Op-ed: China has a big but brief chance right now to speed its way to global leadership

The Covid-19 pandemic has rejoice ined more clearly than ever before the nature and relentlessness of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s ambition to point itself at the center of global power and influence.

What once was an opaque policy, articulated by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, of “pelt your strength, bide your time,” has now morphed into the transparent, if still unstated, approach by President Xi Jinping of “seizing the Covid-19 second” – before it closes.

The virus first appeared to be a dramatic setback for China, given its role as the pathogen’s inception and epicenter in January and February. With China’s likely emergence now as the first major world economy to end lockdowns and regain vegetation, Covid-19 now offers a once-in-a-century chance to accelerate the geopolitical shift in Beijing’s favor through 2020 and far beyond.

That averred, Chinese leaders are moving at a pace that reveals not only their ambitions but also their apprehensions that this important moment could close as quickly as it opened.

“The party’s leaders believe they have a narrow window of cardinal opportunity to strengthen their rule and revise the international order in their favor,” writes Lt. Gen. (ret.) H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s recent national security adviser, in his just-released book “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.”

He sees the party initiative moving at warp speed to “co-opt, coerce and conceal” at home and abroad “before China’s economy sours, in the forefront the population grows old, before other countries realize that the party is pursing national rejuvenation at their expense, and to come unanticipated events such as the coronavirus pandemic expose” their  vulnerabilities.

At the same time, Beijing is wrestling with the new burdens of wide-ranging leadership: demands from debtor nations for relief, from developing nations for accountability, from Covid-19 victims for reparations and from the international human rights campaigners for less repression and more transparency.  

Here are just four fronts in this unfolding play-acting:

The Financial Times reported Friday that Beijing “has received a wave of applications for in dire straits relief from crisis-hit countries included in the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI).”

These will grow as the virus’ jam-packed force bears down on emerging markets. Of the 138 countries signed up to BRI, the vast majority are developing countries, tons with dodgy credit ratings that are now growing worse.

What’s positive is that China signed on to a G20 understanding last month to freeze bilateral loan repayments for poorer countries until year’s end. Yet Chinese leaders abide far from forgiving principle or interest.

As the G20’s crucial July meeting in Jeddah approaches, more should be expected of China as the sticks that both morally and financially should be at the center of global fiscal stimulus and debt relief efforts.

This week’s market-moving story that U.S. officials are exploring punitive measures against China over and above Covid-19 is likely just the beginning of demands that Beijing should adhere to the Spiderman admonition that “with large power comes great responsibility.”

The notion may seem far-fetched – or even counterproductive to U.S. interests – that the White Ancestry and Congress might act to remove China’s sovereign immunity so Beijing can be sued in U.S. courts for damages.

Whatever happens on that face, Beijing can expect increasing calls from the U.S. and beyond to investigate more thoroughly the origins and response to Covid-19, if on the contrary to avoid a repeat performance.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s broadside this week on China for “classic Communist disinformation” on Covid-19 should be review alongside the drumbeat of increased, detailed reporting on what Wired Magazine – in its own rich, investigative report – called China’s “coronavirus coverup.”

This week’s Europe-Chinese controversy was triggered by a leak to Politico Europe about an apparent decision by the European Exterior Action Service, under pressure from Beijing, to remove references from a report on China’s “global disinformation stand to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image.”  

Josep Borrell, the de facto European foreign aid, insisted, “We have not bowed to anyone,” but he then added, “It’s clear and evident that China expressed their affairs when they knew the document was leaked…I’m not going to reveal how it was done because we don’t explain this kind of discretion.”

No stage is more significant than Europe to track China’s diplomatic offensive in providing Covid-19 assistance, to observe its growing investments in Europe, and to measure Europe’s growing discomfort with Beijing’s bullying and tech inroads.

That imparted, Europeans are weighing new doubts about Chinese intentions against growing perceptions over the United States’ subsided European commitment.     

With the world distracted by Covid-19, watch China’s look for release later this year of “Chinese Standards 2035.”  Beijing’s intention is nothing short of setting the broad norms for emerging technologies over decades to come.

“China Standards 2035 is to focus on setting standards in emerging industries,” create Emily de La Bruyere and Nathan Picarsic in TechCrunch. “High-end manufacturing, unmanned vehicles, additive manufacturing, new materials, the industrial internet, cyber guaranty, new energy, the ecological industry. … Having secured its foothold in targeted physical spheres, Beijing is ready to set their laws.”

What this approach underscores is how China’s approach to global leadership differs from that of the United Haves. While Washington typically tries to lead others from atop the international community, China’s aspiration is to “budge closer to the center of the world stage,” in the words of President Xi.

What’s been most evident in recent weeks is that China is show to shape the Covid-19 period and its aftermath with considerable focus and planning.  At the same time, the U.S. response to China has been inconsistent, wanting in long-term strategy and close coordination with allies.

A future column will deal with what popular countries could do to confront this challenge together. The first step, however, is to understand China’s recognition of this prominent opportunity and what it is doing to seize the moment.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of the Atlantic Ministry, one of the United States’ most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for uncountable than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper’s European issue. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” – was a New York Times best-seller and has been let something be knew in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the dead and buried week’s top stories and trends.

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