a very very thorough report, recommend reading in full, about 18 .pdf pages, has details on newer state organs and thus newer power players who head them, struggles between the state and the party
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/file ... _Final.pdf
Beyond China’s Black Box
Five Trends Shaping Beijing’s Foreign and
Security Policy Decision-Making Under Xi Jinping
China’s foreign and security policymaking apparatus is often described as a metaphorical black box about which analysts know little. That is true to an extent, but at the same time, it is possible to develop a better understanding of the people, institutions, processes, and pressures that go into making China’s policies toward the world during Xi’s “new era,” that is, his time as the country’s top leader. This report pursues that
objective by identifying five major trends mostly internal to the People's Republic of China (PRC) party-state system that shape its foreign and security policymaking.
In addition, the paper describes the effects that each trend generates, from bureaucratic incentives to behavioral patterns.
The first trend is personalization of the system around
Xi. It reduces the influence of various interest groups
and therefore the need to bargain with and among them,
raises the prospect of groupthink among the loyalists Xi
has surrounded himself with, and potentially increases
the importance of achieving certain goals for China on
Xi’s watch. In addition, Xi’s centrality creates a major
management bottleneck that could hamper the system
during even brief absences.
The second trend is empowering the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) over the state. That trend has
made more officials into policy-implementers rather than
policymakers, even on issues below the level of strategy.
It has also increased central demands for ideological
activities, such as Xi Jinping Thought study sessions. At
the same time, while the leadership wants to improve
coordination and might be making some progress, it
stops short of actions that could allow government
organs to coordinate horizontally if doing so might plau
sibly jeopardize the center’s control.
The third trend is domestic policy headwinds and the
search for alternative forms of political legitimacy for the
CCP. This creates two contradictory pressures: China’s
reaching out and trying to improve ties with the world,
and its turn to an assertive and at times even aggressive
form of nationalism to counteract stalling economic
growth. It also dents the power and influence China
gained through its rapid rise and its role as a massive
market driving global economic growth.
The fourth trend is further elevation of regime security
over other concerns. This trend negatively affects
Beijing’s ties with foreign countries by worsening the
experience of foreigners visiting and living in China,
exporting repressive political ideas and techniques to
the world, and complicating how China’s foreign and security bureaucracy interacts with its counterparts.
The fifth and final trend is diplomatic and military
assertiveness and seeking an active global leadership
role, which feeds a self-reinforcing cycle of growing
tensions, requires PRC diplomats to shoehorn any
activities into Xi’s marquee frameworks, and leads
Beijing to build out structures of an alternative inter
national order.
Examining these trends helps illuminate the macro
pressures shaping China’s foreign and security policy
decision-making. Still, aspects of how the party-state
makes decisions about its foreign and security pol
icies—“known unknowns”—remain particularly
opaque.
However, insights about which
factors and actors truly shape Beijing’s foreign and
security policies have become seemingly harder to find.
Analysts can observe from the outside that an amalgam
of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organs and People’s
Republic of China (PRC) state bodies—often short
handed as the “party-state”—shape decision-making
processes. And CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping reigns
from the top as the ultimate authority.
Analysts frequently characterize what happens within
that system, though, as a metaphorical “black box”
wherein we do not know how decisions are made. Even
senior U.S. officials with access to classified information
confess to a lack of knowledge about how Beijing makes
foreign and security policies.
Trend 1: Personalization of the
System around Xi
In October 2016, the CCP recognized Xi as its
“core,” a powerful designation that had been retired in
2002, something it noted as “vitally important” for the
country and the party.6 In October 2017, Xi’s eponymous
“thought” was incorporated into the CCP constitution,
then into China’s state constitution in March 2018.7 In
November 2021, for only the third time in more than a
century of existence, the party published a “historical
resolution,” which devoted more than half of its space
to affirming Xi’s policies.8 In October 2022, the CCP
adopted a concept known as the “two establishments”
that formally established Xi as the core of the CCP
and established “Xi Thought” as its guiding ideology.9
Concepts like these can get arcane and even nonsensical to
observers who are not immersed in party-speak. But they
matter because they help Xi tie himself to the party, both
as a man and as an ideological agenda, and try to make the
two indistinguishable and thus beyond reproach. They also
provide a barometer of Xi’s grip on power.
