Chinese belligerence

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s keynote address at the ceremony to mark the centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was peppered with stern warnings to foreign powers. Adopting a holier-than-thou attitude, he asserted that the forces which would attempt to bully, oppress or subjugate China would find themselves ‘on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people’ and even ‘get their heads bashed’. The imagery was violent, the message was loud and aggressive: mess with China at your own peril. Though Xi did say, albeit far from convincingly, that China had always worked to ‘safeguard world peace, contribute to global development, and preserve international order’, his speech made it amply clear that the Dragon was in no mood to tone down its belligerence. The ceremony itself was a massive show of strength, with the CPC showcasing the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) Air Force’s J-20s, regarded as the most advanced stealth fighter jets in the world.

Xi Jinping has unequivocally spelt out the Chinese agenda: the ‘reunification’ of Taiwan with the mainland; making China a great, modern socialist country; and accelerating the modernisation of China’s armed forces. These interlinked goals indicate that China is prepared to plough its own furrow, regardless of adverse international opinion, in the post-Covid world. Of course, there are few takers for China’s ‘I’m not the aggressor’ rant, least of all India, which has repeatedly experienced Chinese duplicity and aggressive posturing.

Instead of treating the centenary as an opportunity for introspection and stock-taking, the CPC has persisted with self-congratulatory showmanship aimed at overwhelming the rest of the world. The all-powerful Xi Jinping, who holds the top three posts in China — President, General Secretary of the CPC and Chairman of the Central Military Commission — is bent on ruling the country with an iron hand and pursuing a hardline foreign policy. Such tactics could usher in a dangerous era of rampant Chinese expansionism on the military and economic fronts. The comity of nations needs to be more firm and watchful than ever to ward off any threat to the global order.

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