The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always operated on a global stage and with global ambitions. At the core of Mao Zedong’s dispute with Joseph Stalin in the late 1940s and early 1950s was which nation, China or the Soviet Union, should lead the international communist movement. 

Mao, after all, did not order the Great Leap Forward and ultimately starved millions of his people so that China could become Asia’s largest steel producer. He wanted China to become the world’s largest—a goal the CCP achieved in the 1990s. The Party also fought at the Vienna Convention of 1994 to embed relativism and regionalism in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and thereby to deny all humans the recognized right to basic freedoms. 

Even under the relatively lethargic leadership of Hu Jintao, Beijing still outlined a global role for itself under the rubric of “New Historic Missions” for the People’s Liberation Army, despite its capabilities still being regionally constrained. Hu also invested in expanding China’s propaganda reach with a $6.5 billion infusion in 2008.[1]

Indeed, all of the CCP’s leaders have left their mark on Beijing’s international reach. The Party’s current leader, Xi Jinping, has only made these ambitions more explicit, and has been more forthright about employing the PRC’s newfound power and status. 

He has done so to great effect. Today, the CCP poses a powerful challenge to the United States, its allies and partners, and all other states that want to decide their own futures, because there is no clear boundary or limits to the CCP’s objectives or its appetite. 

Avoiding the Power Prioritization Trap

Saying that the Party’s highest priority is to remain in power is too simplistic. If the CCP cared only for power, it would not have survived the tumultuous years of Mao’s rule or been able to retrench after years of reform and opening up. Ruling a country is composed of two parts, after all. The first is politics, which is maneuvering to stay in power. The second is policy, which are the measures taken to govern. Analytically, focusing too much on the former distracts from the Party’s existing policy program and its progress. 

All political parties must practice politics and cultivate power, regardless of whether they run a one-party totalitarian state or exist as one of several factions in a parliamentary system. The CCP and its individual leaders do this by controlling the security apparatus, propaganda, and central bureaucracy, and by ensuring the loyalty of the relevant organs to the party-state. The Party also continues to adapt its security and propaganda systems to cultivate public loyalty, target dissent before it cascades, and guide public narratives. 

Even if the Party’s primary goal was power, it is not one Xi and the other leaders think about all the time. The Party does not confront an existential threat each day from the Chinese people. Most incidents of unrest are relatively small, and they only rarely extend across geographic areas. 

Indeed, Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor identified only a few hundred protests in China over the last year, and few involving the political legitimacy of the CCP itself. Instead, most were related to home ownership problems, animal cruelty, and other general social issues.[2] The last major eruption of politically threatening sentiment was the White Paper Protests that took place against the PRC’s draconian COVID lockdown in November 2022. Those began at a university in Nanjing after a fire in a locked-down apartment building in Urumqi killed 10 people. The demonstrations cascaded across 39 cities in 21 provinces, aided by a social media campaign that bridged domestic and international platforms.[3] Other individual protests or demonstrations may have attracted more participants, but none drew as many people across as many geographic areas.

The White Paper Protests represent an anomaly in terms of regime support—or at least the absence of willingness to oppose it. Surveys have shown that the CCP enjoys approval ratings of around 80 percent, with some results claiming a 95 percent approval rating for Xi himself.[4] Such surveys should not be understood as reflecting genuine backing, however. The Chinese people understand well the dangers that such surveys present, even when anonymity is assured, and are unlikely to trust the process. However, the high number that support the Party suggests that most people do not want to actively oppose it and will not even take a neutral position that might suggest dissatisfaction or disloyalty. The overall point is simple: one cannot see a sign today that the Party faces an imminent threat from Chinese society that the CCP’s control apparatus cannot handle as a routine matter.

But the CCP has a positive policy program that aims at much more than simply protecting the interests of its leadership. In their profiles of Chinese leaders since the Qing Dynasty reformers, historians John Delury and Orville Schell showed how both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping fit clearly into a Chinese tradition of trying to strengthen the country and restore China to its perceived place in the world. Critics can dispute whether Mao and Deng should be viewed as normal leaders, but they should not dismiss the fact that both leaders had a clear vision.

