Even if Xi is revisionist, he is not a dangerous, radical one – he’s a defensive realist.

Xi has transformed Chinese foreign policy, although not in the way that is usually understood in the West. Despite the frequent comparisons with Mao Zedong, he is no revolutionary seeking to overturn the global order and impose in its place a Chinese Brave New World. He is a revisionist in that he seeks to maximise China’s influence and status. But, like his predecessors Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, and Deng Xiaoping, he aims to do so within the existing international system. In this connection, Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not the harbinger of an alternative world order. Its connectivity agenda is more prosaic: to improve China’s access to natural resources; open up new markets for its manufactured goods and services; extend Beijing’s economic influence across Eurasia; and ensure a friendly and secure neighbourhood. Even in these more limited aims, the BRI has underachieved.19 Similarly, Chinese actions in the Western Pacific are not about promoting a sinocentric hegemony, but reflect longstanding goals: power projection; acquiring control over resources; having a decisive say in regional security; reducing or containing American influence; and asserting authority over Taiwan. Such an approach is hardly comforting, but it is neither new nor radical.20

The real difference Xi has made is in the energy and clarity he has brought to the pursuit of these goals. Whereas previous leaders emphasised China’s limitations and its aspirations to become a ‘moderately developed country’, there is no such strategic cringe or dissimulation today. Beijing no longer cares to defer to the United States or to indulge Western sensitivities.21 It is much bolder in promoting China’s ‘core interests’ in the South China Sea and reunification of Taiwan with the mainland. Xi speaks openly of a Chinese model of development and a ‘shared future for humanity’ in which China plays a leading role. Meanwhile, internal repression has increased markedly, as Beijing angrily rejects Western criticisms of its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang and of the new national security law for Hong Kong.

The overall message is that China is rising and the world had better get used to it. This attitudinal shift has come as a shock to Western leaders accustomed to the Deng Xiaoping course of hiding one’s capacities, maintaining a low profile, and never claiming leadership.22 The cloak of humility that long masked Chinese foreign policy goals has given way to in-your-face ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy. The sharpening of Chinese rhetoric has been backed up by a significant expansion of military, economic, technological, and soft power capabilities, as well as a greater willingness to deploy them. Xi’s assertive approach signals that China is not content to be a mere rule-taker, but demands a major part in framing and implementing the twenty-first century global order. That said, realpolitik, not messianism or iconoclasm, remains the basis of Chinese foreign policy. Beijing is a long way from demonstrating the will, much less the capacity, to build an international system in its own image. It is one thing for Xi to speak about a ‘community of common destiny’ and a global leadership role.23 It is quite another to translate such abstractions into hard commitments.24 Contrary to Western fears, Beijing is not looking to populate the world with Mini-Me versions of a Leninist party-state. What matters to it is that other countries — democratic or authoritarian — support Chinese interests and policy positions.25 Converting them to ‘Chinese values’ is neither achievable nor necessary.