Bachulska: 'The coming decades could be strongly influenced by Chinese ideas'

In your new book "The Idea of China: Chinese Thinkers," which you co-authored with Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and Janka Oertel, Director of the ECFR Asia Program, you present Chinese thinkers and ideas. What was the idea behind the book?

Our main idea was to bring ideas originating in China under Xi Jinping closer to non-Chinese audiences. Essentially, if the last few decades have been characterized by the spread of Chinese goods and capital, the coming decades could be strongly influenced by Chinese ideas. Many of the "Chinese solutionists" – as we call them – want to create distinctively Chinese ideas to respond to the questions of the age of uncertainty – the period of "great changes unseen in a century," as Xi Jinping likes to put it.

This is a rather vacuous sounding term, but it is of huge importance for the leadership – what does it mean?

It is Beijing's diagnosis of the current state of the international order, the global political, economic, technological and cultural shifts. Beijing needs to navigate through this era to secure regime stability and prosperity for China’s population. In this context, security is key.

While "Chinese solutionists" work for the system and understand its limitations, they do not have a complete monopoly over knowledge-making in China. Other voices, often marginalized or operating from abroad, try to bring new perspectives into this debate. We also tried to reach out to them – that is why the chapter "People" is heavily focused on topics such as feminism, alternative identities, and discourse power.

Another term is so called democratization of international relations.

China’s political lexicon shares this concept with Russia. It is essentially about reclaiming the meaning of some well-established concepts, mostly originating in the West, and giving them a new meaning in line with the interests of the leadership. This concept stands for all efforts conducive to the weakening of what many in China see as "US hegemony." Yet, in the systemic context, it is about strengthening the CCP's ability to assert its own rules over the interpretation of basic liberal democratic notions such as human rights, sovereignty, multilateralism, etc.

You describe how the war in Gaza became central to Chinese efforts to win influence in the so called Global South. You quote an unnamed Chinese analyst with the remarkable sentence: the region is becoming a “laboratory for a post American world”.

For many of our interlocutors, the so-called Global South is the arena where the fate of the US-China strategic rivalry will be decided. Many Chinese intellectuals believe that as Washington’s power declines, regional players try to assert themselves, and China is trying to exploit this “window of opportunity” by deepening its ties with them. Beijing has established vague initiatives, such as the Global Security Initiative, to present itself as a “responsible actor”. Cooperation with countries outside of the Global North is seen by Beijing as a trial-and-error exercise in building institutions that in the future could potentially form a backbone of a post-American order.

The Chinese leadership pursues an utopian future. How does it look like?

Its goal is to re-write the rules of the game for China to become a global leader in AI, the green transition, and, potentially in the long run, the international financial system. Chinese intellectuals are trying to merge seemingly contradictory ideas, for example Marxism and the study of AI, to create an intellectual basis for the authorities to use

As Janka Oertel has put it: "If Chinese technology companies provide the backbone of the green and digital transition, state actors’ access to personal data will be eased, and data flows will increasingly be routed through Chinese servers for system security." What might sound like a utopia to the authorities in Beijing might easily turn into a dystopia for the Europeans.

The CCP is seeking international support for its own understanding of AI governance.

Beijing is seeking international support for its own version of AI governance in an effort to establish itself as a pioneer in this realm – to be ahead of the curve. AI will be the most impactful area when it comes to shaping technological structures of economic and political dominance in the future, and the Chinese leadership is trying to navigate this environment to secure China’s position as an AI leader. The authorities, however, need to strike a balance between innovation and control, and this will prove to be a very difficult task. The Chinese leadership, as well as Chinese intellectuals, do not have a full understanding of the implications of their current approach to AI.

In the West when talking about climate progress, there is an underlying sense of loss. Meanwhile in China the narrative of green modernity is much more optimistic.

The authorities in China, alongside many intellectuals, are trying to give a positive spin to the debate on climate progress. Beijing does not emphasize the need to de-growth. Quite the contrary, the Chinese leadership tries to make the case that development and emissions reductions are possible at the same time.

The Chinese leadership attempts to create a new model of financial architecture to better serve its interests. What could it look like?

Under current circumstances, the debate on China’s financial power is the most controversial because of the overall slowdown in Chinese economy and the political gravitas of the topic. The authorities do not trust financial markets, which translates into an underdeveloped stock market and limited interest in liberalizing the renminbi. At the same time, they want to make the renminbi strong enough to be useful in case of a major conflict and make it attractive for others to use to hedge their US exposure.

The CCP is very keen to create a national identity that supports its goals.Where does it draw its inspiration from?

Against the backdrop of growing complexity and economic downturn, Beijing wants to build a self-image of China, and Chinese people, that are strong and proud, able to "eat bitterness." Essentially, it is about fostering an identity that could endure in an era of prolonged uncertainty.

These ideas, however, might not be that easily digestible to younger audiences. It is by now clear that many alternative identities have emerged over the years in China, with concepts such as "involution" and "lying flat" becoming increasingly mainstream and reflecting the fact that many young people are opting out of the rat race and are not that willing to subscribe to the official line.

This ideal identity also includes an ideal family.

China under Xi has experienced a revival of traditional norms and related narratives. Challenged by the demographic crisis, the authorities are trying to convince women to have more children, either by shaming unmarried and childless women as "leftovers" or by creating encouraging stories about the seemingly bright side of the neo-Confucian revival. The authorities are cracking down on organized feminist movements, but they have so far met with little success. The popularity of feminism-inspired works of culture, such as films, series, and books, testifies to the fact that gender discussions are far from extinct in China

And even as women are increasingly sidelined in politics – with an all-male Politburo, women are gaining economic power?

Yes, and this also changes some domestic dynamics in China. Women are gaining economic power; they are becoming better educated and much more conscious about their own position. To a certain degree, women choosing not to have children can be seen as actors of change – defying the official logic and choosing other, non-traditional ways of being fulfilled in the society. The authorities do not seem to have a good answer to this trend yet, quite the opposite: they’re doubling down on their efforts to re-envigored traditional norms. This, in the long run, will most likely bring more tensions between the official ideas on what it means to be a “patriotic” woman in China and what women would actually choose in their everyday lives.

Alicja Bachulska is Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. You can download the book "The Idea of China" for free here.