US aggression and China’s stance

The sustained assaults by the US-Israeli axis against Iran remain unabated. In the wake of Washington’s rogue actions in Venezuela—culminating in the abduction of the nation’s elected president—the unfolding tableau in Iran lays bare both the sheer magnitude of American imperialist aggression and the ultimate limits of its power. The United States makes no secret of its intent to target Cuba next. Beyond their geopolitical, strategic, economic, and military dimensions, it is patently clear that these incursions are designed to send a definitive message to China. Yet, regardless of its maneuvers, Washington remains fundamentally powerless to arrest China’s ascent. Given Venezuela’s close ties with Beijing, the strategic premium China places on the Panama Canal, its status as a primary consumer of Middle Eastern oil, the depth of Sino-Iranian relations, and the critical importance of the Strait of Hormuz to Chinese foreign trade and energy security, the global community is eminently justified in its curiosity regarding China’s stance on these unfolding crises.

China operates under the conviction that time is firmly on its side. It places unwavering faith in its colossal economic might and formidable production capacity. With strategic patience, Beijing quietly observes the gradual attrition of the United States. Long dubbed the “factory of the world,” China not only stands as the premier destination for foreign direct investment but is also universally recognized as the nation allocating the most substantial resources and investments toward advanced technology, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy. China’s Achilles’ heel, however, is its profound reliance on foreign energy; it imports roughly three-quarters of its domestic consumption. As the world’s leading energy consumer (followed by the US and India), China is executing massive, large-scale investments in both nuclear and renewable energy sectors to mitigate this severe external vulnerability.

The Chinese economy and the Belt and Road Initiative

China consistently underscores the imperatives of sustainable development, social justice, and meticulous centralized planning. Its overarching calculus is predicated on forging a robust and healthy middle-class society. The Chinese leadership articulates a resolute focus on becoming a formidable state of which the Chinese nation can be profoundly proud by 2049, the centenary of the country’s founding. On the economic front, they are implementing stringent measures to ensure that national resources are utilized with frugality, efficacy, efficiency, and profound productivity. Even as it accelerates its integration into the global economy, Beijing is enacting draconian measures to eradicate bribery and corruption—a chronic impediment not merely for domestic operations but equally for foreign investors.

China harbors exceptionally ambitious economic objectives and programmatic agendas. Endeavoring to replace the heavy exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor with innovation, productivity, a highly skilled workforce, and premium-quality manufacturing, China envisions a structural transition wherein the service sector not only complements heavy industry but ultimately eclipses it. The economic blueprint targets technological modernization, brand elevation, and full employment. Furthermore, China champions one of the most formidable poverty alleviation programs in global history, striving to ensure that not a single citizen is left languishing below the poverty line.

Another formidable objective of the state is the eradication of air pollution in major metropolises. The guiding ethos is encapsulated in the slogan: “A beautiful China with blue skies, green lands, and clean waters.” Among the ten future industrial sectors deemed of paramount importance, priority is accorded to next-generation information technology, numerical control tools and robotics, aerospace and satellite equipment, ocean engineering and high-tech vessels, advanced energy generation equipment, medical and healthcare devices, novel materials, new energy turbines, advanced railway equipment, and agricultural machinery. Paradoxically, while China consumes more coal than any other nation, it simultaneously boasts the world’s highest installed capacity for wind and solar energy, and firmly holds the global vanguard in electric public transportation systems.

China actively champions the market economy, free trade, and commercial competition on a global scale. It takes palpable pride in the growing ranks of its wealthy citizens. It meticulously cultivates relationships both with the select few nations that have reaped the dividends of globalization, and the multitude of nations that have been disproportionately disadvantaged by it. It conducts robust trade with Japan despite underlying political and diplomatic friction, just as it does with Australia, a nation firmly entrenched in the geopolitical orbit of the US and the UK. In other words, Beijing exhibits a masterclass in compartmentalizing its foreign relations. It pursues a fiercely multi-vector, multidimensional foreign policy. Furthermore, it is systematically accelerating efforts to internationalize its currency, the Yuan (officially the Renminbi), cementing its status as a global reserve currency in international trade.

As the world’s largest automotive market, China has eclipsed both the United States and Japan in vehicle production. In addition to cultivating its indigenous brands, it manufactures vehicles for a plethora of global marques—including Volkswagen, Audi, General Motors, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda, and Toyota—through strategic joint ventures with domestic partners. Notably, 55 percent of the vehicles produced are of foreign brand origin. Its dominance, moreover, is not confined to automobile manufacturing; it currently occupies the premier global position in absolute shipyard capacity.

Beyond the traditional levers of hard power, the primary vanguard of Chinese soft power and public diplomacy is the network of approximately 550 Confucius Institutes dispersed across nearly 160 countries. Tellingly, fully half of these institutes are strategically situated within nations participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Advancing its educational, scientific, and technological frontiers in tandem with its economic expansion, the steady proliferation of Chinese corporations within the global Fortune 100 and 500 is precisely mirrored by the ascent of Chinese universities into the top 100 and 500 global academic rankings. China’s relentless augmentation of its research and development budget, culminating in its ascension to the number one global ranking in patent filings, serves as incontrovertible proof of this paradigm shift.

