Thread 2:
“among the external forces that lie beyond Chinese control – and while great powers such as Russia, Japan, and even India could complicate or even impede China’s rise – only the US could wield sufficient strategic and economic power to potentially derail it.” 1/21
“among the external forces that lie beyond Chinese control – and while great powers such as Russia, Japan, and even India could complicate or even impede China’s rise – only the US could wield sufficient strategic and economic power to potentially derail it.” 1/21
“despite his daughter’s English language fluency, Xi himself neither speaks nor reads English – which means that his understanding of 🇺🇸 has always been intermediated through official Chinese sources of translation, which are not always known for accuracy, subtlety, or nuance.”
“(The China Communist Party’s) hostility to the American ideal.. has been grounded in the view that the American concept of freedom represents a continuing existential threat to the political legitimacy of the party within China itself.” 3/21
“The CCP sees “bourgeois liberalism” as more of a threat today than at any time in its history, with the single exception of the tumultuous events of 1989. That is why ideology remains at the core of the US-China divide.” 4/21
“If ideology has been one major factor in defining this divide, race has been the other. With race comes the wider Q of ethno-nationalism and Chinese revulsion.. at acts and attitudes of Western political and cultural condescension toward China over the centuries.” 5/21
“I have described Xi’s worldview as “Marxist-Nationalist,” because while his appeal to the party remains ideological (not least because ideology is the backbone of Leninist discipline), his appeal to the people is assiduously nationalist.” 6/21
“simplified ideology & reified nationalism.. appeal to the mind & heart..bring forward the collective consciousness of an ancient people to the politics of the present.. potentially much more potent a nationally mobilizing force than Mao Zedong Thought was half a century ago.”
“scale, interdependency, &.. exposure of 🇨🇳 & 🇺🇸 financial interests are simply too great. As of 2021.. bilateral financial relationship stood at just over $5 trillion… 🇨🇳 listings on US stock exchanges ($1.9 trillion).. $1.1 trillion in 🇨🇳 official holdings of 🇺🇸 Treasuries..”
“Xi Jinping’s emphasis on modernizing the PLA is driven in large part by his personality. Xi is a strategic realist who believes that, as important as economic prosperity is, it is military power that ultimately lies at the heart of state power.” 9/21
“Xi’s attitudes are also shaped by his military service from 1979 to 1982 at the beginning of his professional career and by his father’s time as a senior military commander during the revolutionary war. He has a healthy appreciation of the military traditions of the PLA..” 10/21
“When Xi reviews the map.. From Beijing’s perspective, Russia is almost completely on side. Japan is hedging but may not be able to escape its economic reliance on China. India has regressed but is still not a lost cause. 🇰🇷 is trending positively & Southeast Asia even more so.”
“🇨🇳 was trying to defuse tensions with 🇮🇳 by seeking to defuse the border crisis and entice 🇮🇳 with offers of economic & COVID-19 vaccine aid. But.. Beijing met with little success in slowing 🇮🇳's embrace of the Quad… wariness of 🇨🇳 had been deeply implanted in Delhi’s psyche.”
“NZ's 2019 defense white paper.. referred to the country’s “increased defence cooperation with 🇨🇳” & – contrary to the 🇦🇺 position – argued that “🇨🇳 was now deeply enmeshed in the international rules-based order,”.. the depth of 🇳🇿 conflicting economic & political priorities.”
“African states have become 🇨🇳's most reliable supporters.. African states are removed from the security impact of 🇨🇳's expanding sphere of influence across Asia.. eager for economic aid, trade & investment.. detached from the long historical shadow of US influence..” 14/21
“In exchange, African states are assured that China also possesses a veto in the UN Security Council that can always be deployed in support of a state (or even an individual political leader) facing the threat of censure or external intervention in times of crisis.” 15/21
“🇨🇳 already has a well-developed.. playbook for dealing with unstable regimes. Its priority- as with 🇵🇰 & 🇲🇲 in Asia – has always been to preserve relations with the state, not necessarily the govt of the day, in order to preserve & maximise 🇨🇳's long-term strategic interests.”
“🇨🇳's party-state, backed by a 🇨🇳 military that answers directly to Xi, is in this view, embarked on a long-term strategy from which it is not about to change course – and certainly not because of some new understanding reached between 🇨🇳 Foreign Ministry & 🇺🇸 State Department.”
“within its system of government, China has become habituated to the near-complete bifurcation of its diplomatic and its military/paramilitary operations. The function of this is for China to appear to be as reasonable as possible in the..” 18/21
“management of its overall bilateral and regional political relationships while, at the same time, allowing its military to do whatever is deemed operationally necessary to advance Beijing’s national security objectives on the ground.” 19/21
“In reality, given Chinese internal decision-making processes, China’s more senior Foreign Ministry officials are relatively powerless to constrain – let alone direct – what Central Military Commission staff do.” 20/21
“By and large, these are seen as two discrete universes: one military, and the other diplomatic, brought together only within the ultimate decision-making center of Xi Jinping’s personal office.” 21/21
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