As much as any other single development, China’s rise over the past two decades has remade the landscape of global politics. Beginning with its entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001, China rapidly transformed its economy from a low-cost “factory to the world” to a global leader in advanced technologies. Along the way, it has transformed global supply chains, but also international diplomacy, leveraging its success to become the primary trading and development partner for emerging economies across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But Beijing’s emergence as a global power has also created tensions. Early expectations that China’s integration into the global economy would lead to liberalization at home and moderation abroad have proven overly optimistic, especially since President Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012. Instead, Xi has overseen a domestic crackdown on dissent, in order to shore up and expand the Chinese Communist Party’s control over every aspect of Chinese society. Needed economic reforms have been put on the backburner, while unfair trade practices, such as forced technology transfers and other restrictions for foreign corporations operating in China, have resulted in a trade war with the U.S. and increasing criticism from Europe.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang presents the government’s “work report” during the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, March 5, 2019 (Imaginechina photo via AP Images).
Meanwhile, China’s “quiet rise” has given way to more vocal expressions of great power aspirations and a more assertive international posture, particularly with regard to China’s territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Combined with Beijing’s military modernization program, that has put Asia, but also the United States, on notice that China's economic power will have geopolitical implications.
WPR has covered China’s rise in detail, and continues to examine key questions about what will happen next. Can China sustain its economic miracle in the face of demographic and environmental challenges? Will China’s military modernization program change the balance of power in Asia and beyond? Is China seeking to reshape the rules-based international system to better reflect its interests, or is Beijing’s goal to undermine and replace it? Below are some of the highlights of WPR’s coverage.
Reciprocity is usually a sound basis for relations between peer states and competitors, but how one pushes for it matters almost as much as the goals of fairness and equality themselves. In announcing recent changes to rules governing the activities of Chinese diplomats in the U.S., the State Department said it was responding to the longstanding imbalance between how Chinese officials are allowed to circulate in American society and who they can engage with, and what U.S. diplomats are permitted to do when they take up posts in China. The best form of engagement with China, however, shouldn’t limit itself to tit-for-tat notions of bilateral ties or trade balances, but rather build diplomacy on positive values. And it is here that the Trump administration missed an opportunity.
China Under Xi JinpingMany observers in the West assumed that integrating China into the global economy would lead to domestic liberalization and international moderation. Instead, under Xi, China has pocketed the gains of its economic rise, while cracking down on what little domestic dissent had emerged under previous leaders.
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