Signs of such vision also are present in the CCP’s five-year plans and the PRC’s rapid movement into emerging technologies. Party planners have looked to steadily move the country up the value chain, to build manufacturing capacity and then invest in the key industries that are likely to define future economic growth: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and robotics, and aerospace.[5] Beijing also made steady investments in electricity production over the last two decades as a way of underpinning continuing industrial growth. According to the International Energy Agency, the PRC has long been the world’s largest electricity producer, generating more than double the output of the United States. In 2023, it generated 9.55 million Gigawatt hours of electricity, and there is unused capacity to generate even more if necessary.[6]

These tangible measures of progress should encourage observers to take CCP leaders at their word when they talk about the great project of national rejuvenation. The Party leadership does not need to worry every day about an existential threat from Chinese society. Therefore, they have the time to invest in the knowledge and decision-making that can support the country’s development. 

The Party’s Ambitions

The Party’s ambitions, at least those most relevant to outsiders, can be explained through three major lines of effort. The first is comprehensive modernity. The formal phrase for this is now “a great modern socialist country” that is “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.” The second is national unification. Most obviously, this means taking control of Taiwan—just as Beijing was able to regain Hong Kong and Macao in 1997 and 1999, respectively. More broadly, however, it means reincorporating any lost territory that Beijing claims as its own. The third is becoming the global leader in comprehensive national power and gaining sufficient international heft to remake global governance. 

The most important feature of these ambitions is that they pit the PRC against the world. The qualifiers “prosperous” and “strong” only make sense relative to other countries. Regaining lost territory, clarifying borders, and asserting political control necessarily involve the countries that now control that territory, whether that is Taiwan or parts of the Russian Far East. Comprehensive national power is a measurement system first explored by the CCP in the 1980s as a way of understanding the PRC’s relative power. These ambitions show that CCP leaders think of themselves on a global stage and have the ambitions to match.

Achieving comprehensive modernity should be understood as becoming economically rich and militarily strong without sacrificing the Party’s political values or control. Each one of the words in the long phrase “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful” is shorthand for a larger set of policy objectives. The reason such phrases fail to resonate with foreign readers is that those observers do not see them as the start of deeper policy discussions about what it means to be prosperous or strong in today’s context.  

National unification or “reunification” is the second central feature of national rejuvenation. Taking control of Taiwan is the most obvious manifestation of that ambition. In a 2019 speech commemorating the “Letter to Taiwan Compatriots,” Xi stated that “the historical and legal fact that Taiwan is part of China and the two sides belong to one and the same China … can never be changed by any force or anyone.” In that and other speeches, he also pressed home the linkage between national rejuvenation and reunification, describing it as an opportunity that Taiwanese compatriots should not want to forego. Such language is repeated throughout the Party Congress Work Reports delivered by successive CCP general secretaries stretching back to Zhao Ziyang (who was put under house arrest after opposing the Tiananmen massacre in 1989). 

National unification refers as much to regaining political control as it does to the economic, social, and cultural unification of areas that the PRC already controls. The CCP uses the same word for unification whether it is unification of the nation or of thought and ideology. But this is not a semantic game. The United Kingdom turned Hong Kong over to PRC control in 1997, completing a political transition. The CCP, however, did not relent in Party publications from referring to implementing “One Country, Two Systems” and the continuing need for united front work to impose the Party’s vision in Hong Kong. Beijing also launched the Greater Bay Area Initiative in 2017 to integrate Hong Kong and Macao into the economic system of the Guangdong cities closest to the two special administrative regions. The initiative also includes an element of promoting young Hong Kongers to work in the surrounding PRC cities rather than pursuing careers in Hong Kong. This is softer than the aggressive assimilation policies pursued in minority areas, like Tibet and East Turkestan (officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR), but the ultimate intent is the same.

The national unification program should be seen as encompassing the entire country and territory yet to be reclaimed. It is most visible in minority areas, because those are the most different from the CCP’s definition of a model Chinese citizen. Just as the Party has squeezed minority language education out of curriculum and public life, so too have Chinese dialects been squeezed out of routine usage in official settings. People in Guangdong protested such language policies in 2010, with thousands taking to the streets, just as Mongolian parents in Inner Mongolia protested curriculum changes in 2020 that phased out indigenous language education.[7]

Earlier this year, national unification was given its most explicit framework yet: the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress Law. The law explicitly states its purpose as “forging the sense of the Chinese national community.” The law also includes provisions, seemingly based on the systematic repression of Uyghur identity in the XUAR, for Mandarin-only education, the cultivation of Chinese consciousness, and the criminalization of unapproved expressions of ethnic identity for which organizations, officials, and others on the social fringes of such expressions can be prosecuted.[8]

The third element of national rejuvenation is becoming the global leader in comprehensive national power. First conceived of in the 1980s, comprehensive national power evolved over two decades to become a central framing device in speeches, policy documents, and national strategies for how the Party understands the PRC’s strengths and competitive position vis-a-vis other countries.[9] In 1991, then-CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin described international rivalry as “a competition for comprehensive national power,” and such framing has continued to the present. Indeed, whether a policy enhances the PRC’s comprehensive national power has been used for three decades as one of the main questions in assessing the correctness of a potential course of action.

