China May Not Be a Superpower

China would not be the superpower it seems, renowned historian Frank Dikotter argues in his book, China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower.

Dikotter draws on party archives as well as his decades of experience in China to analyse China’s social and political development since the Cultural Revolution.

Paramount Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is widely feted for launching China’s ‘reform and opening’ policy, which is hailed for spurring rapid economic development and poverty reduction. But reality is different, writes Dikotter.

Following the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, peasants found themselves without supervision and controls. So they started operating underground factories, opening black markets and trading, and dividing land among themselves. That means that all Deng really did was put a stamp of approval on ordinary villagers’ drive to claim back the freedoms they had before 1949.

Hundreds of millions of people in the countryside lifted themselves out of poverty, but not thanks to the CCP.

According to Dikotter’s reading of the party’s archives, Jiang said the United States hated China, and that China should build up its army and join the WTO but not adhere to its rules. Indeed, China was able to use WTO membership to dump its stores of overproduction on world markets, undermining many competitors and spurring a boom of inward foreign direct investment.

Visitors to China are dazzled by the stunning infrastructure of cities such as Shanghai. But Dikotter writes that communist regimes often spend great amounts of money projecting an image of power, strength and modernity. And who funds all of this? It is the savings of ordinary people from the poor countryside, far away from the glitz of big cities. And yet, much of these infrastructure projects are white elephants.

Xi Jinping is widely considered to be the most powerful and consequential Chinese leader since Mao. In particular, he engineered the abolition of leadership term limits, paving the way for him to potentially become a leader for life. But according to Dikotter, Xi was seen as a harmless figure, acceptable to different factions within the CCP. Now as a Leninist dictator, he spends most of his time worrying about plots against him by his underlings and other CCP factions. He is a ‘caveman Marxist’!

On the possibility of China invading Taiwan, Dikotter writes that there is nothing new about public declarations about taking over Taiwan—they go back probably to 1949. But it is a completely unpredictable problem, when you are dealing with a dictator who teeters between hubris and paranoia. The safest option is to arm Taiwan to the hilt to minimise the risks.

That said, Dikotter warns that the U.S. may be overestimating China’s military capabilities. China is ramping up cognitive war as its propaganda machine pumps out false stories about its supposed high-tech weaponry to discourage any U.S. thoughts of defending Taiwan. The frequent anti-corruption purges of very high-level military officers suggests that something is awry in China’s armed forces. And one can wonder if China’s military would actually be willing to fight against Taiwan.

Despite its veneer of capitalism, China still has a Marxist economy with state ownership and control of the means of production, writes Dikotter. Virtually all capital is tied up in state-owned banks. All land and thus natural resources belong to the state. Population movement can be controlled, notably by the Hukou System, a virtual apartheid system by which access to social benefits is tied to birthplace. And while membership of the CCP represents a gravy train, its members pay for this through restrictions on their freedom.

China’s reformers wanted to make socialism work better, not move to capitalism. China does have many apparent economic successes, but they depend on subsidies, which have driven up public debt to massive levels. And unemployment is enormous, especially among young people.

What does the future hold for Xi and his administration? Dikotter argues that their grip on power is slipping as evidenced in their caving into the 2022 White Paper Protests against the Covid-19 lockdowns. Dikotter’s perspective on China may seem overly pessimistic, but it is important to recall that the U.S. overestimated other supposed postwar rivals, notably the Soviet Union and Japan.

John West is the author of Asian Century … on a Knife-edge and executive director of the Asian Century Institute. His career has included major stints at the Australian Treasury, the OECD, the Asian Development Bank Institute and Tokyo’s Sophia University.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).