Title: Kevin Rudd: Understanding How China Sees the World at Asia Society Switzerland.
June 2, 2022 — Asia Society President and CEO Kevin Rudd examines the ideological underpinnings of China President Xi Jinping’s worldview and how countries can create effective China policies. Asia Society Switzerland Executive Director Nico Luchsinger moderated the conversation. (1 hr., 11 min.) This event was organized in collaboration with Credit Suisse.
Kevin Rudd on Understanding How China Sees the World
ZURICH, June 2, 2022 - On Thursday, June 2, 2022, Asia Society Switzerland and Credit Suisse hosted the Hon. Kevin Rudd, President of Asia Society and former Prime Minister of Australia, at Forum St. Peter in Zurich for a conversation on China’s worldview with Nico Luchsinger, Executive Director of Asia Society Switzerland.
Our key takeaways
Xi Jinping’s worldview in ten concentric circles. Understanding how China sees the world is not just an idle academic reflection. What is unfolding underneath our feet is profound change. Xi has changed China and broke with the path of evolving continuity of his predecessors. He has taken Chinese politics and economics to the left, and nationalism and foreign policy to the right. It is vital to understand Xi’s worldview, to be able to respond to it. His ten priorities are:
Keep the Party in power, and himself as its leader, at all costs.
Secure national unity as was done in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and will be done in Taiwan.
Grow the economy.
Do so in an environmentally sustainable fashion.
Modernize the military into a world class force that can fight and win wars.
Have at least a benign relationship with the 14 neighboring states, but preferably have them be compliant.
Push the U.S. back by securing maritime influence in the Pacific and undermining American alliances in Asia.
Convert Eurasia into a zone of economic opportunity that becomes increasingly dependent on China.
Become an indispensable partner to the rest of the developing world.
Change the nature of the international system, making it more compatible with China's worldview.
Xi inserted Marxism-Leninism back into China’s economy. It is surprising how Xi Jinping has profoundly changed the economic growth model of China. Why would you change a model that for forty years delivered double-digit growth? A model which increased opportunities for the private sector, decreased the role of state planning and expanded economic integration with the rest of the world. Now, expected growth is in the low single digits.
The reason for the change is Xi Jinping and his strong Marxist-Leninist politics. The previous model created a whole bunch of new elites — people like Jack Ma. Xi sees these guys as ultimately being a challenge to the rule of the Communist Party, so he reigned them in by, for example, forcing mergers between successful private companies and weak state firms.
China wants to become indispensable to us all. Beijing’s grand strategy is to ensure that our economic, corporate, and individual wellbeing depends on access to the Chinese market. Up until 2017, there was a reasonably effective strategy in place to reach that goal, which included the Belt and Road Initiative and the 16+1 grouping tying Central and Eastern European countries to China. These developments were all making China an increasingly indispensable power on trade and capital markets.
Things went wrong because of classic overreach, which is Xi Jinping’s core failure. He has gone too far, too fast, too early, by adopting coercive economic diplomacy and direct wolf warrior diplomacy as tools to get countries to comply to China’s wishes. This has not advanced China’s interest.
The five parts of an effective China strategy if you’re not a superpower. These criteria make for a good way to manage the complex relationship with China:
Never take a step back on human rights as they’re defined in the Universal Declaration of 1948, to which China is a signatory. Anchor your position on human rights in international law.
Never step back from being an ally of the U.S. if you are one now.
Maximize your economic engagement with China as appropriate.
Work within the global governance system.
If you pick a fight with China, and you’re not a superpower, be sure to not go at it alone.
For an example of how these criteria work in practice, look at Japan. It has managed its relationship with China through its own robust principles. The economic relationship between the two nations is still strong, even though Japan hasn’t taken steps back on its human rights principles or its alliance with the U.S. and is constantly building partnerships with others—most recently in the Quad—to effectively deal with China.
Don’t feel too flattered if China calls you special. Switzerland may think it has a special relationship with China, but Beijing says that to every country, except the U.S.
