Even as growth falters in China, Xi Jinping seems confident that he has the right road map to overcome his Western rivals.
China’s economy has sunk into a slower gear. Its population is shrinking and aging. Its rival, the United States, has built a lead in artificial intelligence. Mr. Xi’s declaration several years ago that “the East is rising and the West is declining” — that his country was on the rise while American power waned — now seems premature, if not downright insulting.
The problems have brought growing talk abroad that China could peak before fully arriving as a superpower. But Mr Xi appears to insist that his policies, with extensive party control and state industrial investment in new sectors such as electric vehicles and semiconductors, can ensure China’s rise.
In a sign of that confidence, his government announced last week that China’s economy was likely to grow about 5 percent this year, roughly the same pace as last year, according to official statistics. And Mr Xi has emphasized his ambitions for a new phase of innovation-led industrial growth, acting as if the past year or two has been an aberration.
“Faced with a technological revolution and industrial transformation, we must seize the opportunity,” he told delegates at China’s annual legislative session in Beijing, who appeared on television to give him a standing ovation.
He later told another group in the legislative session that China needed to “win the battle for key core technologies” and told People’s Liberation Army officers to develop “strategic capabilities in emerging areas,” which the officers said included artificial intelligence, cyber business and space technology.
Mr. Xi’s optimism may be partly spectacular: Chinese leaders, like politicians everywhere, are loathe to admit mistakes. And some officials have admitted privately that the economic malaise is curbing China’s ambitions and hustle, at least for now.
Ryan Haas, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, who visited China late last year, said he came away with the feeling that “the Chinese are a little bit educated even compared to where they were before a year. The trajectory of the Chinese economy overtaking the US in the coming years — that has been pushed further into the horizon.”
Even so, Mr Xi’s determination to stick to his long-term ambitions seems little more than show. “Xi and his team still believe that time and momentum remain on China’s side,” said Mr. Haas, a former director for China at the US National Security Council. “With Xi in power,” he added, it’s hard to imagine “any significant recalibration in the overall trajectory that China is on.”
Since taking office in 2012, Mr. Xi has tightened the Communist Party’s grip on Chinese society. He has expanded state management of the economy, expanded the security apparatus to quell potential challenges to party rule, and confronted Washington over technology, Taiwan and other disputes.
For Mr. Xi’s critics, his centralist, hardline tendencies are part of China’s problems. He did not cause China’s dangerous dependence on the real estate market for growth, and worked to end it. But many economists argue it has been too heavy-handed, stifling business and innovation. Critics argue that Mr. Xi has also unnecessarily antagonized Western governments, pushing them to limit access to technology and deepen security ties with Washington.
Since last year, the Chinese government has moved to ease those pressures. It has taken steps aimed at reviving confidence among private businesses. Mr. Xi has also sought to ease tensions with the United States and other countries.
Such restrained gestures show what Mr. Xi described as the “tactical flexibility” he expects from Chinese officials in difficult times. But according to Mr. Xi’s statements, even as officials take easing steps, they must stick to his long-term goals. He and his loyal subordinates defend his policies in speeches and articles, suggesting that challengers are short-sighted. Chinese officials and scholars have also stepped up the denunciations of Western analysts who have predicted that China is facing an era of decline.
Mr. Xi stressed that economic and security priorities must work together, even as China faces slower growth. Mr Xi is also betting that investment in manufacturing and technology can deliver new “high-quality” growth by expanding industries such as new clean energy and electric vehicles.
“The mantra of the Chinese leadership seems to be, ‘We’re not going to grow as fast as we used to, but we’re going to gain more leverage over trading partners by controlling critical parts of the global economy,'” said Michael Beckley. , an associate professor at Tufts University, who has argued that China is a “peak power,” meaning a country whose economic rise has slowed but not yet stopped.
Some economists argue that China’s progress in these select industries will not be enough to offset the impact caused by falling consumer confidence and debt-strapped developers and local governments. China’s wider fortunes will depend heavily on whether Mr Xi’s bet on technology can pay off.
“They see technology as the solution to every problem they face — economic, environmental, demographic, social,” said Nadège Rolland, a researcher at the National Bureau of Asian Research who studies China’s strategic thinking. “If they cannot make sufficient progress in this area, it will be very difficult for them.”
Scholars in China and abroad who hope the country can take a more liberal path sometimes look to history for examples of when party leaders have made bold changes to defuse domestic and international tensions.
The last time China found itself at such a painful crossroads was after the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters on June 4, 1989. The bloodshed prompted Western countries to impose sanctions on China, which deepened the economic shock. Within several years, however, Deng Xiaoping, then China’s leader, sought to mend relations with Washington and other capitals and unleashed market changes that revived growth and attracted Western investors.
Now, however, China faces much more entrenched competition from other major powers, Zhu Feng, a prominent foreign policy scholar at Nanjing University in eastern China, said in an interview. For example, China’s growing exports of electric cars – which have benefited from extensive government subsidies – could reignite trade tensions as the United States, Japan and Europe fear losing jobs and industrial power.
Economic and diplomatic pressures “pose China’s biggest challenge” in decades, Professor Zhu said.
But Chinese leaders seem to believe that, whatever their problems, their Western rivals face worse problems that will eventually humble and break them.
Recent reports from institutes under China’s ruling party, the military and the state security ministry show the fierce polarization in the United States ahead of the next election. Regardless of who wins, Chinese analysts argue, American power is likely to remain troubled by political dysfunction.
Chinese scholars have also focused on rifts in the Western bloc over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Beijing’s relations with the United States and European governments have been very strained because of Mr. Xi’s partnership with President Vladimir V. Putin. But as the war stretches into its third year, the burden of supporting Ukraine is deepening rifts and “fatigue” in the United States and Europe.
“US foreign intervention cannot handle everything it tries to juggle,” Chen Xiangyang, a researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, which is under the state security ministry, wrote last year. “China can take advantage of contradictions and use them to their advantage.”
