CHINA WATCHBook Review: How Xi Jinping Derailed China’s Peaceful Rise
In just one decade, Xi Jinping managed to dismantle the collective leadership system carefully crafted by Deng Xiaoping; sour China’s relations with most of its neighbours; and set China on a collision course with the United States. A new book offers an answer.
How did Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in just a decade manage to dismantle the collective leadership system carefully crafted by Deng Xiaoping, sour China’s relations with most of its neighbours and set China on a collision course with the United States? Western analysts generally focus on the authoritarian policies put in place by Xi since his rise to power in 2012, while Chinese scholars blame Western overreaction, starting in 2017 with US President Donald Trump, who made it clear that he wanted to prevent China from replacing the US as the global hegemon.
In Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise, Susan Shirk seeks explanations more widely. She focuses in particular on the era of Xi’s predecessor, CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao, who in her view set the stage for much of what has happened under Xi. Shirk has been following Chinese politics for decades, has published extensively on China and currently chairs the 21st Century China Center of the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. She has also served as US deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for East Asia and the Pacific.
Hu Jintao is generally seen as a weak leader who failed to build on the reforms initiated by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. His term in office (2002–2012) is usually considered a ‘lost decade’. However, Shirk reminds us that much of China’s current overreach started under Hu. China’s fortification of rocks and shoals in the South China Sea gained pace in the early 2000s, its coastguard began to harass other countries’ ships in 2006, and the global financial crisis of 2008–09 boosted Beijing’s confidence and marked the start of a more openly assertive foreign policy.
Shirk ascribes this early overreach to Hu’s inability to manage the politburo standing committee, China’s top decision-making body. When Hu took over from Jiang, he increased the size of the standing committee from seven to nine, elevating the bosses responsible for internal security and propaganda to the committee.