China has deep respect for Switzerland as an incredibly successful country. But the simple truth is: when China thinks about Europe, it thinks about Germany. The German view of how to engage China is scrutinized intimately in Beijing.
The war in Ukraine does not change things regarding Taiwan. Russia’s underwhelming performance in Ukraine, although we must suspend judgement until we know what will happen in Donbas, does not change China’s timetable for reunification with Taiwan at all.
Xi Jinping wants this to happen in the late 2020s, early 2030s. Until then, China is preparing itself by building a strong, decisive military force and a more dominant, resilient economy. If anything, China would tell Russia it should’ve better prepared itself before invading Ukraine. Better preparing itself is exactly what China is doing now.
Kevin Rudd is President and CEO of the Asia Society, and inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as 26th Prime Minister of Australia (2007 to 2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010 to 2012). He is Chair of the Board of the International Peace Institute in New York, and Chair of Sanitation and Water for All – a global partnership of government and non-governmental organizations dedicated to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House and the Paulson Institute, and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons.
Book Review:
The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China
by Kevin Rudd (Hatchette 2022)
The rise of a strong and confident China has had more implications for Australia than perhaps any other advanced country apart from the United States, as evidenced by the ongoing public debate over the impact of China’s new bilateral security agreement with the Solomon Islands. More than any other US ally, Australia has been forced to grapple with the consequences of a souring relationship with China in fields such as trade, higher education, regional security and foreign influence in domestic politics. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s book can thus be described as nothing short of indispensable for Australian, as well as US, observers who seek to understand how to view this ascending presence in their neighbourhood, and how they themselves are viewed likewise.
Although by his own admission, Rudd is ideologically embedded to a Western conception of the world, he is humble about the disparity between Chinese efforts to understand the United States and the lack of reciprocal?diligence exhibited by Americans. His exploration, across several chapters, of the historical background of US–China relations and the contemporary challenges in the relationship does not attempt to go beyond fundamentals, but it remains an open question as to how many of these key elements many US and Australian policymakers are conversant in.
Somewhat ominously, when discussing China–Russia relations, Rudd identifies Russia’s greater willingness for adventurism as something that China views as a strategic asset in the relationship.
Rudd’s admiration for China’s achievements may well dissatisfy his own country’s more combative foreign policy commentators. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Rudd as sycophantic in his assessment of China; in fact, more often than not, when discussing how China views its future priorities, China is not the pronoun he uses in the book, but rather Xi Jinping, the man. This simple linguistic decision to highlight how much power has been amassed by one leader will remind readers that Rudd’s conclusions do not stray far from mainstream Western thought, even if his restraint-based recommendations fail to endear him to the more confrontationally-minded.
While it is a legitimate thought experiment for policymakers and scholars to hypothesise why national leaders make their decisions, the risk of claiming unwarranted omnipotence is ever present for an author writing from outside the room. Rudd has a lifetime of credentials and relationships to give credibility to his conclusions, whether they relate to China’s primacy in 5G telecommunications technology or how unpromising are attempts to displace the US dollar’s dominance in the international currency system. Somewhat ominously, when discussing China–Russia relations, Rudd identifies Russia’s greater willingness for adventurism as something that China views as a strategic asset in the relationship.
Despite advocating a war-weary approach that would trigger labels of “appeaser” from his detractors, Rudd frames the need for managed strategic competition in unabashedly realist terms. Specifically?for the United States, he describes the need for the 2020s to be a decade of rebuilding – a bold assertion in an era when?many observers believe that it is China, rather than the United States, that seeks to avoid overt confrontation to allow time for internal development. That sets up the book for perhaps its primary shortcoming: its inadequacy in speaking to an audience that needs to be convinced that war is not inevitable. In an era when future confrontation over Taiwan is spoken of in the United States with increasing resignation, Rudd’s appeal to abandon jingoistic nationalism will find few receptive ears beyond those already convinced. It may be an unrealistic expectation for an author to try to speak the language of his opponents, but the absence of such an attempt in Rudd’s book makes it more likely that his readers will consist only of those already enamoured with his views of the world.
