Chinese power

China is seeking to replace US as the leading world power and remake the international system in its illiberal image, but can they do it?Jessica Chen Weiss, an author and China expert at Cornell University, writing in The New York Times (NYT) said that President Xi Jinping of China has vowed to thwart what he views as US-led efforts to “contain, encircle and suppress” China and has said, “capitalism will inevitably perish and socialism will inevitably triumph.” However, most Communist states have collapsed, and the Chinese leadership fears being next. Moreover, China’s economy today is more capitalist than Marxist and highly dependent on access to world markets. China has fed these fears by building up its military, partnering with Russia, pressing disputed territorial claims, and with its own rhetoric.But such ideological proclamations are in part motivated by insecurity. China’s long-term ambitions are difficult to know with certainty, and they can change. But it is far from clear that it can — or even seeks to — replace the United States as the world’s dominant power, said Weiss. Xi and the Communist Party of China (CCP) apparently see the United States as trying to keep China perpetually subordinate and vulnerable, opposing whatever China does or advocates in an international system that Beijing believes favours the United States and developed democracies.