It also raises the risk that handpicked officials can wash out quickly
because they have not been stress-tested for the rigors of their positions over the course
of long careers. This appears to have been the case for former State Councilor and Foreign
Minister Qin Gang, who was purged from his positions after just six months.
Xi has aimed to shorthand the party’s
history as such: under Mao the country stood up, under
Deng Xiaoping the country got rich, and under Xi the
country is becoming strong. It is now likely harder for
Xi to travel since he has taken a more direct role
in overseeing nearly every aspect of the Chinese
system, which creates the possibility of him
becoming overwhelmed even when he is not traveling.
Trend 2: Empowering the Party over the State
With himself as the “core,” Xi has also altered
China’s party-state system to empower the
party at the expense of the state. Some have
described this a “north-south war” between two separate
parts of Zhongnanhai, China’s leadership compound: the
south courtyard that houses the central organizations
of the CCP; and the north courtyard where the State
Council’s main offices sit.
In 2018, as part of a slate of organizational shifts, China created the Central Foreign
Affairs Commission (CFAC) to boost the party’s control
over foreign policy.21 The CFAC, which is led by Xi,
upgraded its predecessor organization, the Leading Small
Group on Foreign Affairs Work, to increase the overall
capacity and bureaucratic power of the CCP’s role in
foreign policymaking.22
Beijing has also enhanced the role of the party’s de
facto foreign ministry, the International Department,
which handles relations with foreign political parties, as
well as the international operations of the United Front
Work Department, which Xi has referred to as a “magic
weapon.”23 The fact that the International Department’s
Minister, Liu Jianchao, is reportedly being considered
as the country’s next foreign minister provides another
proof point for the CCP’s ascendancy in managing
China’s relations with the outside world.
In addition, the CCP has
conducted several major party
conferences on foreign affairs
topics. Those are rare meetings
where party leadership provides
“top-level design” for the policy
area it governs.25 These include
a major meeting on periphery
diplomacy in October 2013 and
three Central Foreign Affairs
Work Conferences in November 2014, June 2018, and
December 2023.
All
these moves to bolster the CCP’s formal power over the
Chinese state illustrate that Xi is different from Mao.
Instead of weaponizing a personality cult against par
ty-state bureaucracy, Xi strengthens party’s institutions
so he can harness them to his own goals, all while making
himself synonymous with party rule.3
In theory, this “top-level design” approach creates
unified, coherent decision-making and execution and
cuts down on any entities freelancing or going rogue. In
practice, however, strict enforcement of central control
often begets one of two outcomes: either paralysis as
officials try to avoid a wrong move by not moving at all,
or overzealous implementation to ensure officials cannot
be accused of soft-pedaling orders or to curry favor with
superiors. The trend of PRC diplomats acting as “wolf
warriors” by making caustic statement illustrates the
latter tendency.
Second, additional bureaucratic and technical capacity
is likely being offset by increasing demands to conduct
ideological activities such as Xi Thought study sessions.
One report from the U.S. investment firm BlackRock said
its employees in China spent a third of their time studying
such material.3
Rather, each area has its
own commission—the CMC, the CFAC, and the Central
National Security Commission (CNSC, more on that
body later)—with jurisdictions that sometimes appear
to overlap. Public information indicates Xi is the only
person who is a formal member of all three bodies, which
underscores that, while the leadership wants to improve
coordination and might be making some progress, it
stops short of actions that could allow government
organs to coordinate horizontally if doing so might plau
sibly jeopardize the center’s control
Trend 3: Domestic Policy Headwinds and the Search for Alternative Forms
of Political Legitimacy
This set of challenges is likely to create two contradic
tory pressures in Beijing’s foreign and security policy
decision-making. First, China’s leaders will feel pressure
to reach out and try to improve ties with the world.
China’s goals will be twofold: manage or resolve issues
that might distract or overwhelm policymakers who are
occupied dealing with domestic challenges, and beat back
efforts to “de-risk” away from China and instead deepen
economic and trade links. Further, PRC leaders need to
burnish China’s image as a trade and investment partner
to lure foreign capital and sustain technology transfer and
co-development.44
The second pressure, however, pushes in the opposite
direction.47 Xi and the CCP will be tempted to turn to an
assertive and at times even aggressive form of nationalism.
