Xi's China and the fate of the Korean Peninsula

By Choo Jae-woo

On Oct. 23, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress concluded with the election of Xi Jinping as the party's general secretary for an unprecedented third term since Chairman Mao Zedong's era. Following his election, the party immediately announced the composition of the highest decision-making organ, the Politburo Standing Committee. Of the six newly appointed members excluding Xi himself, no heir apparent was in the standing.

All six men will be over the age limit of 67 during the next party leadership change in five years. Again, as had happened in Xi's first and second terms, the party did not assign to one person the position of the first secretary of the Party's Central Secretariat and the vice chairmanship of the party's Central Military Commission. The CCP's deliberate effort to evade including an heir apparent in recent personnel shuffles sends a clear message. Xi's leadership is most likely to go beyond his third term.

Xi's leadership longevity is justified by his loyalty to communism and commitment to China's long-sought dream of becoming a socialist powerhouse. No one else apparently seems to meet these requirements other than Xi in the eyes of the party. It is not simply because of Xi's personal background. That Xi is a son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the high-profile personnel among the first generation of party leaders along with Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai was a mere factor in his election.

His paradoxical experience of having been a victim of the “Down to the Countryside Movement” during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s is the decisive narrative best accounting the theory that Xi is a communist to the bone. He and his family's suffering from the movement could have made them detest the party and communism. Paradoxically enough, he was instead engulfed in communist ideology through daily self-criticism and brainwashing political study sessions.

According to the CCP's political timetable, China is at a critical juncture to materialize communism as well as a strong, modernized state system. It has defined the leadership nature and character that can effectively navigate the nation toward these ends. A shift in China's policy goals from economic development to the completion of socialism called for a change in the leadership's orientation from pragmatism to ideology. A leader that is a communist to the bone had to be sought, and Xi was deemed to be the perfect fit.

Having assumed his throne in the party in 2012, Xi already declared his intent to lead the nation into a so-called “New Era.” It is an era in which the CCP envisions that the nation will have completed the modernization of socialism by 2035 and a strong state founded on modernized socialism by 2049. The next five years will therefore be a critical period for the realization of the former, per Xi's address at this year's party congress.

Perfecting socialism and its modernization process will dictate the ultimate goal of Xi's China policy: to prove that a socialist system is superior to others including a democratic one. It naturally alludes to the inevitability of the rising power competition against those with different systems. China's socialist system must reign atop. It puts Xi's China in competition against the United States, the leader of democracy and the founder of the existing liberal world order. For this reason, strategic competition between the United States and China will perpetuate as long as Xi is in power in China.

Against this background, the fate of the Korean Peninsula will be greatly challenged. China will incessantly attempt to expand its influence over the two Koreas until they are fully incorporated into its long-term foreign policy goal as a member of the community of common destiny for mankind.

To counter China's challenge, South Korea will first have to exploit China's growing anxieties from the strengthening of the alliance with the United States. Beijing is intimidated by the U.S.' aggressive approaches to global supply chain resilience efforts, for instance. The alliance should push the envelope a little further to hamper China's economic development and therefore also the legitimacy of Xi's leadership. This may transpire in China seeking a compromise that would be favorable to those who share democratic universal values.

Secondly, Korea must find a way to counter China's playing one off of the other strategy. The answer lies in its unswerving commitment to the alliance. China's strategy in theory can be very effective considering the structure of international relations in Northeast Asia. All regional states are bound by an alliance relationship in one way or the other. South Korea and Japan, for example, are respectively allied to the United States, and the North with China.

For Beijing to achieve its strategic interests in the South against Washington, it would have to manipulate Seoul to go against the latter. China's sanctions following the THAAD deployment succeeded in creating “sinophobia” in Korean society. Korea must now overcome its fear of China's punitive response while in pursuit of its national interests, let alone the interests of the alliance. Beijing will otherwise keep pressing Seoul over the reinforcement efforts by the U.S. Forces Korea.

Lastly, Korea must build its own set of bipartisan principles for its foreign relations. The consequences we can expect are twofold. It will produce a great boost in the allies' confidence in Korea, and will allow Korea to counter coercive actions by those with a different ideology and values.

Choo Jae-woo (jwc@khu.ac.kr) is a professor of international relations at Kyung Hee University and director of the China Center at the Korea Research Institute for National Security. He was a visiting fellow of Brookings Institution.