From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   China Is Starting to Act Like a Global Power   
   By Jonathan Cheng, March 22, 2023, WSJ   
      
   BEIJING—China now sees itself as a global power—and it is starting to act   
   like one.   
      
   Long reluctant to inject itself into conflicts far from its shores, Beijing is   
   showing a new assertiveness as Xi Jinping begins his third term as the   
   country’s head of state, positioning China to draw like-minded countries to   
   its side and to have a    
   greater say on global matters.   
      
   China is emerging from three years of “zero-Covidâ€� isolation to a far more   
   unfriendly West, and signaling that it feels it has the military and economic   
   heft to start shaping the world more to its interests.   
      
   Earlier this month, Beijing surprised the world by brokering a detente between   
   Saudi Arabia and Iran, a bold foray into the Middle East’s turbulent   
   rivalries.   
      
   Now, Xi says he wants to insert himself into efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine   
   war, as he returns home from several days of warm meetings in Moscow with   
   Putin, and plans his first conversation since the beginning of the war with   
   Ukrainian President    
   Volodymyr Zelensky.   
      
   The moves might not result in lasting diplomatic breakthroughs, and China’s   
   perceived inclination toward Russia on the Ukraine war, highlighted again this   
   week in Moscow, has undercut Xi’s credibility as a neutral arbiter among   
   Kyiv’s backers.    
   Early Wednesday, as Xi was preparing to depart Moscow, Russia launched a new   
   wave of missiles and armed drones into Ukraine, killing four people in a   
   school dormitory in the Kyiv region.   
      
   But China’s willingness to wade into these conflicts in such a strident way   
   marks a new phase in the country’s vision for itself and its role in the   
   world. It sends a message that China and its friends are no longer obliged to   
   conform to a U.S.-led    
   global order, and that Beijing poses a challenge to Washington as it tries to   
   shape a world it sees as divided between democracies and autocracies.   
      
   China long hewed to a policy of biding one’s time while slowly building up   
   its economic, political and military might.   
      
   That began to shift as China’s economic and political interests came to span   
   the globe, with infrastructure projects tied to its Belt and Road initiative   
   in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. It has hundreds of billions of   
   dollars of investments    
   and growing diasporas worldwide that must be protected, as well as a voracious   
   appetite for strategic resources abroad.   
      
   In addition to his interventions on the Russia-Ukraine and Saudi-Iran   
   conflicts, Xi has in the past few weeks promoted three new initiatives   
   expanding his vision for the world, titled the Global Development Initiative,   
   the Global Security Initiative and    
   the Global Civilization Initiative. Though short on the particulars, their   
   sweeping ideals seek to position China as a country with which nations that   
   are wary of U.S. hegemony can do business, seek security guarantees and find   
   respect.   
      
   â€œIn advancing modernization, China will neither tread the old path of   
   colonization and plunder, nor the crooked path taken by some countries to seek   
   hegemony once they grow strong,â€� Mr. Xi said in a speech this month as he   
   unveiled his Global    
   Civilization Initiative, cautioning unnamed countries to “refrain from   
   imposing their own values or models on others.â€�   
      
   Xi also warned darkly of a U.S.-led effort to contain and suppress China at   
   legislative sessions this month that confirmed his third term as China’s   
   president.   
      
   Xi’s sharpened rhetoric reflects a belief that China can serve as a   
   counterpoint to the West and its framing of a showdown between democracy and   
   autocracy. Rather than an authoritarian country, as Biden would have it, Xi   
   wants nations around the world,    
   particularly in the Global South, to regard China as a voice of reason, an   
   economic model and a benign power that can stand up to a U.S.-led Western   
   order that it sees as hectoring and bullying.   
      
   â€œComing out of Covid, there’s an attempt to put China forward in a   
   different light, and a large part of it is to create a contrast between the   
   roles that China and the U.S. play,â€� said Paul Haenle, a China expert at the   
   Carnegie Endowment for    
   International Peace. “They honestly believe they have a different way of   
   being a major power and exerting its influence in the world and they believe   
   the U.S. is too security-focused, that it uses its military too often.â€�   
      
   Haenle represented the U.S. at the Beijing-organized six-party talks aimed at   
   addressing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program—a tentative foray by   
   Beijing into international diplomacy in the mid-2000s that eventually fell   
   apart. Today, he sees a    
   strikingly different approach from China, particularly in its willingness to   
   take risks on the global stage.   
      
   â€œXi Jinping is much more tolerant of risk than anyone had anticipated,â€� he   
   said. “He’s also taking bolder steps than China has been willing to do in   
   the past, both with Iran-Saudi Arabia, and with regards to Ukraine.â€�   
      
   Xi has been emboldened by his success in asserting Beijing’s authority in   
   Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea, despite Western denunciations of   
   his actions. In some of these cases, Beijing found considerable support among   
   developing nations for    
   its portrayal of the U.S. as hypocritical and self-serving, seeking only to   
   block China’s rise.   
      
   In Xinjiang, the far western region of China where the U.S. and its allies   
   have accused Xi of carrying out forms of genocide against Muslim minorities,   
   China’s vigorous diplomatic efforts have resulted in virtual silence from   
   Muslim-majority countries†  
   ”including from Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two rivals that China brought   
   together in secret meetings in Beijing this month.   
      
   Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli   
   Institute for International Studies, said that while some of China’s   
   rhetoric falls flat in Western capitals, “there are a lot of studies that   
   show that those themes work    
   particularly well in the developing world—the idea of the U.S. resorting to   
   military intervention, and the idea of China being peacemakers.â€�   
      
      
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