This straight turns their scenario – attempts to deter China will be seen as strategically hostile and cause dialectical escalation only explained by Marxist IR – China is too ideologically disciplined to respond to western posturing, but their thought that victory is inevitable means they won’t preemptively start war – only the plan has a risk of causing it.

Xi’s Marxist nationalism is an ideological blueprint for the future; it is the truth about China that is hiding in plain sight. Under Xi, the CCP will evaluate changing international circumstances through the prism of dialectical analysis—and not necessarily in ways that will make sense to outsiders. For example, Xi will see new Western institutions intended to balance against China, such as the Quad (the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic cooperation agreement between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) and the AUKUS (a defense agreement linking Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), as both strategically hostile and ideologically predictable, requiring new forms of political, ideological, and military “struggle” to roll back. In his Marxist-Leninist view, China’s ultimate victory is guaranteed because the deep forces of historical determinism are on the CCP’s side, and the West is in structural decline.

This view will affect the likelihood of conflict in Asia. Since 2002, the CCP’s code language for its belief that war was unlikely has been the official phrase “China continues to enjoy a period of strategic opportunity.” This statement is meant to convey that China will face a low risk of conflict for the foreseeable future and can therefore seek economic and foreign policy advantages while the United States is bogged down elsewhere, especially in the broader Middle East. But in the wake of Washington’s official labeling of China as a “strategic competitor” in 2017, the ongoing U.S.-Chinese trade war, mutual (if selective) forms of economic decoupling, and the hardening of U.S. alliances with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and NATO, the CCP is likely to change its formal analytical conclusion about the strategic environment.

The danger is that dialectical methodologies and the binary conclusions that they produce can lead to spectacularly incorrect conclusions when applied to the real world of international security. In the 1950s, Mao saw it as dialectically inevitable that the United States would attack China to snuff out the Chinese revolution on behalf of the forces of capitalism and imperialism. Despite the Korean War and two crises in the Taiwan Strait during that decade, no such attack materialized. Had Mao not taken such an ideological view, the thawing of China’s relationship with the United States could perhaps have been initiated a decade earlier than it was, particularly given the unfolding reality of the Sino-Soviet split that began after 1959. In similar fashion, Xi now sees threats on every front and has embarked on the securitization of virtually every aspect of Chinese public policy and private life. And once such threat perceptions become formal analytical conclusions and are translated into the CCP bureaucracies, the Chinese system might begin to function as if armed conflict were inevitable.

Xi’s ideological pronouncements shape how the CCP and its nearly 100 million members understand their country and its role in the world. They take such texts seriously; the rest of the world should, too. At the very least, Xi’s embrace of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy should put to rest any wishful thinking that Xi’s China might peacefully liberalize its politics and economy. And it should make clear that China’s approach to foreign policy is driven not only by a rolling calculus of strategic risk and opportunity but also by an underlying belief that the forces of historical change are inexorably driving the country forward.

This should, therefore, cause Washington and its partners to carefully evaluate their existing China strategies. The United States should realize that China represents the most politically and ideologically disciplined challenger it has ever faced during its century of geopolitical dominance. U.S. strategists should avoid “mirror imaging” and should not assume that Beijing will act in ways that Washington would construe as rational or serving China’s self-interests.

The West won an ideological contest in the twentieth century. But China is not the Soviet Union, not least because China now has the second-largest economy in the world. And although Xi may not be Stalin, he is certainly not Mikhail Gorbachev, either. Xi’s adherence to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy has helped him consolidate his personal power. But this same ideological stance has also created dilemmas that the CCP will find difficult to resolve, especially as slowing economic growth puts in doubt the party’s long-standing social contract with the people.