Xi Jinping Turns Inward

A political speech is always as much about what is not said as it is about what is said. What Xi Jinping left out of his work report to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party on October 16 is, perhaps, as much of a surprise as some of the people who were also left out of top leadership positions, particularly Li Keqiang.

In a speech that took the better part of two hours to deliver, Xi made only two references to the Belt and Road Initiative, his signature plan to revamp and revitalize trade routes across the world, while investing in infrastructure ostensibly designed to help developing countries struggling with their development model. This plan, referred to in Chinese by its original name, literally “One Belt, One Road,” and many of its hundreds of projects, has been the subject of scrutiny and criticism from dozens of nations who have expressed opposition to what many see as Chinese state-sponsored economic exploitation and hegemony.

Why would Xi refer to his grand plan with only glancing remarks acknowledging its existence?

In the first reference, Xi said:

We implemented a more proactive opening strategy, a global network of high-standard free trade areas, accelerating the promotion of free trade experiments and the construction of Hainan Free Trade Port. The joint construction of the “Belt and Road” has become popular and a welcome platform for international public goods and international cooperation.

There is no elaboration on the Belt and Road projects into which China has invested hundreds of billions in U.S. dollar terms throughout Asia and the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. The BRI, once so important that it was added into the Chinese Constitution, now receives little more than an honorable mention, and only after free trade zones and the Hainan Free Trade Port are highlighted.

The second mention of the BRI in Xi’s work report comes in a bullet point titled “Promote high-level opening to the outside world.”

The reference is one short sentence: “Promote joint construction of ‘One Belt, One Road’ high-quality development.” After that, Xi switches back to domestic points, encouraging greater opening in China’s poorer western and northeastern provinces.

Does this signal a change in Xi’s thinking about the efficacy of BRI? Will we see less activity and investment from China throughout the developing world? Is this a sign of retreat, perhaps even defeat in some areas?

A comparison of Xi’s remarks on the Belt and Road Initiative in his speech to the 19th Party Congress five years ago highlights the stark difference in tone and substance between the CCP’s emphasis on BRI then and now.

In the 2017 work report, Xi mentioned the BRI no fewer than five times. Shortly after the opening of the speech, under the section titled “Major Achievements in Economic Development,” Xi remarked that “Regional development has become more balanced; the Belt and Road Initiative, the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt have all made notable progress.” Note that the BRI is mentioned second, only after “regional development.”

The BRI then comes in for a second shout-out in the section titled, “Further progress in China's diplomacy on all fronts.” Xi said, “We have made all-round efforts in the pursuit of major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics, thus...creating a favorable external environment for China’s development. We have jointly pursued the Belt and Road Initiative, initiated the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, set up the Silk Road Fund, and hosted the First Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation,” going on to list a number of other international meetings and summits which China hosted in the preceding five years. The BRI leads the list because, in 2017, the Belt and Road was China’s star vehicle and poster child for international outreach, development, and investment.

The BRI was meant to deliver China international respect and prestige, the soft power tools that it needs to advance its global interests. But, as Andreea Brînză, vice president of the Romanian Institute for the Study of the Asia-Pacific (RISAP), pointed out in The Diplomat back in September, mention of the “Belt and Road” is now largely being supplanted by references to the Global Development Initiative, another murky development program in China's playbook.

But even the Global Development Initiative is only mentioned once in the 2022 work report to the 20th Party Congress. It is buried in Section 14 out of 15, “Promoting World Peace and Development and Building a Human Community with a Shared Future”:

Only when all countries pursue the cause of common good, live in harmony, and engage in cooperation for mutual benefit will there be sustained prosperity and guaranteed security. It is in this spirit that China has put forward the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, and it stands ready to work with the international community to put these two initiatives into action.

That’s all that Xi said about a program ostensibly intended to take the place of the Belt and Road Initiative as China’s primary channel for international economic development and cooperation. But with no substance in Xi’s speech to define or describe the depth and direction of the Global Development Initiative’s scope, reach, and mission, listeners are left wondering if it is anything more than a catch-all phrase for any international initiative made outside of China’s borders.

In one early clue, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi addressed the GDI’s “Group of Friends” countries in September 2022, promising to deliver “to the UN six sustainable development data sets” in support of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. That’s a far cry from the bridges, roads, and ports of the BRI.

In 2017, Xi said in the work report that “we should pursue the Belt and Road Initiative as a priority, give equal emphasis to ‘bringing in’ and ‘going global.’” He went on to say that “China will actively promote international cooperation through the Belt and Road Initiative… to achieve policy, infrastructure, trade, financial, and people-to-people connectivity and thus build a new platform for international cooperation to create new drivers of shared development.”

Five years later, Xi added “high-quality” to his only two mentions of BRI, signaling some knowledge that perhaps some of the BRI projects to date have not been, and left it at that.

There were other notable differences between the work reports, as well. Although Xi mentioned the Chinese military over 50 times in both 2017 and 2022, the South China Sea was not mentioned in 2022 at all. Nor were the islands China claims in the area, under dispute with Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Xi was proudly able to say in 2017 that “construction on islands and reefs in the South China Sea has seen steady progress.”

On the other hand, socialist ideology loomed large in both speeches, and not surprisingly underpinned the framework of most of both speeches. Technology and technological gains were given equal emphasis in 2017 and in 2022.

The most glaring difference between Xi’s report in 2022 and that of 2017 is his constant reference to security. References to security almost doubled, going from 43 in 2017 to 81 in 2022. Security, particularly national security, is raised in relation to every issue, in every sphere of China’s internal and external engagements and public policies.

Social security, national security, ecological, political, people’s, external, public, traditional, non-traditional, and common security are all addressed. So are the securities of sustainability and food. Energy and development security, bio-security, resources security, key industrial and supply chains security; the list goes on. Every aspect of Chinese life must be safe and secure.

Xi even devoted a whole section to the topic: Section 11, “Modernizing China’s National Security System and Capacity and Safeguarding National Security and Social Stability.” Xi’s repetitive discourse on safety and security reflects a preoccupation that may have already become a risky obsession.

Priorities have changed for Xi Jinping. The BRI, once called the Project of the Century, which was meant to help usher in a new Chinese-led world order and to define Xi’s legacy for generations to come, receives no more than a passing mention in his most critical communication to the Communist Party and to the Chinese people for the next five years. Its purported replacement, the Global Development Initiative, fares even worse, with a single mention.

Xi’s 2022 Party Congress work report is in many ways a remarkable departure from his 2017 speech on the same occasion. He seems to have heard the growing backlash from even friendly countries on BRI projects that were being described as debt traps in policy circles, and exploitative by those on the ground. His answer seems to be to quietly walk away from the one grand initiative that has defined his foreign policy since 2013.

More deeply, Xi’s speech betrays that he is now ever more cautious toward the outside world, a posture emblematic of China over the centuries. Xi’s sense of China’s need for security in every realm of life – indeed, of threats to the Chinese nation from every corner – is clearly heightened. Xi’s prescription of an overarching security state to combat those threats is not only predictable, but inevitable.