Comprehensive national power includes the following elements: economic strength, science and technology strength, national defense strength, natural resource strength, political strength, cultural and educational strength, and foreign policy strength.[10] Underlying these areas are at least thirty variables identified by Chinese researchers that form the composite score. This seemingly formal modeling of national power might appear academic, but approximately a decade ago, the official scoring was moved under the National Bureau of Statistics. Moreover, even before the adoption of comprehensive national power as a national statistical measurement, the Party already had begun acting on the insights it thought it had gained.

Beginning in the early 1990s, it created the first three of seven national strategies to mobilize society and address different aspects of the PRC’s comprehensive national power. Beijing first introduced the “Rejuvenation through Science and Education Development Strategy” in 1995 to address weaknesses in the PRC’s scientific power and human resources, because the Party had determined scientific and technological progress to be the key determinant for economic progress. The following year, the “Sustainable Development Strategy” was introduced to balance economic development, social development (human resources), natural resources, and ecological stability. The discussions around the strategy explicitly mention the need to balance the costs and unevenness of rapid economic growth. In 2003, the Party doubled down on the human resources problem by introducing the “Talent Strong Country Development Strategy.”

Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, PRC analysts realized that Beijing and Washington led countries much more powerful than the rest of the world. To catch up with the United States, however, the CCP would need to improve its ability to harness science and technology and to facilitate the spread of that technology across different domains of comprehensive national power. In response, four additional national strategies would be introduced: the “Innovation-Driven Development Strategy” (2012), the “Regional Coordinated Development Strategy” (2014), the “Military-Civil Fusion Development Strategy” (2015), and the “Rural Revitalization Strategy” (2017). All seven strategies would be added to the Party’s Charter (sometimes called its constitution), thereby formalizing the approaches to building comprehensive national power.[11]

The CCP sees comprehensive national power as defining the structure of the international system. As PRC power grew, Beijing started to see itself as “moving toward the center” of international affairs and introduced new ideas and structures to subtly subvert the existing order. The Party’s “New Type of International Relations” and “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind” envisioned Beijing’s united front governing international relations in which countries resolve their interests through Beijing. The Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative all attacked aspects of the U.S. alliance system and universal values and human rights. They also reinforced the idea that sovereignty included culture and ideas that justified pushing back against Western hegemony.

Taken together, the idea of national rejuvenation represents a powerful urge not just to develop China for its own sake, but for the Party to assert itself globally.

Socialism and Systems Confrontation

Marxist theory sees socialism as inevitable in part because “scientific socialism” views social and political outcomes as the result of measurable inputs. The CCP holds to the same view: that national rejuvenation is inevitable should it achieve its prerequisites.[12] These goals, some of which are antithetical to U.S. interests, lead socialism and its underlying logic to shape the PRC’s approach to competition with the United States and the West. The CCP’s belief in socialist ideology and historical inevitability emboldens its ambitions and determines how it seeks to achieve its goals. 

As such, Western values pose a challenge to the Party’s ambitions, and it has responded accordingly both at home and abroad. Domestically, this has meant a crackdown on “subversive” views, an effort most clearly delineated in a 2013 communique known as “Document 9.” That edict, which was approved by the Party’s central leadership, named Western democracy, universal values, and other related ideals as threats to both the CCP leadership and the ideological system of Chinese socialism as a whole.[13] Since Chinese socialism is seen as the only force capable of achieving what are presented as national goals, threats to the ideological system are seen as impediments to national development. 

Ideological confrontation also influences the PRC’s engagement with the world. The PRC’s promotion of “indigenous innovation,” particularly in science and technology, predates the 14th and 15th five-year plans, having been formally introduced as early as 2006.[14] Followed by the Xi-era industrial policy that promotes “autonomous and controllable” supply chains, the CCP leadership had created the economic conditions for global preeminence in technology and trade. The policy of dual circulation took this a step further, promoting self-reliance domestically while facilitating the world’s increasing dependency on the PRC, effectively centralizing it in the global economy.[15] Indeed, the economic policy pursued by the PRC since 2006 reflects a clear decision by the Party to engage in a systems confrontation with the United States and the West. 

