Xi Prefers Fleet Power to Street Protest

In 1999, American bombers accidentally blew up China’s embassy during an attack on Belgrade, killing three. The Chinese reacted with outrage, demanding reparations and official apologies. To prove their seriousness, they made nationalist speeches that whipped Chinese citizens into a frenzy, culminating in tens of thousands of protesters throwing rocks and encircling the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

For Chinese leaders, this was par for the course. In responding to international crises, China long hewed to a simple playbook: stoking anti-foreign protests to show resolve and pressure the other side to desist.

But today, something has changed: Chinese leader Xi Jinping, hardly averse to invoking nationalism when it suits him, has nonetheless eschewed stirring up frenzied protests when facing international crisis. During the biggest foreign-policy crisis for China in decades, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan, Xi did not encourage Chinese protests—in fact, nationalist fervor was met with online repression, including a temporary shutdown of social media. Instead, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out a series of unprecedented exercises to punish Taiwan and redraw the cross-strait status quo.

Xi’s avoidance of anger on the Chinese street is not a one-off. In the past decade under Xi, crises have not abated but accelerated—yet they’ve been matched by the effective absence of anti-foreign protests in the streets and frequent displays of military force. The reasons for Xi’s shift away from protest bargaining are multifaceted, rooted in domestic politics and a preference for showing strength both at home and abroad. The result of a new crisis-signaling playbook is a China that shows resolve in crises not through anger in the streets but through warplanes and the fleet.

Chinese leaders, facing wave after wave of crisis over the past three decades, have long turned to protests to bargain. The turn of the century brought not just Belgrade but the 2001 EP-3 incident, where a lethal collision between planes resulted in Chinese diplomats threatening their U.S. counterparts with the rage of the Chinese streets if appropriate amends were not made. Throughout the 2010s, China and Japan feuded repeatedly over the status of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, most notably in 2012, when Chinese government-stoked protests in reaction to the Japanese government’s purchase of the islands from private hands resulted in thousands of protesters engulfing 85 Chinese cities.

Jessica Chen Weiss, in her groundbreaking study of Chinese protests, examined more than 80 orchestrated protests in the quarter century preceding Xi’s ascension to power. She argued that protests are China’s attempt to do what economist Thomas Schelling called “tying hands”—increasing bargaining power by showing that one can’t back down.

Just as democratic leaders can point to polls as proof they’re fenced in at home, China can allow protests to rage in the streets to show the people will turn on it if it doesn’t get its way. China’s opponent will fear the effects of unrest that could become regime-threatening instability; considering the alternative, just letting Beijing have its way is preferable.

Yet few, if any, examples exist of Xi stoking anti-foreign protests during his tenure as president. In fact, he has worked actively to suppress such protests. While prior Chinese leaders frequently leveraged domestic protests as bargaining tools, Xi is hesitant to use nationalist uproar as his default option. Instead, Xi is more comfortable showcasing the PLA’s military power in major coercive demonstrations while suppressing nationalist movements at home.

To the extent that the people have mobilized under Xi, it has been for government-orchestrated “boycotts” that attempt to pressure other countries economically. Genuinely outraged Chinese citizens were discouraged from physically protesting during the deployment of a THAAD missile defense system in South Korea in 2017. Instead, Chinese consumers were encouraged to boycott the major retail conglomerate Lotte, which eventually drove the South Korean company out of China.

The new approach can be explained by several shifts within China over the past decade.

First, China’s leadership has changed. Xi is as confident about his nation’s strength as he is paranoid about the stability of his rule. As China’s unchallenged chairman of everything, Xi has consolidated control over all facets of Chinese society, presiding over the decimation of collective leadership, anti-corruption campaigns that have neutered elite opposition, and a massive surveillance network.

But this is not compatible with bargaining through protests, which inherently involves both telegraphing and accepting political vulnerability, requiring Xi to suggest that his power has limits and can be imperiled. Stoking protests constitutes evidence of Xi’s precarity among the elites or the population and is too risky to accept. Xi, knowing that his road to absolute control was paved with the ouster of all rivals, has installed himself as ruler for life; for such a leader, the prospect of being ousted is legitimately existential.

Second, China’s approach to foreign policy has changed. In previous decades, protests were an appropriate tool for reacting to a crisis foisted upon China, a weaker country telegraphing to the other side that it needed to cease the unwelcome behavior.

Xi Jinping, however, has moved away from former leader Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “hide and bide” as China has grown increasingly powerful. Old territorial disputes have been dusted off: China has attempted to expand control of the South China Sea, harassed India on the countries’ shared border, pushed Japan in the East China Sea, and exerted unrelenting pressure on Taiwan.

Many of these disputes amounted to “crises”—only this time, they were initiated by China, making domestic protests a less effective tool to coerce weaker countries compared to military harassment by air and sea.