In the post-Mao era, the CCP has relied on high growth
rates as its primary source of legitimacy. The implicit social
contract, or what some have called the “authoritarian
bargain,” held that Chinese citizens would cede politics
to the CCP.48 The party would deliver expanded economic
opportunity and high growth rates in return. An era of
lower growth will mean the CCP must draw from other
sources of citizens’ support (along with repression) to
protect its hold on power.
Beijing is likely to avoid the most extreme possible
manifestation of nationalistic fervor, starting a diversionary
war, because the costs and risks of doing so are likely to
remain prohibitive.49 But Xi will still leverage nationalism
for diversionary purposes.50 Antagonism toward “hostile
foreign forces,” particularly the United States and Japan, can
provide a convenient scapegoat for China’s leaders who need
someone other than themselves to blame for the country’s
faltering economy. Fanning nationalist flames is not risk-free
or cost-free, though, as those same sentiments can catalyze
activists who later turn their ire against the domestic leadership.
But outreach probably
reflects more a tonal and tactical thaw—a charm offensive—
rather than a substantive and strategic reorientation.
Trend 4: Elevation of Regime Security over Other Concerns
Xi has put addressing domestic threats to regime
security, both real and perceived, at the center of his
governing agenda. The preeminence of Xi’s domestic
security agenda became clear early in his tenure with the
issuance in April 2013 of a communiqué that came to be
known as “Document 9.”54 That memo laid out a vision rife
with political threats and called on PRC leaders to strengthen
their work in the “ideological sphere.” Xi has built out the
vision through his concept of “holistic national security” and
formally called for integrating development and security,
thereby elevating security to the same priority level as devel
opment in party policy.
To oversee implementation throughout the par
ty-state, in November 2013, China established a new
Central National Security Commission (CNSC).56 That
commission primarily focuses on centralizing coordi
nation for domestic and regime security rather than
foreign affairs, as other countries’ national security
councils usually do. Reports suggest, though, that the
CNSC sometimes touches on foreign policy issues
when they might threaten internal social stability or
regime security.57
The same quest for political security drives Xi’s purge
of the CCP’s ranks through the Central Commission
for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and other tools.
That body targets officials at every level of the party.
The CCDI’s works focuses on countering corruption,
which Xi believes is an existential risk for the party.
But informally, the CCDI enforces other crimes, too,
mainly insufficient loyalty to Xi.
Anti-corruption work provides a tool Xi
uses to perpetually strengthen his control and ensure
his edicts are carried out, which is why he has a called it
a “forever journey.”61
China’s drive to address perceived political threats at
home and “make the world safe for the CCP” abroad also
shapes its overseas behavior in several ways.
Separately, the ascendance of security
bureaucracies appears to have boosted the power of
China’s security services, especially the Ministry of State
Security (MSS) and the Ministry of Public Security. The
then-head of the MSS, Chen Wenqing, was promoted
to the Politburo in October 2022.69 The MSS has clearly
felt emboldened to step out from the shadows and carve
a larger public profile than in previous years, including
by starting an account on the Chinese social media
website WeChat and issuing statements on events such
as Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election.
Trend 5: Diplomatic and Military Assertiveness and Seeking an Active Global Leadership Role
China’s foreign and security policy decision-making
is also driven by assertiveness and seeking to
actively shape the outside world through what Xi
has called “struggle.”
This trend affects China’s foreign policy in several
ways. First, it has fed a self-reinforcing cycle of growing
tensions. Beijing’s belligerent rhetoric and aggres
sive actions provoke countermeasures from targeted
countries. PRC policymakers then interpret those
countermeasures as evidence of foreigners’ hostile
intent toward China. Chinese leaders once viewed the
international environment as being in an unalloyed
“period of strategic opportunity,” but now Xi argues
that “strategic opportunity coexists with risks and
challenges, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors
are rising.”87 This justifies Beijing’s perceived need to
fight back against what Xi has called Western “all-round
containment, encirclement, and suppression.”88 To be
sure, most officials and scholars in the liberal demo
cratic world, including the author, believe that changes
in China’s behavior set off the cycle.
