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How China is overtaking the US as top world power (according to an investor)
The 21st century kicked off with a more open China, hungry for foreign investment in the heyday of globalization. Things have changed since.
For emerging markets investor Antoine van Agtmael, China has become "much more closed, and [...] developed to have a real sense of itself as a world power." Meanwhile, the US has become more defensive about its global superpower status.
That means we're moving from the American century to the Chinese century, he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Van Agtmael says that the US needs to get used to being No. 2 and China used to being No. 1. And that applies to military superiority, where America's edge is not as clear as before.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Chinese Power
Xi Jinping tightens his grip on China
Who's the most powerful person on the planet right now? Xi Jinping, who just got a third term as boss of China's ruling Communist Party and got all his loyalists appointed to the CCP's top decision-making body.
But having so much power comes with big tradeoffs.
Zero-COVID is devastating the Chinese economy. And Xi is feeling the heat from his increasingly muscular foreign policy.
Xi's tightening grip has massive implications for China's future — and the world's, too.
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Xi Jinping shaping China's chilling future
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take to kick off your week. All sorts of things going on, but I want to focus on China because that is the most world-changing of the issues that are on our plate right now. Xi Jinping, breaking through term limits, securing for himself, not surprisingly, a third term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He is today, without question, the most powerful human being on the planet. And that should concern us in the sense that the system is incredibly opaque.
There are increasingly not effective checks and balances on his authority. It is also not aligned with the future that so many in the world are hoping for when it comes to the way that political and economic systems should function - rule of law, transparency, human rights. And I'm not suggesting that the United States has always been a shining example of all of those things, but certainly, you don't have the level of concentration of power in the US or any democracy that you presently have in authoritarian regimes, and particularly right now in China.
Now, there are a few things that are concerning about this development. One is that over time there had been a hope that China was going to economically reform to a greater extent and integrate itself more in the global economy. That is now becoming harder, in part because the Chinese are focusing much more domestically given their own economic challenges. Things like, for example, their dual circulation policy, given the demographic challenges, given the challenges and indebtedness, it is much more focused on Chinese supply chain. It is much more focused on Chinese consumption. But also the fact that you just aren't getting the same level of data out of China that you used to.
There's not publishing that data anymore, so it's fine. China has incredible amounts of data on their own population. The surveillance economy they have, which helps to drive Chinese political stability, but they're not willing to publish information on the second-largest economy of the world to the rest of the world. And of course, that creates a big black box for the rest of the world to invest. It creates more uncertainty, and over time, it potentially creates more uncoupling, the opposite of the globalization that endured so much human development and wealth over the course of the last 40, 50 years.
There's also the fact that Xi Jinping historically and the Chinese Communist Party for the last 50 years has been much more meritocratic than many other political systems. So yes, it's opaque, and yes, it doesn't have rule of law, and yes, it's not a democracy, but positions of authority. If you want to make it through the Communist Party, you have to be, of course, orthodox and loyal, but you also have to be really, really capable. And the smartest, most capable authorities were the ones that would make it through the top ranks.
That is absolutely not what we saw from the leadership that has just been unveiled around Xi Jinping, where a lot of very capable senior bureaucrats in the Communist Party were sidelined. And instead, it was much more about personal loyalty to Xi. In other words, China increasingly moving away from the top-level human capital that helped get them to where they are today and instead moving in a more Putinesque direction. Not a good thing for the future of China, not a good thing for the future of the planet.
So I do think that what we're seeing coming out of China over the last week are, generally speaking, a little chilling, a little concerning for the future of the planet. I haven't yet mentioned, of course, the most titillating moment of the Party Congress, which was when former President Hu Jintao, sitting right next to Xi Jinping as the closing ceremonies were getting started, was suddenly escorted out by Xi Jinping's personal security. And the Chinese state media said it's because he wasn't feeling well.
For a guy that wasn't feeling well, number one, he really didn't want to go. Number two, Xi Jinping didn't say boo to him on his way out, didn't try to calm the situation or act in a more human and engaged way with someone who was having a health problem, not what you would do if it was purely about health. And then the fact that all discussion of Hu Jintao shut down on Chinese social media, none of that coverage was available to the Chinese population. Those are all things that implied there's something else going on here.
We don't know what that something else is. Was it possible that Hu Jintao was planning on making some kind of an oppositional statement or vote against Xi in terms of securing his third term? We don't know. Is it possible that there was an effort to sideline him internally because of things he had said inside the Party Congress over the course of the past week? We have no idea.
What we know is doing this publicly is an incredible symbolic power move by the most powerful person on the planet. That if that can happen to him, it could happen to anyone, any person in that room, and they are all aware of it. That's pretty extraordinary to see play out on the global stage. And I think that Xi Jinping has no problem with the United States of America and American allies seeing and taking away exactly those messages.
Of course, none of this can be discussed inside China because inside Chinese state media, you have to go with whatever the official narrative happens to be until they change it, in which point, yes, you've always been at war with Oceania. Yes, that's a 1984 reference, increasingly relevant when we talk about the Chinese Communist Party.
That's it for me. Hope everyone's well. I'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- What makes Xi Jinping tick? - GZERO Media ›
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Under Xi's third term, China will stay exactly the same
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In 60 Seconds.
Will China become more assertive with Xi securing his third term?
I don't think so. I think it's going to be pretty much exactly the same. Okay everyone's going to be watching whether you get technocrats in key economic positions or not. If you do, they're going to say, "Oh, it's going to be more balanced." If you don't, they're going to say, "Xi's going to crack down." In reality, he's in charge and he's been in charge and he is going to be in charge. And that really means driving a more domestically focused economy with more local supply chain, more focused on local consumption, and more state capitalism probably means a little bit less productivity and efficiency as well. Plus zero-COVID keeps going, so I don't think it changes that much.
Should Ukrainians worry about the loss of US support after the next month's midterm elections?
Finally people asking about this as opposed to, "Is Europe going to break down?" I think Europe is going to stay stronger because they consider it their war. They're the ones that took millions of Ukrainians into their homes. They're the ones that are facing the major economic challenges themselves. They're the ones that are in many cases, deeply worried about what happens next after Ukraine. And you're going to see asymmetric warfare. The Norwegians are feeling it now with arresting a couple of Russians. The Polish government, the Baltic states, and they're all bringing Ukraine in. The United States, very different. And you've seen this with Elon Musk's recent commentary, you've seen it with Trump's commentary, now you've seen Kevin McCarthy saying "You're not going to get the same amount of money from Congress if the Republicans come and take the House."
This is not going to be a near term issue the next 6, even 12 months. I still think you're going to get a massive amount of support from the US, some of which will have been approved from 2022. But looking out, Zelensky will clearly know that the Americans are not going to be as strong behind him. They're going to be more divided than they have been over the last eight months.
With the ongoing Civil War, is Ethiopia's humanitarian crisis going to deteriorate?
Certainly in the near term it looks that way right now. The willingness of the Ethiopian government to try to improve their military situation on the ground in Tigray while they are supposedly talking about humanitarian negotiations, that means that there's going to be a lot more fighting, frankly. This is what always happens in these conflicts, is when the situation is unstable and one side believes that they have something to play for before they can get negotiations going. It's a harder time to get it moving. And that's where we are right now in Ethiopia. Hard to see in one of the poorest countries, poorest regions, the Horn of Africa in Sub-Saharan Africa right now.
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