China, due to its rapid growth, also no longer sees protests as useful for telegraphing domestic weakness. China used to self-identify as a non-threatening developing country, and protests were helpful in advancing this image; the United States had no reason to worry about China dominating Asia when the country couldn’t even control its own streets. Yet today’s China advertises itself as a real power, proclaiming that Mao Zedong made Chinese people stand up, and Deng made them rich, but only Xi made them strong. This strong China is at the center of what Xi calls the rise of the East and the decline of the West. Such a country is not liable to be brought to its knees by anger in its streets.

The young people who make up the bulk of protestors are also a more volatile tool than in the past. From the May 4, 1919, demonstrations onward, Chinese university students have historically been reliable sources of nationalist anger directed at Japanese or American imperialists. But today, China’s younger generation lives in what has been called “an age of malaise,” confronting a whirlwind of economic and political problems ranging from slower growth to a collapsing real estate sector and widespread youth unemployment. Young adults are motivated more by frustration over the COVID-19 pandemic’s aftermath or the desire to “lie flat” in the face of persistent joblessness, hardly concerns Xi wants to be vocalized.

The protests today have also simply lost effectiveness as a bargaining tool. China’s successful deployment of the method relied on it credibly tying its own hands, suggesting that leaders bucked public opinion at their own peril. But if China can simply ignore or suppress protests, or is perceived as capable of doing so, there is not much credibility in hand tying and, thus, in the threats.

Xi’s success in concentrating power at home has accomplished just that. Improvements in the effectiveness of the repressive domestic apparatus have removed any credible constraint that could be believed by a foreign country. Xi’s tenure has intersected with a remarkable revolution in surveillance and censorship technology, with the world as its witness. Over the past 10 years, China has built the most monitored society ever: Eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the world are Chinese; of the world’s billion surveillance cameras, half are in China. Online, private group chats are constantly monitored by algorithms and live agents, with real-world arrests frequently made.

As such, Xi’s campaign to centralize power and muffle opposition has eliminated any collective action that can be even remotely considered regime-threatening and, along with it, any prospect that protests could be used as a bargaining instrument. While previous Chinese leaders could reasonably point to popular or intra-political constraints, akin to an American president tied down by the U.S. Congress or polls, the omnipotent chairman of everything will struggle to convince others of his impotence.

The 2022 White Paper protests, set against a decade of popular passivity, were a clear moment of assertiveness and the most forceful domestic demonstration against Xi. But foreign onlookers saw that even the worst case for Xi—unrest spurred by something as aberrational and impactful as COVID-19 policy—could nonetheless be contained. If so, then smaller displays, such as anti-foreign demonstrations outside embassies, undoubtedly can be managed too. The alacrity with which China managed the White Paper protests has also fed the perception that they were a one-off: Protesters themselves were surprised by the degree to which China responded and held participants responsible, with one noting that “it’s going to be very difficult to mobilize people again.”

At the most basic level, Xi’s increased emphasis on military displays means international crises will run a greater risk of accidents. Military exercises, missile launches, and close encounters at sea or air are not risk-free, given the proximity in which the U.S. and Chinese militaries operate in the Pacific. If each military crisis is a roll of the dice, more crises mean rolling the dice more frequently—with more opportunities for something truly catastrophic to happen.

But more fundamentally, repeated military crises prime both sides to always reach for the military option, viewing anything less as a weakness and a retreat. Should China try to telegraph to the United States that its interests are at stake, the United States, well-accustomed to displays of force, may assume China’s response is cheap talk, absent a coupling with something more muscular. Consider the Pelosi visit in 2022. Xi’s repeated verbal warnings were dismissed as a bluff, and the United States persisted, which boxed Xi into sweeping military displays: a simulated blockade of Taiwan, firing a ballistic missile over the island, and commencing what has now become regular incursions of the Taiwan Strait’s median line.

In an ideal world, policymakers on both sides would recognize the dangers created by Xi’s new playbook and actively work to limit crises. Given the deep-seated interests involved on both sides, this is unlikely. But even without behavioral changes, policymakers would benefit from recognizing that assumptions from previous decades of crisis management no longer hold. This should provide the impetus for renewed stability dialogues: discussing redlines to avoid flashpoints, sharing insights on how each side views crisis management to manage disputes, and building firebreaks to contain incidents that risk spiraling out of control.

The alternative is continuing down a dangerous path, where future crises begin where the prior ones left off and Chinese leaders feeling pressure to not just repeat but one-up their previous response. Once a line has been crossed, uncrossing it appears weak and unthinkable. But as both sides climb the escalation ladder, fewer rungs will remain. As noted in these pages, this creates a new normal that leaves both parties living on the “edge of chaos”—permanently.

By Raphael J. Piliero