Information flows
The first is how information flows
to Xi and other senior leaders, or what in the U.S. context
is often called the “paper process.” Outside observers
do not know anything about what types and sources of
information Xi consumes regularly. He does not give
press conferences or unscripted interviews. Studies of
authoritarian regimes have shown that information that
gets to leaders tends to be poor quality because disagree
ment tends to be perceived as disloyalty.92 Nevertheless,
getting accurate information is essential for Xi to
assess how his policies are faring in practice. The lack
of a functioning feedback loop could create dangerous
misunderstandings. Better knowledge about those infor
mation flows that takes into account both longtime actors
and newer influences such as Chinese think tanks could
give analysts a more nuanced understanding of the sin
cerity of Xi’s apparent optimism about China’s trajectory
(among other topics). Specifically, it could indicate to
what extent Xi’s optimism is an attempt to inject confi
dence into the system or whether he underestimates the
challenges the country faces.
Dynamic among Xi and his top advisors.
The second is the role of Xi’s close advisors and exactly how they
exercise influence. Xi has succeeded in stacking the
leadership—including the Politburo and its Standing
Committee—with his men. (And they are all men; the
Politburo has no women for the first time in 25 years.)94
But from the outside it is not clear the degree to which
close confidants can speak truth to power or genuinely
debate new approaches.
The most likely effect has
been to create an environment prone to groupthink if not outright sycophancy.95 But a different dynamic is possible and could prevail in certain situations: Xi could
have enough trust in his inner circle’s loyalty to him that
he allows more frank advice and debate because he does
not feel the need to worry about their fealty to him or his
political agenda. The role Premier Li Qiang reportedly
played in convincing Xi to end Xi’s draconian zero
COVID policy—which had initially helped to control
the pandemic but had grown ineffective, costly, and
unpopular—provides an example.96 Meanwhile, Xi’s top
aides already appear to be jockeying among themselves,
particularly Xi’s Chief of Staff and “security czar” Cai Qi
and Premier Li.97
Structure and frequency of meetings. The third
mystery factor is China’s meetings process for foreign
and security policy issues. Some meetings of the formal bodies covering these issues are reported publicly: for example, the foreign minister’s annual address to PRC
diplomats and the Party Congress work reports every
f ive years. But key questions about the specifics remain,
namely whether meeting processes are structured to
always have the same people and occur on a regular
basis—or whether those meetings are more ad hoc, with
participants joining or falling off the list depending on the
issue being discussed and/or political winds.
PRC media
are not allowed to write what, in the American context,
are called “process stories,” or detailed stories about
how government decisions were made. Little is known
about how organizations that provide staff support to
senior leadership—such as the CCP Secretariat, the CCP
General Office, and the CFAC—function on a day-to-day
basis under Xi.
Informal constraints on Xi’s power
Fourth, it is not clear
whether there are, or could be, any meaningful checks and
balances in China’s elite decision-making under Xi. The PRC
system remains Leninist in both structure and culture and
was never designed to have formal checks and balances. But
the practice of collective leadership often pitted the ambi
tions of different factions against one another, forming a sort
of check against the unbridled exercise of power by any single
person or group. Even Mao confronted pushback in 1962
after his Great Leap Forward campaign ended in catastrophe.
Moreover, Xi’s consolidation of power has created a constitu
ency of losers in the system. Stories documenting a backlash
over Xi’s policies have become a perennial feature of China
analyses.
Leadership transition plans
The fifth aspect is Xi’s
plans for timing and manner of power transition. Xi obvi
ously has worked hard to remove any formal or informal
time constraints on his tenure as China’s paramount leader.
So transition plans might not yet exist, even in Xi’s mind.
He might be waiting to decide based on circumstances as
they evolve. Although it is clear he wants to avoid becoming
a lame duck once a successor is tapped, if for no other
reason than ceding power in an authoritarian system can
be politically and even physically dangerous. The question
of leadership transition could be resolved in a few dif
ferent ways, and nearly all of them would be messier than
a predictable transition to new leadership on a planned
schedule.99 In the meantime, observers will have to look for
indicators of how the dynamics of Xi’s leadership shift as
he continues to age.