the re-interpretation Xi seeks is a polemical device with direct relevance for Australia. In this connection there are two myths being cultivated. The first is that Mao Zedong’s forces were instrumental in defeating Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and 40s. In fact, it was Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army that principally fought Japan’s army, took most of the casualties and was responsible for most of the damage done to the invaders.
Mao’s strategy was largely to avoid conflict with Japan’s forces as part of his long-term plan to seize power in China. It worked brilliantly.
Second, the myth being cultivated at this 80th anniversary is that China was responsible for Japan’s High Command deciding in early 1942 not to invade Australia. In short, apart from America being fundamental in spearheading from Australia the successful resistance to Japan, China, we are told, was more fundamental in denying Japan’s invasion of this continent in the first place.
An Australia invasion
It is true that Japan’s Naval General staff wanted to invade Australia and that the Japanese Army leaders fiercely opposed the navy plans. It is also true that army commitments to fighting in China were a factor weighted in the decision. But there were many other factors. The army argued an invasion of Australia would be counter-productive – the gains not justified by the resources expended. Historian Peter Stanley said Japan calculated a full invasion of Australia would need 10 to 12 divisions while Japan had used nine divisions to conquer the whole of South East Asia.
The army believed an invasion of Australia would become a “profitless war of attrition” – when it was essential for Japan to retain strong forces in China in case of a ground offensive from the Soviet Union.
Historian David Horner said that in March 1942, Japan’s High Command decided it was far more sensible to form a defensive ring around Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, as distinct from seeking an invasion of Australia.
The US did not save Australia from invasion – but nor did China. We were saved, in fact, by the sensible decision of the High Command on the best balance of Japan’s overall Pacific strategy.
But you can expect to hear a lot more about this.
At the 80th anniversary in his efforts to reshape world history from the conclusion of WWII to the present, Xi urged China’s ambassadors to pursue the cause. In The Australian Financial Review of September 2, China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, called for Australia and China to deepen trust and co-operation, invoking their joint struggle in WWII “driven by common values of resisting aggression” and recognising “the profound harm fascism has brought to humanity”.
The ambassador said it was important “that more Australian and Chinese people understand the history of our joint struggle” and “guide the younger generations of both countries to carry forward this history”.
Don’t think this Chinese version won’t be taken up at home. The left in Australia is skilled at rewriting history to advance its contemporary political struggles – and few have more salience than the campaign to distance our strategic engagement from America and strengthen ties with China.
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The symbolism is paraded before the world – China intends to dominate in industrial, military and ideological domains. Xi Jinping operates in a blend of intimidation and seduction – and it is working. His propaganda message is unmistakeable: China’s rise means America is finished as number one.