Emperor Xi

 “Woe and death to all who resist my will”.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

August 4^th, 2023. On this day in 1914 World War One broke out. It was caused by the insane imperial ambitions of a deluded ultra-nationalist German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. In September 1939 World War Two was caused by the insane ultra-nationalist ambitions of Chancellor-for-Life Adolf Hitler.  In fact, almost all systemic wars have been caused by ultra-nationalists in power for life.  The Russo-Ukraine War was launched by the Russian ultra-nationalist President-for-Life Vladimir Putin in thrall to the even more extreme nationalists with whom he has surrounded himself. And now in Beijing there is a new Chinese ‘Emperor’, President-for-Life Xi Jingping who is showing all the signs of the same mix of absolute domestic power, insane ambition and deluded ultra-nationalism.

The first signs of Xi’s growing megalomania were the October 2022 humiliation of his predecessor Hu Jintao, by having him forcibly ejected from the Great Hall of the People. Like all ultra-nationalists Xi’s power base is the military, the burgeoning People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

And, like all past emperors he is moving first to quell any dissent within the Chinese Communist Party, whilst weakening adversaries abroad. Over the past month Xi has ‘vanished’ China’s erstwhile Foreign Minister Qin Gang and purged almost all the senior officers of the PLA Rocket Force. Abroad, China is engaged daily in industrial levels of cyber attacks and espionage, with the US now trying to eradicate malware Washington believes the Chinese have inserted into critical national infrastructure upon which the American armed forces depend.

There was one other thing the ultra-nationalists of the past have with the ultra-nationalists of the present – a distracted free world in denial about the systemic threat they pose. Xi has made the aims of his ambition clear: the forced reintegration of Taiwan into the Chinese state, the forced subjugation of states around the South China Sea into a Chinese sphere of influence, the expulsion of the United States from East Asia, the use of Chinese money to push the West out of the Middle East and beyond, and debt traps to create de facto Trojan Horses within both NATO and the EU.

European states are belatedly awakening to the threat. This week the Italian Defence Minister warned about the threat posed by Italy’s membership of Beijing’s Belt and Chains Initiative. At the July 2022 NATO Madrid Summit, the Alliance finally confirmed that “the PRC’s malicious hybrid and cyber operations and its confrontational rhetoric and disinformation target allies and harm Alliance security”.  In July 2023, a report by the UK’s House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee said that China had penetrated almost all levels of British society and government whilst London’s response was fragmented and disjointed.  As ever, the British cannot decide which is more important: Chinese money or the threat China poses.  

Whilst it is vital the West continues to talk to China and avoids ‘war is inevitable’ syndrome it is also now vital that China is made to realise the costs it would incur if Xi were ever to go for broke (for that is what it would mean) and attempt to realise his ultra-nationalist ambitions.

When will we the West ever learn?

Julian Lindley-French