The essence of civil and military is to alternate tensions appropriately. Just last month during the Alaska talks with the U.S., the diplomats of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) displayed such stirring nationalistic maneuvers as “the U.S. is not qualified to speak to China in a condescending manner.” Then recently, head of state Xi Jinping seemed to change his tone and move away from tough talks to tactful and sensible remarks. In his keynote speech at the Boao Forum for Asia on April 20, he repeatedly applied Western values and then redefined them to maintain the appearance of a consistent bilateral discourse. On the one hand, he sought to silence the U.S. and create opportunities to divide the West, and on the other hand, he repackaged the demands of the CCP in order to seek advantages over the U.S.

Why? First, before and after taking office, the Biden administration has repeatedly raised the banner of multilateralism. Internally, it has criticized the unilateralism of the Trump era and its “withdrawal” from international organizations; externally, Biden has repeatedly emphasized the need to form alliances in the campaign against China. Rather than fighting solo, he has sought to contend with China under the support of “partners with common values” and other democratic countries.

Xi Jinping’s response was spot on: in fact, not only the U.S. advocates multilateralism, China is even more so. The distinction lies in Xi’s view that China is insisting on “true multilateralism” and that it intends to uphold “the international system with the United Nations at its core” and “the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core.” The insinuation is that the U.S. is saying one thing but doing another, given that under President Donald Trump, the U.S. withdrew from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and even threatened to withdraw from the WTO.

Second, the values-based diplomacy advocated by the Biden administration has also been countered by Xi in an unspoken manner. During the CNN Presidential Town Hall with Joe Biden on February 17, Biden made a strong reference to American values, declaring that any U.S. president in office must reflect American values, which is why Biden would slam China’s human rights issues whenever necessary. In his first major foreign policy speech on March 3 as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken added that “the current international system is ultimately a reflection of American values.” In this way, Biden has linked American values to American diplomacy, while Blinken has further linked the preservation of the liberal international order to American values.

Xi Jinping blasted this as unilateralism. He alluded to the fact that universal values are not necessarily American values, and that “rules formulated by one or a few countries should not be imposed on others, nor should the unilateralism of individual countries set the pace for the whole world.” Moreover, Xi Jinping chose to partially incorporate the concept of universal values, but rhetorically, he also repackaged it as “common values for all mankind,” a new and innovative term that is close to the existing discourse. This is a combination of superficial conformity and China’s flexible interpretation of the concept. On the one hand, it avoids being perceived as an arrogance of Chinese values, and on the other hand, it avoids being misinterpreted as being soft on the U.S.

Third, Xi Jinping again tactfully attacked their differences in political systems. According to German sociologist Max Weber, there is a difference in the legitimacy of procedures between liberal democracy and authoritarian regimes. Xi does not criticize liberal democracy per se, but argues that the coexistence of the two regimes is a virtuous manifestation of diversity in civilization, just like “mutual respect and appreciation” between flowers of different colors. Any thinking that treats one as superior and the other as inferior, and makes a presumptuous distinction between the two, is engaging in a “new cold war and ideological confrontation,” as well as an unproductive “cold war mentality and zero-sum game.”

Fourth, the Biden administration has repeatedly stated that epidemic relief, climate change, and economic revitalization are priority goals. Xi Jinping agrees but with a slight twist, connecting it to China’s political goals. On one side, Xi emphasized that the developing countries are “a community of common destiny,” drawing a connection between the Belt and Road and poverty eradication in an effort to allay international suspicions about so-called debt-trap diplomacy and economic unity war. On the other end of the spectrum, Xi called for “building closer open and inclusive partnerships” with advanced economies, linking it to the popular concept of “inclusive growth” in the West. He also said that “man-made walls and unpegging ...... are detrimental to everyone,” implicitly accusing the Biden administration of restricting and preventing Chinese capital and research exchanges on the grounds of information security and intellectual property rights.

On the whole, Xi Jinping’s Boao speech was a mixed balance between being soft and tough, not directly confronting the liberal international order led by the U.S. and the West, but applying and spinning Western terminology at every turn, and presenting the argument that China is the guardian of the status quo. In this way, he is gradually redefining the principles and values of the international order in a piecemeal manner. In addition, as the head of state, Xi must also leave some leeway for subsequent Sino-U.S. games.

Could it be that this adjustment, which replaces the wolf-warrior approach with a clever narrative, represents an escalation of the strategic competition between China and the U.S. from a physical trade war and a technology war to an ideological battle for voice, or is it an attempt to take advantage of the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-China ping-pong diplomacy to preserve a window of opportunity to reset U.S.-China relations? As Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan and Foreign Minister Wang Yi have repeatedly said, “U.S.-China relations are at an important juncture, and we hope that both sides will take a new path of peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.” The next step will be to observe what happens next.

(Wen-Ti Sung, lecturer at the Australian National University - College of Asia & the Pacific)

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