Ending Globalism with Chinese Characteristics; Red China’s strategic initiatives face severe headwinds from the Trump administration

For the last quarter-century or more, the Chinese Communist Party has been building the case for, and the framework of, a Beijing-led new world order. Their end goal is to replace the extant US-led liberal international order that operates within the geopolitical and economic framework of multilateral organizations like the United Nations, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and other agencies that has evolved since World War II.

The problem for the communists is the existing international order promotes liberal values and freedoms, including speech, press, association, and political expression, which directly undermine the CCP’s ongoing efforts to pacify and control the Chinese people and oppressed minority groups. As a result, the CCP has developed a strategy that employs the language of the values of the current order while incrementally implementing a multipolar framework that enhances Chinese prestige, influence, and leadership that could be labeled as “globalism with Chinese characteristics.”

State-run Chinese media routinely propagate supporting messages promoting a Beijing-led new world order. Consider this headline from Global Times on 7 April: “China is willing to work together with countries, including Canada, to safeguard multilateralism and multilateral trading system.”

During the Xi Jinping regime, the word “global” has increasingly crept into communist Chinese propaganda. At various intervals, Xi has announced several “global initiatives” that have a dual purpose: to demonstrate Chinese altruism and world leadership in matters important to all of humankind and to psychologically condition foreigners to the inevitability of Chinese global leadership.

Let us examine those initiatives and what the future may portend for globalism with Chinese characteristics.

VARIOUS CHINESE GLOBAL INITIATIVES

Emphasizing multipolarity and fairness as defined by the CCP, current global initiatives proposed by China include the following:

Global Digital Economy Partnership City Cooperation Initiative. (ref: https://english.beijing.gov.cn/latest/activities/202307/t20230706_3156250.html). Marked by annual conferences held in China, this mouthful’s purpose is “to promote exchanges and cooperation between cities worldwide, share a mutually beneficial market environment open for all, foster an eco-system conducive to digital-tech innovation, accelerate urban digital transformation, support green development empowered by digital technologies, and propel inclusive cooperation on the global digital sector. It aims to establish a network for opening up and innovation in the digital economy among cities worldwide.” This is Beijing’s tactical siren song for the Digital Silk Road, which presents the same data privacy and cyberespionage pitfalls for the unsuspecting as noted above.

Global Data Security Initiative (GDSI). In response to US efforts to promote the banning of Chinese technology companies, in 2020 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed the GDSI which includes principles that should be followed for the safeguarding of personal information and preventing cyberespionage and “mass surveillance.” Since China has its own rules for censorship and data-sharing, as implemented with through the Great Firewall, the likelihood that countries will sign on to this initiative is problematic at best. Does anyone really believe the communist Wang Yi’s claims that “[w]e have not and will not ask Chinese companies to transfer data overseas to the government in breach of other countries’ laws”? The Europeans are certainly concerned about unlawful data transfers to China, as noted here. As usual, sunlight is the best countermeasure for Chinese subterfuge.

Global Development Initiative (GDI). Proposed by Xi in 2021, the GDI is intended to promote the achievement of the 17 UN sustainable development goals in eight priority areas: “poverty alleviation, food security, pandemic response and vaccines, financing for development, climate change and green development, industrialization, digital economy. and connectivity in the digital-era.” The key area is climate change and green development, as China is the world’s largest producer of solar panels, electric vehicles, and other “green-tech” components. The new Trump administration is taking the opposite approach by leaving the Paris Climate Accords (again) and abandoning massive Biden-era green subsidies. The Europeans are also learning about the pitfalls of shedding hydrocarbons and nuclear plants for green power production promises (blindly, from the perspective of outside observers). The Chinese are about to learn economic lessons from the great capitalist Adam Smith that subsidies of the uneconomical are doomed to failure over the long run.

Global Security Initiative (GSI). The GSI promotes the adoption of Chinese-centric security norms and operational practices within the existing framework of multilateral organizations like the UN and ASEAN as the key building block of “global peace.” The GSI incorporates China’s core principles of diplomacy, including “the paramount importance of state sovereignty and territorial integrity; noninterference in the internal affairs of states; and opposition to ‘unilateral’ sanctions and ‘bloc confrontation.’” In announcing the GSI, Xi invoked the concept of “indivisible security” to make China’s ongoing defense of its “core interests” seem more palatable to regional partners. The problem for the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, and other countries is that Chinese “core interests” always seem to come at their expenses, especially in the South China Sea. Color those countries skeptical about China’s GSI based on direct experience with PLA and Chinese COGARD intimidation!

The other problem with the GSI is that it promotes the expansion on international Chinese policing. A number of countries, including the US, have had recent encounters with Chinese police stations that have been discovered to have been hubs for the intimidation of overseas Chinese and dissident groups like the Falun Gong, as well as for Chinese espionage and influence-peddlingoperations. Continued US and allied nation counterespionage and prosecutions are the best countermeasures for thwarting China’s GSI.

Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). Announced by Xi Jinping in 2024, the GCI promotes a China-centric state-focused and state-defined values system aimed at eliminating universal values in areas such as human rights and democracy. This China-dominated “new world order” will replace the current international order that has dominated global development since World War-II. As noted here, China’s new world order will be “friendlier to autocratic governments [,and] sovereignty will come at the expense of individual liberties, while universal values such as democracy and human rights, which have been at the core of world affairs for decades, will be stripped from global governance.” The best countermeasures to this grandiose initiative include the continuing exposure of the CCP’s human rights violations, persecution of Chinese minority groups, forced organ harvesting, intimidation of its neighbors, and other uncivilized actions of the Beijing regime. Who in his right mind wants to live in a world dominated by the Chinese Communist Party?

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The problem for Xi and communists is that many nations have caught on to what would be in store in a future world dominated by the CCP: a continuation of Chinese mercantilism at the expense of their own economies, increasing diplomatic threats and intimidation backed up by the belligerence of the People’s Liberation Army, debt traps associated with Chinese “investments,” economic and cyber espionage, intellectual property theft, cultural genocide, and a trampling of basic human rights.

Recognizing those threats, the Trump administration is isolating China with a new tariff regime whose goal is to rebalance international trade and undermine globalism with Chinese characteristics. Those tariffs will price out Chinese over-production in the American market (a stake in the heart of one of their mercantilist pillars), put pressure on other countries to tariff Chinese products to earn favor with the US, undermine Chinese development of supply chains through third party countries to avoid US tariffs and regulations, and pressure China to remove non-tariff regulations and restrictions that impede fair trade.

The US implementation of reciprocal tariffs is isolating China and effectively ending their globalist dreams of a Chinese new world order. Note that China was the only nation to blink when President Trump announced the new tariff regime; only China responded by raising tariffs in response. They understand that reciprocal tariffs are kryptonite to China’s export economy that was built through China’s decades-long exploitation of the World Trade Organization and other international institutions that have promoted free trade.

And that’s great for the world! Make all countries great again.

The end.

This article originally appeared in Stu Cvrk’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission

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