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How can the United States and its allies capitalise on the mounting pressure on Xi Jinping’s regime?
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A sprawl of protests has broken out across China over the past month amid a stark shift in public sentiment towards President Xi Jinping’s regime and the Chinese Communist Party more broadly.
A cacophony of grievances has been voiced by protestors, however, Xi’s continued reluctance to ease COVID-19 lockdown measures has fuelled much of the discontent.
A belated emergency services response to an apartment fire in northwest China — resulting in 10 deaths — seemingly triggered the latest weave of dissension, with the delay attributed to compliance with strict COVID-19 protocols.
“China is being wracked by popular protests on a scale not seen since Tiananmen Square,” James Jay Carafano, vice president of The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, writes in a piece originally published in 19fortyfive.
But have the protests prompted Beijing to rethink its political strategy?
According to Carafano, the CCP’s response has been aesthetic.
“The regime has softened its public rhetoric,” he observes.
“For several days now, public officials and the government-controlled media have foregone talk of ‘dynamic clearing’, the official description of China’s zero-COVID policy.
“Instead, they have emphasised ‘optimising’ pandemic controls.”
This change in tone, he adds, suggests Xi’s “draconian COVID lockdowns” may be gradually eased.
“Local governments are being told to target their lockdowns more narrowly, impose them quickly, and end them as fast as they can,” he writes.
“Some locations — such as Beijing and Guangzhou, which are both experiencing surges of infections — are tweaking their rules to allow more business as usual, letting mild cases quarantine at home rather than forcing them into centralised facilities.”
But an easing of COVID-19 restrictions would not be reflective of a broader loosening of authoritarian controls.
“Nor should anybody expect a 180-degree shift in China’s COVID-19 policies,” Carafano adds.
“It is mostly the narrative that is shifting. If infections spike again, expect a quick return to brutal crackdowns.”
While a wholesale overhaul may not be in the offing, the protests have exposed “demonstrated confusion” on the part of the CCP.
This disorder is underpinned by an uncertain future for the regime, which faces an array of social and economic challenges.
“The Chinese Communist Party is not secure,” Carafano writes.
“In addition to struggling with its COVID policy, the regime faces the longer-term challenge of sustaining economic growth despite a looming demographic crisis.
“The protests remind us that as aggressive as China has become in the last few years, a number of vulnerabilities, both within and outside of its borders, diminish the threat posed by Beijing.”
As such, Carafano claims the West has an opportunity to accelerate the decline of long-established authoritarian rule.
“The worst policies would look to accommodate China out of fear of losing access to cash and favours from Beijing,” he adds.
“All indications are that China will be a less reliable and dependable partner in the future. Instead, it will become even more exploitive and manipulative as it struggles to sustain its global stature.”
Instead, Carafano calls on the United States and its allies to “get ahead of the threat”.
“Authoritarian regimes are always weakest when they are pressed from without and within,” he explains.
“External competition, isolation, and pressure will force the Chinese Communist Party to make difficult choices that pit rising expectations at home against ambitions to expand Beijing’s influence abroad.”
This, he concludes, would limit the CCP’s destabilising effect on the world order.
“In just the last few years, China has triggered a global pandemic, greenlit Russia’s unconscionable invasion of Ukraine, threatened the people of Taiwan, conducted a malicious global campaign of espionage, and compiled the world’s worst record on human rights and environmental protections,” he writes.
“China must be held accountable for its atrocious behaviour. It should be treated like a global pariah, not courted by governments.”
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