That limitation – which few authors could succeed in overcoming – should not take away from the encyclopaedic collection of deft observations that Rudd’s book provides. Rudd is an attentive student of China’s past and present. His contribution to an important public debate in Australia, the United States, and China, should not be ignored even by those who are already mentally preparing for the end of peacetime.
The Avoidable War — averting a conflict between the US and China
James Crabtree is executive director of IISS-Asia and author of ‘The Billionaire Raj’
In his new book, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd urges a policy of ‘managed strategic competition
Few western statesmen have enjoyed much quality time with Xi Jinping, especially as China’s president has of late retreated into pandemic-era seclusion. Kevin Rudd is one who did. “I spent a total of 10 hours in conversation with Xi in six separate meetings, including about three hours around a winter fire at the prime ministerial residence,” he writes in The Avoidable War, describing a moment back in 2010, when Xi was Chinese vice-premier and Rudd was Australia’s prime minister.
Rudd knows China too. He speaks Mandarin, having studied and worked there. Following his second stint as Australian leader in 2013, he now runs the Asia Society in New York. But he still found time recently to wrap up a doctorate at Oxford, on “Xi Jinping’s Worldview”, which now provides the underpinnings for his book.
His views on Sino-US ties are therefore notable for being both well-informed and gloomy. Beijing’s reputation has clearly plunged in the west. China’s leaders meanwhile view the US as “insufferably arrogant, condescending, and systemically incapable of treating China or its leaders with appropriate national respect”. The outlook is thus bleak: “The world views now dominant in China and the United States are pushing the two countries toward war,” he writes.
The author argues that Chinese political elites are at least well-informed about US politics, something that cannot be said of Americans who still struggle to understand “the domestic drivers of China’s international policy behaviour”. To remedy this Rudd lays out 10 “core priorities” that animate Xi, ranging from the survival of the Chinese Communist party to rewriting the existing global “rules-based” order.
Xi's second priority is arguably the most important, namely Chinese national unity and the political future of Taiwan, where Xi is “a man in a hurry”. China’s leader intends to settle this question “in his political lifetime”, a period that may now stretch well beyond a third term this year and into the middle of the next decade.
Rudd’s book provides a rich and realistic portrayal of China’s motivations, as well as a stark warning to a world standing on the edge of a conflict potentially far more devastating than Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. His argument contains an intriguing balance of pessimism and optimism. On the one hand, competition between the superpowers is inevitable. Rudd sketches out 10 plausible scenarios over Taiwan, half of which end in military confrontation. Yet he also suggests creative diplomacy could avert disaster, hence his title, “The Avoidable War”.
The world views now dominant in China and the United States are pushing the two countries toward war Kevin Rudd
Rudd proposes a policy of “managed strategic competition”, sketched out in just a handful of pages towards the book’s conclusion. This boils down to developing mutually respected red lines, along with plenty of high-level back-channel diplomacy to enforce them. This is not a bad idea, although it is hardly radical: US President Joe Biden is trying something similar with his notion of Sino-US “competition with guardrails”.
Why might China and the US follow such a path? Mostly to buy time. With Asia’s economic and military balance tipping in its favour, China may be willing to limit its ambitions over Taiwan for now, simply to avoid the short-term risks that a damaging conflict with the US could bring. In a decade or so, it is likely to be in a still better position.
Meanwhile, the US may be willing to play nice for a period as it tries to renovate its domestic economy and shift military resources to Asia. The risk, however, is that by focusing on diplomacy the US might also choose to delay the kind of costly build up in military power that would actually deter China from acting over Taiwan in the first place.
Certainly there is a risk that the west will underestimate China’s resolve, just as it failed to deter Russian aggression over Ukraine. Rudd admits that he risks being accused of naivety, with proposals that seek largely to delay an inevitable confrontation, perhaps for another decade or more. “I would argue that there is nothing wrong, let alone cowardly, with kicking this particular can (ie, war) a long way down the road,” he writes. The risk, as recent events in Ukraine show, is that military confrontation between the superpowers may not be avoidable indefinitely.
