China’s surging global influence has not settled the debate among observers about whether it is an offensive, revisionist power seeking global hegemony, or a defensive, status quo power just protecting its core security interests. One camp sees hegemonic intent in China’s growing military spending, investments in cutting-edge technologies, aggressive economic statecraft, and attempts to bend international organizations to its will. The other counters that China’s territorial ambitions are limited, it has no desire to export its governance model, and – unlike the United States – does not claim to represent universal values.
Both camps are partly right, but both are also missing a vital piece of the puzzle.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overriding priority is indeed the defense of its regime and so-called core national interests. But Beijing has defined its security so expansively that defending it requires exerting influence and reshaping the international environment far beyond China’s borders. The problem is not simply that internal insecurity generates external assertiveness, although that is true. Rather, what appears to outsiders as coercive or revisionist expansion is, in the CCP’s understanding, defensive necessity. A maximalist conception of defense results in the CCP being defensive in intent but offensive in action.
This dynamic is visible across multiple domains. An unprecedented peacetime military buildup, including rapid nuclear expansion, is framed as essential deterrence. Sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the East and South China Sea and the steady militarization of disputed areas there are justified as protecting sovereignty. Pressure on Taiwan is described as an internal matter of national reunification. Restrictions on foreign technology alongside efforts to export Chinese standards are cast as economic security. The same is true of China’s years-long campaign to achieve a strategic chokehold over critical mineral processing. Even direct efforts to influence narratives in other countries and reshape international norms are portrayed as defensive responses to “anti-China” forces.
In the CCP’s worldview, pursuing critics and dissidents abroad – what rights advocates call transnational repression – is a normal part of national security policy. The CCP regards overseas Chinese, in particular, not simply as citizens of foreign states, but as an integral part of the broader national community. It thus views their political loyalty as a legitimate security interest.
Foreign media criticism, whether from diaspora Chinese communities or not, is often interpreted as hostile political action justifying countermeasures ranging from diplomatic objections to economic retaliation against the outlet or its government. At the same time, Chinese national security legislation has increasingly asserted extraterritorial jurisdiction, most prominently in Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law. Where foreign countries might see offensive lawfare, the CCP sees a necessary defense against foreign attempts to meddle in China’s domestic affairs.
There are, of course, instances in which China uses deception or deflection rather than justifying its actions as self-defense. On its expanding cyber operations, for example, Beijing consistently denies responsibility and deflects, contending that China is a victim of cyberattacks and that the United States is the world’s most aggressive cyber attacker. When the CCP deploys unannounced sanctions and other economic coercion against other states, Beijing claims – unconvincingly – that these are not state-directed actions. Yet even here, the CCP frames the economic behavior of the public and Chinese companies as legitimate defensive action given the “offense” or hurt caused by the other country.
Despite some covert initiatives, the CCP is overall not engaged in a campaign of deception to hide revisionist ambitions. Some observers have claimed that China must have a secret plan for world domination. If that is so, then the plan has not been shared widely even within the party or the military. To the contrary, the party’s official rhetoric declaring its defensive, peaceful intent on the world stage has been deeply integrated into domestic messaging, including in China’s education system from kindergarten curriculums through graduate programs.
As difficult as it may be for some observers to believe, the CCP genuinely does not see – or cannot accept – that China’s far-reaching global actions constitute offensive expansion. Two longstanding concepts lie at the root of this mindset.
The first is China’s self-perception as being inherently peaceful. A notion of fundamental innocence in international affairs is a deep-rooted political and cultural trope that anyone who has spent time in China will recognize. As international relations theorist Iain Johnston argued, nonaggression is central to China’s version of national exceptionalism. “One of the most deeply ingrained beliefs in China is that the Chinese are a uniquely peaceful people,” he wrote. Chinese schools teach that China was the leading military and cultural power in East and Southeast Asia for thousands of years but did not invade or subjugate neighboring powers. Unlike the Roman empire or other Western empires, China practiced benevolence and led other countries through the power of its example.
President Xi Jinping has often claimed that “China will never seek hegemony or pursue a zero-sum world” because “such notions have never been part of China’s cultural DNA.” The conception of a peaceful, pre-19th century Sinocentric world order, accurate or not, is a cornerstone of mainstream public discourse in China.
Seeing in its own history a benevolent paternalism toward other Asian countries, China does not regard its contemporary efforts to exert new influence across the region as coercive or aggressive. East and Southeast Asia are seen as natural areas in which Chinese power should extend – China’s equivalent of the United States’ “backyard” in Latin America. When its neighbors push back against Chinese pressure, China often sees this as the result of an American “black hand” intervening in the region and stirring up trouble.
The second concept is China’s profound sense of historical victimhood, which further inclines it against ever seeing itself as an aggressor. Every Chinese person knows about the Century of Humiliation, the period between the 1840s and the 1940s when China suffered repeated foreign intervention and subjugation, national division, and the loss of several territories. Modern tensions with Western powers and Japan – China’s chief historical tormentors – are often interpreted by the CCP as continuations or echoes of this painful history.
The CCP portrays itself as having ended the Century of Humiliation. Yet it also emphasizes that China must never forget key lessons from this history, such as that foreigners are always ready to interfere in and take advantage of China. Moreover, the legacies of national humiliation have yet to be fully overcome. From this perspective, “reunifying” (absorbing) Taiwan is a major outstanding task – and a fully legitimate one.
The key impediment to China’s seizure of Taiwan is of course the United States. Although the United States was not a major player in China’s Century of Humiliation, it has, in the CCP’s view, taken over the mantle of leading foreign power attempting to subjugate China. Preventing the CCP from finishing the Chinese Civil War by taking over Taiwan was just the beginning. Since at least the early 1990s, the CCP has regarded the United States as attempting to suppress China’s economic and geopolitical rise and eventually topple its regime. Accurate or not, this perception of constant victimization at the hands of the United States results in the CCP regarding even its most assertive behaviors directed at the United States or U.S. partners as justifiably defensive.
China’s expansive view of defense, and the mismatch between its self-perception and its global actions, are bad news for policymakers in the United States and elsewhere. An increasingly aggressive China is difficult enough to deal with. China acting like a bully while feeling like a victim makes the situation worse.
Policymakers cannot easily dismantle China’s self-serving narratives, but they can strengthen their communication with Beijing to reshape narratives around its strategic choices. Rather than calling out problematic Chinese actions in isolation, policymakers should reframe criticisms of China as assurances of reciprocity. For example: Just as our country will not pass laws that claim extraterritorial jurisdiction within China, we will not honor Chinese laws that infringe on our sovereignty.
When the CCP justifies its actions in one domain by citing alleged offenses against it in another domain, policymakers should welcome the broader conversation and stress that their goal with China is no less than reciprocal respect and responsibilities across the board. Policymakers need not accept China’s self-perception as peaceful and defensive, but taking it seriously will sharpen their ability to speak in ways the Chinese understand.
Source:
thediplomat.com