Chinese leader Xi Jinping is seeking to boost his own historical significance via ambitious expansion, says Beijing-based journalist Jeremy Goldkorn.
His SupChina news site and Sinica podcast are go-to sources of information and analysis for keen China-watchers.
China's President Xi Jinping leaves the podium following his speech after a ceremony to inaugurate the city's new leader and government in Hong Kong on July 1, 2022, on the 25th anniversary of the city's handover from Britain to China. Photo: Selim Chtayti / POOL / AFP
Listen to the full interview here
By changing the rules to extend his own leadership, Xi Jinping pulled off a remarkable power grab, Goldkorn tells Kathryn Ryan.
“The man himself is the son of one of the original senior leaders of the Communist Party, a guy named Xi Zhongxun, and so in some ways, I think he sees himself almost as a Communist aristocrat, somebody who was born to take power and to lead and to be a strong leader.”
Xi is determined to hold on to power so he can help prevent Communism from collapsing in China as it did in the Soviet Union, he says.
“Xi, in a speech that was leaked about a decade ago, had this famous line where he said one of the greatest parties in history just disappeared overnight with a few words from Gorbachev, and nobody was man enough to stop this from happening.
“He sees himself as almost having a kind of historical destiny to preserve the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party and to keep China together and to take a different tack from what happened to the Soviet Union.”
Editor-in-chief of SupChina and co-host of the Sinica podcast Jeremy Goldkorn. Photo: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs
In the years before Xi Jinping became China's top leader in 2012, social tensions had been rising in the country, exacerbated by the Global Financial Crisis, Goldkorn says.
“There certainly was... a sense that China was, in the previous Premier Wen Jiabao's words, unstable and unbalanced.
“The tensions of the reform and opening up era were apparent to everybody by the time Xi Jinping took over. And this ranges from high levels of corruption in the government, extraordinary inequality where you have people living on a dollar a day right next to people driving their third Ferrari, and very bad environmental pollution.”
By the time Xi Jinping came to power, change was needed to quell any potential threats to the regime, he says.
“From what we know of the very secret dealings of the senior levels of the Communist Party, there was some sort of agreement that what was needed to sort these problems out was a strongman essentially, and now we have Xi Jinping.”
But having a strongman in charge is a double-edged sword, Goldkorn says.
“It's become very, very difficult to have any kind of political or ideological difference from the messages about Xi Jinping.
“I would imagine some of the senior leaders of the Communist Party didn't quite know that they were really going to be in for somebody who is setting himself up as the most powerful leader since Chairman Mao.”
By 2049, The Chinese Communist Party aims to be “rich, strong, powerful, and at least as respected as America, if not the most respected and powerful nation on Earth”, he says.
Part of that plan is bringing Taiwan into the fold, but the question is how far China will go to achieve this, Goldkorn says.
“Xi Jinping is a very ambitious man. His project will not be complete without Taiwan, and while there's no doubt that he and the Communist Party would much prefer that they get Taiwan by peaceful means, they have explicitly said that they will get it by any means, including a hot war.
“I would say sometime between now and 2049 the world will get a clear answer to this question.”
Goldkorn believes it’s only a matter of time “before China adopts the features of an expansionist country merely in order to protect its economy and its trading relationships”.
China’s economic interest in the Pacific Islands is an example of this, he says.
“[Pacific Island countries] have resources that we may not yet know about on the sea beds, they have fish, they represent international rhetorical support for China’s positions, votes at the United Nations, and I think those things are all very important.
“While I don't think China is planning a complex system of military bases, at least not yet in the Pacific island nations, there certainly is a desire on Beijing’s part to have a longer range navy and more military capability.
“Now, of course, militarily, it's way, way behind the United States, which has hundreds of military bases all over the world, and a much bigger nuclear arsenal, many, many more aircraft carriers, etc.
“But China is ambitious, and those ambitions will start to make other countries uncomfortable.”