He is in high spirits. His country has tamed the coronavirus, reignited the economy and – he says – eradicated absolute poverty. But Chinese president Xi Jinping is actually besieged. From the Bay of Bengal to Thailand, Hong Kong and onwards to South America, a “ring of fire” of juvenile protests is rocking the Asia-Pacific region, which the paramount leader envisages as a China-led community of shared future. And this is not only a problem of regional instability threatening Chinese exporters and investors.

After the 1989 Tiananmen mass protests threat and the following collapse of the Soviet empire, the economic crises in 1997-98 and 2008-2009 and now the COVID-19 pandemic, will the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime also be able to survive such a generational challenge?

At the current stage of China’s geopolitical growth, there are high chances that the world will witness the Asian giant’s “Cuba moment” sooner or later. In 1898 the United States fought and won a war with Spain in Cuba and the Philippines that heralded its rise to global primacy. While at the time the McKinley administration aimed to gain political leadership in the Caribbean, besides the economic one the United States already had, China could now desire to turn economic clout in its neighborhood into political control.

The idea of invincibility that the Beijing government aired at the recent Two Sessions, the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, leads someone to believe that the Asian giant is ready to walk that path. The US national security establishment is increasingly persuaded that China may conclude it has only a window of opportunity in the short term to make geopolitical advances, given that the Chinese are likely doomed to lose in a protracted war with the US superpower.

However, Chinese grand ambitions, such as winning back Taiwan, would be constrained if a strong movement of young protesters on China mainland demanding democracy, political freedom or simply more say in state affairs were to emerge. Street protests in Myanmar and Thailand are similar to those in Hong Kong, with demonstrators advocating a democratic direction for their countries.

Protesters’ demands in Peru, Chile or Colombia are basically different from one another, ranging from the fight against corruption and mistreatment of indigenous people to the refusal of authoritarianism. But they all have a common trait with those in Asia – rejecting the idea that current rulers will determine their future.

Last November Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said history was not on the side of Thai coup Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha: “The demands of the pro-democracy movement [in Thailand] are a breakthrough, unthinkable even just in 2019.”

The same could go for China. Xi’s promise to rejuvenate his country risks actually backfiring. The multiplication of “Ru Bao” satirical channel on YouTube mocking the CCP leader is evidence that Chinese people have critical thinking. Then there are citizens, such as young, well-educated Chinese expatriates, who consider outspoken and persecuted Chinese academic Xu Zhangrun the “pride of the nation.”

Though a small fraction of China’s society, Chinese expats in the West could bring change by joining forces with reformers within the Party’s “second red generation,” the descendants of Communist China’s revolutionary founders, and Premier Li Keqiang-style pragmatic bureaucrats. This is the sort of collaboration that top Party school’s expelled professor Cai Xia envisages to win over the “silent majority” in the CCP, who is against the excessive concentration of power in Xi’s hands but does not have the courage to challenge him.

Xi and his acolytes grasp the danger. On January 5 the CCP United Front Work Department released new regulations to “strengthen guidance of thought and promote the love for the motherland, the Communist Party and socialism with Chinese characteristics among overseas Chinese citizens and overseas students.”

Because of their government’s rough policies, Chinese nationals who live and work abroad often feel victim to “stupid” behavior in their host country. As a Europe-based Chinese scholar once told me, Europeans do not like the Chinese. “In China I was suspected of spying for the West. In Europe I am considered a Chinese spy,” he said.

Reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s fight against the “evil empire” – the Soviet Union – US President Joe Biden is shaping his foreign policy as a battle between democracies and authoritarian regimes. However, the United States and its allies cannot win if they do not change their approach to the China challenge.

Washington and the Europeans should help Chinese expats to broaden their space in their country’s political debate, creating the conditions for them to be well integrated in the Western societies. This is the best way to forge the deepest relations between the two cultures and breed a new generation of Chinese acquainted with democratic values.

China will ultimately have its “democratic moment” only if someone is able to change the social pact between the CCP and the population – “we make you richer, and you refrain from challenging us”.

(Emanuele Scimia, Deputy editor-in-chief with AsiaNews)

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