“Fortress” China

a few thoughts on why Xi pursues it

It’s a blah day as Annapolis awaits another predicted snowfall. For those of you who experience snow regularly, the reaction here seems ridiculous but we relocate so often as individuals within this country, it’s hard to remember who many southerners are clueless about driving frequently under snowy conditions, particularly without the type of municipal preparations you all pay for all the time. We get some snow about once every fourth year, more about every sixth year, then a blockbuster every decade. The movement of people, particularly from the southern environments of late, makes that more complicated that you might expect. So, we receive dire warnings in anticipation so those newbies not launch as if it’s dry pavement they are encountering. Actions and consequences come to mind….

“Xi Pursues Economic Fortress As Shield Against U.S. Pressure” blares an article on the cover of today’s WallStreetJournal. Xi Jinping, as I have noted persistently, fears his country becoming hostage to outsiders’ actions against China, not the least President Trump right now. I provide the citation for the article below; the thrust is that many of Xi’s actions occur in parallel with assuring China’s sovereignty over its economy and politics as much as trying singularly to dominate the world in all industries and the everything else. The Journal notes Xi seeks to “make China [emphasis added-cw] more self-sufficient and impervious to Western pressure”.

Impervious is such a powerful aspiration. How many governments seek to become impervious to outside actions or merely whims? Probably 99.999%. The General Secretary is actively, methodically, and measurably marching his nation down that path with some success, feeding palpable anxieties abroad about their motivations. But those outside his borders are neither his audience nor his primary concern. A China with its sovereignty intact is pivotal to the future, as he articulates that future.

China also seeks to be the state that foreign ministers wonder about as they decide on a policy relative to the South China Sea or islands of the South Pacific, much as we have been for eighty years.

Truth is that those motivations of leading the world versus achieving imperviousness are not “either/or” but “and” in most cases, I suspect. We tend to look at things in a zero sum way as great powers do but multiple things can be true simultaneously. Of course Xi will maximize his gains but I can’t think of too many leaders, especially authoritarians, who don’t seek that outcome, can you?

Leaders of any government, as any U.S. president knows, ultimately must heed their domestic constituency and the interests of that population above the preferences of other states. To do otherwise is almost always a ticket back out of office, ultimately even for the populations in repressive regimes like Russia or China. Populations reach their breaking point earlier in democracies if the leader appears to foresake them for the demands of someone else.

Xi is hell bent on never allowing the CCP to appear subservient to foreign intervention, not the least because the Party achieved power in 1949 partially through arguing it would not bend to the will of those intent to humiliate China by ignoring its sovereignty. This story line is as old as the PRC itself, with Xi only the latest in the line of General Secretaries to whom that obligation fell.

The difference between Xi and perhaps the King of Jordan, now increasingly under pressure to accept Palestinians as a legal, formal, permanent obligation under President Trump’s Gaza concept, is that the latter has fewer resources, thus less negotiating space, in which to operate.

Jordan is a weak country composed already of a substantial number of Palestinians in addition to the native Bedouins of Trans-Jordan, the pre-1948 predecessor entity, when the current state came into force. While it may appear a logical, if not simple solution for King Abdullah to absorb even more stateless Palestinians under the concept, the politics of doing so would likely be disastrous for the Hashemite ruler. Acquiescing to Washington’s intention to slam the door on the aspiration of a Palestinian state would likely be political suicide within his own country.

Abdullah’s father, the late King Hussein, suffered numerous assassination attempts during his forty-six year rule. They stemmed from various competing players seeking to topple him because his relatively centrist position. Despite those attempts on his life, Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel (as it turned out we now know he negotiated secretly with various Israeli leaders for decades) which garnered him invaluable long-term U.S. assistance. Hussein ultimately succumbed not to an assassination but to the all-too-universal scourge of cancer in 1999.

Abdullah inherited a kingdom teeming with challenges, even if his queen is a Palestinian herself. The unsatisfied and undetermined status for Palestinians remains a major focus of popular discontent, only to escalate as the new concept for Gaza (shutting off a significant, if relatively modest piece of land for Palestinians) looks ever more a victory for economic interests in the United States in support of Israelis punishing the Palestinians further.

He desperately needs aid from the United States while Abdullah rules over a fractious population. Talk about a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position.

It strikes me Abdullah has no good options as President Trump is threatening to withhold the crucial aid Jordan’s king needs to maintain peace. At the same time, folding on public support for the Palestinian cause can only rile up millions infuriated by Israel’s retaliation on Gaza since late 2023, much less prior actions. He doesn’t have too many tools at his disposal to orchestrate to achieve national interests of any sort.