The sheer scale of the China-led Belt and Road Initiative is monumental. Despite its most strenuous efforts, the United States has categorically failed to stymie the project’s inexorable advance. Moreover, a multitude of key US allies have actively signed on to the initiative. Consequently, the Belt and Road Initiative now encompasses approximately one-third of the global economy, two-thirds of the world’s population, and three-quarters of the planet’s energy resources.

China’s foreign policy priorities

China extends voluminous lines of credit to the developing world, with a particular emphasis on Africa. In fact, the volume of Chinese sovereign lending in numerous nations currently dwarfs the disbursements of the World Bank. Furthermore, Beijing actively endorses and supports the intra-regional alliances forged among these developing states. It aggressively incentivizes foreign trade denominated in the Chinese currency. China possesses a profound recognition of Africa’s latent potential, maintaining deeply entrenched relations with the 55-member African Union. Beijing is acutely aware that this vast, impoverished, and deeply challenged continent holds fully one-fifth of the world’s mineral wealth and two-fifths of its subterranean water reserves. It is equally imperative to bear in mind that China reigns as the paramount foreign trade partner for a multitude of nations not exclusively in Africa, but across a vast geopolitical expanse spanning from Latin America to Central Asia, and from Europe to the Middle East.

Buoyed by its economic and political heft, a formidable military apparatus, an advanced defense industry, and technological prowess, China has assumed a significantly elevated profile in foreign policy. It increasingly distinguishes itself on the global stage through deft diplomatic mediation, the hosting of high-stakes summits, and the orchestration of new geopolitical alliances. Concurrently, diverse schools of thought and theoretical approaches concerning international relations and statecraft are increasingly prominent within Chinese academia. In this context, a recently published and exhaustive doctoral dissertation on Sino-centric international relations theories—authored by journalist Dr. Elif İlhamoğlu Akkoç, a brilliant young mind in Turkish academia, under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hasan Duran at the Istanbul University Faculty of Political Sciences—yields invaluable insights into the scholarly discourse unfolding within China in this field.

The seminal research of preeminent Western scholars in this domain, such as Prof. Dr. Peter Gries (at the University of Manchester in the UK) and Prof. Dr. David Shambaugh in the US, despite their varying academic and political divergences, converges on an unequivocal consensus: China’s ascent is an undeniable reality and its upward trajectory will inevitably persist. It must be stated that there remains no monolithic global consensus regarding Beijing’s ultimate grand strategy. While many analysts assert that China harbors revisionist ambitions to dismantle the international status quo—advancing by stealth and depth—detractors of this thesis counter that China is fundamentally non-expansionist, innately respectful of sovereign regimes and territorial integrity, and astutely conscious of the limits of its own power. Proponents of this latter view argue that China is acutely aware it can never replicate the unparalleled success of the United States in weaponizing and globalizing its cultural exports—be it language, culinary tastes, cinema, music, entertainment paradigms, lifestyle, educational institutions, or sports franchises—as instruments of soft power. These experts posit, by way of illustration, that Mandarin will never supplant English as a global lingua franca, that Chinese fast-food models and beverages cannot feasibly challenge the global hegemony of McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, and that, ultimately, Chinese culture cannot present a viable, overarching alternative to Western cultural paradigms.

Prof. Dr. David Shambaugh identifies seven distinct schools of thought within Chinese foreign policy discourse. He categorizes them thus: 1- Globalists, 2- Selective Multilateralists, 3- Global South Advocates, 4- Asia Firsters, 5- Major Power Advocates, 6- Realists, and 7- Nationalists. He emphasizes that the Realists constitute the most influential intellectual current, frequently overlapping with the Nationalists on myriad issues. He underscores that they are adamantly opposed to US hegemony, firmly convinced of the absolute necessity of maintaining a robust military apparatus, and fiercely protective of concepts such as state sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity.

Boasting the world’s second-largest population after India, the second-largest economy behind the United States, and a sprawling landmass of 9.5 million square kilometers, China is historically acknowledged for having sustained an average economic growth rate of roughly 10 percent over nearly a quarter of a century. The systemic impact of this hyper-growth, coupled with rapid industrialization, urbanization, and the explosive expansion of the middle class, invariably echoes throughout the nation’s economic and political architecture. Consequently, this not only amplifies China’s geopolitical footprint but also exponentially increases the global visibility of Chinese investors in the corporate arena, Chinese tourists across the globe, and Chinese scholars within international academic institutions. Today, approximately 55 percent of the Chinese populace resides in urban centers. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, this figure stood at a mere 20 percent in 1980. The active-duty personnel of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army exceeds 2.3 million, while the membership roll of the Chinese Communist Party has surpassed the 100 million mark.

In summation, China operates in open defiance of the US-centric Atlanticist system. It vociferously advocates for a multipolar global order. It pioneers alternative organizational structures to circumvent institutions spearheaded by the United States. It strategically funnels aid and capital investments into nations currently buckling under Washington’s pressure. Beijing accords paramount importance to its multifaceted relationship with Russia. Finally, it watches with distinct satisfaction the gradual economic enervation of the United States, the global proliferation of anti-American sentiment, Washington’s eroding international prestige, and the widening fissures fracturing the unity of both US bilateral alliances and foundational Western institutions like NATO.