China is America’s preeminent global adversary. But in recent years, China has been the one scoring most of the wins in this new cold war. Fortunately, January has brought Xi Jinping’s Communist regime five small defeats.
The four most recent defeats all came last week.
First, there was the U.S. Senate’s introduction of the Utilizing Strategic Allied Telecommunications Act. The bipartisan legislation will provide $1 billion in funding alongside regulatory changes. The intent is to provide cellular providers with new ways of building out their 5G networks. But the strategic effect should be felt in foreign nations finding alternatives to using China’s Huawei for their 5G infrastructures. This is critically important because Huawei serves the Communist Party’s espionage apparatus. And China will use Huawei’s 5G networks to spy on our allies and their citizens. But if the United States can provide allies with an affordable, superior, and safer 5G alternative, they’ll be more amenable to rejecting Huawei.
A second defeat last week was the Peace Corps announcement that it is ending its China program. The suspension signals that U.S. taxpayer dollars will no longer go to support an adversarial power by educating its citizens on how to defeat us. It also removes an intelligence recruitment opportunity for the Ministry of State Security.
Third was China’s confirmation that its GDP growth rate plummeted in 2019 and that its birthrate also fell to the lowest level in the Communist Party’s ruling history. This undermines Xi’s long-term ability to outproduce foreign competitors and support his rapidly aging population. Considering the vast socioeconomic disparities between China’s urban centers and its rural heartlands, these data also point to longer-term political instability.
And the economic data speak to China’s final defeat last week — Xi’s submissive agreement with President Trump to a phase one trade deal. While Xi will seek to use the second phase negotiations to play Trump on intellectual property issues, his pledge to purchase $200 billion more in U.S. goods came without much reciprocity. Although Trump will suspend tariff rate hikes and the introduction of new tariffs, existing tariffs will remain in force.
For a leader who seeks to present himself as the new Mao Zedong, a leader of almost ordained wisdom and virtue, this submission will have been hard to swallow. They’ll never say it, but Xi’s inner circle in the Central Committee must be increasingly nervous with his rule.
There’s more. If we go back a week earlier in January, we can see another major defeat for Xi — the overwhelming Jan. 11 reelection of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. A fervent member of the Democratic Progressive Party who rejects increased deference to Beijing, Tsai’s reelection followed a well-resourced Chinese influence campaign to unseat her. And while Taiwan is sure to face escalating Chinese pressure in the years ahead, Tsai’s boosted military spending and closer links with the global economy mean that her state should prosper. The U.S. can strengthen that likelihood by selling greater numbers of more advanced weapons platforms to the small island state. But the world now has two examples, via Hong Kong and Taiwan, that nominally Chinese nationals reject Xi’s China Dream whenever given the chance.
These are small victories to be sure — but important ones nonetheless. China is creaking under Xi’s misguided rule.