Confrontation with the West also involves the Party presenting an independent form of global leadership. A June 2026 white paper on global governance made this clear, promoting Xi’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI) and claiming that the PRC is already a global leader in many respects.[16] As Chinese scholars have indicated, the GGI, a central aspect of the PRC’s proposed mode of leadership, is intended to “transcend the Western-centric governance paradigm.”[17]

Beyond high-level proposals for Chinese leadership like the GGI, PRC diplomats also embed aspects of systems confrontation in existing international forums and bilateral relations. For instance, at the UN Human Rights Council, the CCP promotes concepts such as the “community of common destiny for mankind,” “win-win cooperation,” and “people-centered approaches.”[18] Resolutions that adopt these Party terms normalize the CCP’s approach to governance and embed its perspectives in influential human rights bodies. 

Simultaneously, the Party has returned to the concept of “Asian values” to bolster the appeal of Chinese leadership in Asia. This concept inherently makes the PRC the leader of its Asian counterparts, and places a Chinese-led Asia in opposition to the West.[19] Like PRC activities in the United Nations, this effort goes beyond advancing regime security. By escalating competition with the United States within the ASEAN countries, the PRC has established another battleground in its ideological confrontation with the West.

The PRC’s alignment with Russia follows the same logic. The relationship is widely regarded as a pragmatic one, with the two countries continuing to compete in Central Asia and having a history of mutual suspicion.[20] However, it provides yet another venue for the PRC to challenge U.S. leadership and Western values. PRC-Russia ties have been characterized as “geopolitical socialism,” an informal alliance that strengthens their ability to compete with the West, reinforces regime strength, and secures the state during this period of heightened tensions.[21]

Bureaucracy in Action: How We Know

Seminal documents like the CCP general secretary’s report to the Party Congress and five-year plans represent the outcomes of long political processes involving many elements of the party-state. Preparations for the Party Congress every five years consume months of effort in the run up to the event. While external observers are aware of political horse-trading for personnel appointments, the bureaucracies are also heavily involved in the formation of the ultimate consensus. 

Americans and other outsiders frequently dismiss CCP speeches and documents, because they misunderstand what these represent. The mirror-image in the West, like the U.S. National Security Strategy or foreign policy documents of the European Council, tend to be aspirational or analytical. They frame future policy directions, priorities, and options. Moreover, they are the product of small writing teams that then coordinate the documents across the system. Bureaucratic engagement is more ad hoc than the sustained, directed, and daily process it is in the Chinese party-state. 

As such, CCP documents and speeches also should be taken seriously, because they are part of a large, growing, and consistent canon that evolves with the PRC’s domestic and international situation. Each leader from Mao to Xi has contributed to the ideas and specificity of PRC development and what it means. There are few, if any, clear breaks in the Party’s history about what the overall objectives should be. Disputes are largely centered around who wields power and how to divide the spoils of economic development, rather than what should be accomplished. 

Finally, all of these ambitions have supporting actions to move them forward. Analysis of comprehensive national power added new dimensions to how the CCP understood global competition. That analysis in turn led to new strategies. From those, we see new actions, programs, and policies. The direction and execution are not always perfect, but the Party is prepared to review, recalibrate, and adapt. China’s party-state is not a monolith, in other words. But it is also not so fragmented that it lacks strategic direction. 

Game Plan

The future of China may still be uncertain and there will doubtless be opportunities to influence how it unfolds. The CCP, however, has chosen a course for the country that has progressed unequivocally in one direction: toward confrontation. Since the end of the reform period, CCP leaders have consolidated their competitive edge, focusing on producing what the world needs in order to increase the centrality of their country. Each new policy planning document has taken further steps to create dependency on the PRC—a dynamic that reinforces the Party’s confrontational stance vis-à-vis the West.  

Failing to acknowledge and respect the choices CCP leaders have made about their country’s future can only lead to disappointment and surprise. Conceivably, after Xi Jinping leaves the political scene, the Party could make another set of choices, and may even loosen its grip on power and the systems of control that maintain it. However, China under Xi needs to be understood as the latest embodiment of the Party’s ambitions, its choices, and the future that the CCP wants to create. That, in turn, should be the starting point for any serious analysis of how to compete or engage effectively to protect U.S. interests.