Part of our frustration with China over the past two decades our inability to alter their behavior as we think necessary. In fact, China is a big country, as Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi stated in Hanoi on 19 July 2010 in a famous exchange with his Singaporan counterpart. Xi and his government constantly remind the world, including the United States, of the country’s size, economic prowess, and willingness to take act on what it sees as its national interests. Many of those actions offend the world, such as bullying weaker neighbor the Philippines on land claims in the South China Sea, or deploying the “tourism instrument” against the Koreans following the 2016 decision Seoul made on THAAD.

China often acts in such offensive, cavalier ways. Unleashing “wolf warrior diplomacy” showed their poor ability to read global opinion when they are feeling especially invulnerable to outside views as if everyone globally welcomed China’s aggressive demands on a variety of topics. Strengthening of global alliances, including the aborted “pivot to Asia”, result from Beijing’s insensitivity to its menacing actions or “wolf” campaign, forcing Zhongnanhai to temper its actions and words to advanced China’s interests in the face of stiffer global resolve.

Many profound differences exist between China and Jordan, of course. A primary one is that the latter has fewer options for using its limited toolkit in international affairs because of the lack of clarity in its national objectives; it’s not entirely clear whether the survival of the country coincides with the endurance of the regime. Jordan, with its volatile population, sits in a tough neighborhood where national compromise can unleash domestic turmoil in a flash. Jordan has few resources to assure it can close the door on the globe as China is doing through a rush towards self-sufficiency.

Xi is, according to the Journal, strengthening his autonomy of Chinese action through economic steps while Jordan will find that much harder to do altogether. We should not be surprised on either score as Jordan is a relatively porous state with regard to security threats, economic vulnerability, and societal cohesion.

China steadily modernizes the People’s Liberation Army but is relying far more heavily on its economic power to assure its role in the world. Promoting domestic development of robotics, solar panels, artificial-intelligence, “high end” manufacturing, and wind turbines alone are a monumental step towards that “fortress” precluding reliance and resulting vulnerability from the rest of the world. In short, China views the tools it needs to compete and survive adversarial actions as reliant on a firm, ever-expanding economic mechanisms.

Xi can make speech after boring speech on the topic with complete evidence to the Chinese citizenry of his actions along this track. Even if a society where Xi’s authoritarian tendencies are perpetually on display through shutting down dissent, arguing one is protecting China in an unassailable sovereign position is powerful. No matter they are not there yet but they are closer than they were.

This may sound contradictory to prior columns where I have written of vulnerabilities China faces with an aging and declining population, environmental disasters, and corruption leading to distrust of CCP leadership. Yet what Xi is focusing on here is the assuring the pieces of the puzzle are all on the table to assure foreign threats cannot inhibit his freedom of movement. That is quite a balancing act but one he is still managing to carry forth as the Party seeks to address the other immediate challenges.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is Xi’s even more fundamental ironclad assumption that the Communist Party leadership over the country’s future is inviolable. Whether the sought after fortress can rely successfully on such a sclerotic governing body prone to authoritarian paranoia remains an open question for the CCP’s long-term survival and ability to satisfy society’s needs. But, as so often in China’s (not merely the PRC’s) long history, he is crossing the river by feeling the stones. He deals with the most immediate problem when he can no longer avoid it while he continues working to assure autonomy and strength within the economy.

Our focus needs be on our own economic fundamentals as much as worrying about Jordan, Ecuador, China or anyone else. Americans have become accustomed to directing the world but we have done so at a high cost to our own domestic cohesion, economic confidence, and our sense of national vulnerability. We will benefit from focusing on our internal dynamics as much as altering the behavior of others with their own interests. Perhaps we need recognize the strength holding us together instead of picking ourselves apart as we tell the rest of the world what we expect them to do. We need prevent our own disconnects in any hopes we can exploit anyone else’s.

Abraham Lincoln famously said “United we stand, divided we fall”. Jordan and China sadly provide some evidence Lincoln knew human behavior well.

I welcome your rebuttals, comments, or anecdotes. This is a dialogue so it requires multiple voices so please chime in.

I appreciate your time. I especially thank those of you who subscribe to the column as your commitment helps advance this work.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Brian Spegele, Jason Douglas, and Yoko Kubota, “Xi Pursues Economic Fortress as Shield Against U.S. Pressure”, WSJ.com, 11 February 2025, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-xi-is-building-an-economic-fortress-against-u-s-pressure-53f6292d?mod=world_whatsnews_pos4