Facing internal challenges, Beijing implements aggressive policies that undercut regional stability

Mandeep Singh

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) faces a bevy of internal challenges contributing to its aggressive expansionist foreign policy, analysts say. Factors such as domestic demand for food and fuel, an aging population, and Beijing’s proclivity to suppress perceived threats to its authority may also be weakening Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping’s hold on power, according to experts.

Changes to the PRC constitution in 2018 allow for Xi to be installed as head of the CCP for a third five-year term in 2023. To do so, however, he still needs the approval of the CCP congress, according to The Economist newspaper. To  stay in power, Xi needs the country he rules to be “stable and successful,” the newspaper noted.

This requirement has driven foreign policy that undercuts regional stability, according to two analysts.

Supplying the PRC’s 1.4 billion people with food, water and electricity is a perennial challenge, Michael Beckley, an associate professor at Tufts University, told Japan’s Nikkei Asia news magazine in March 2022. These resource demands underpin tensions with PRC neighbors such as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, he said.

“In the long term … things are going to get worse for China,” Beckley told Nikkei. He noted plans to strengthen ties between the United States and Taiwan militaries and U.S.-Japan cooperation in the region that could stifle CCP ambitions.

“That means that the long-term trends seem to be not very favorable for China, but short-term trends are in China’s favor,” he said. “This creates a dangerous window of opportunity.”

Beijing has repeatedly violated the territorial waters of Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam through actions ranging from illegal fishing to forcing the cessation of offshore oil and gas projects, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Significantly for China’s many neighbors, China has chosen since 2008 to assert itself in disputes in its periphery and to use her power to change facts on the ground and at sea,” former Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon wrote in a January 2022 essay for India’s Centre for Social and Economic Progress. “As a consequence, she is ringed in maritime Asia by disputes and hotspots which have flared up in the last decade or so, from the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, to the South China Sea, to the India-China border and to new Chinese territorial claims on Bhutan.”

The PRC “depends on the sea-lanes for her food, energy, commodities and exports essential to her economic well-being,” Menon wrote in his essay, titled “Internal Drivers of China’s External Behavior.”

The PRC’s aging population will lose more than 70 million working-age individuals while gaining more than 100 million seniors by the early 2030s,  according to Beckley. Also, with Xi set to turn 80 in 2033, the PRC is “going to have a looming succession crisis, regardless of whether or not he installs himself as dictator for life.”

This sets a time limit for what Beckley calls the PRC’s “power peak” — the period before its strength begins to diminish — during which its leadership may feel compelled to act on foreign policy priorities such as military action against self-governed Taiwan, which the PRC claims as its territory. Xi’s desire to create a legacy and the momentum of his “repressive and aggressive” policies make it unlikely that Beijing will change its approach, Beckley added.

However, Xi’s aggressive foreign policy appears to be backfiring, according to The Economist. Public impressions of the PRC in developed nations are at their lowest point in two decades, as is the case in many emerging countries, such as India, which shares concerns about Beijing’s aggression.

The PRC is also losing favor with “most of its neighbors,” Menon wrote. That creates opportunities for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which consists of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S., and its regional partners to build a “united front” of effective deterrence to Beijing’s aggression, according to Beckley. This can already be seen in Japan’s defense expansion and the recent security pact among Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S., known as AUKUS, he added.

Mandeep Singh is a FORUM contributor reporting from New Delhi, India.

IMAGE CREDIT: ISTOCK