An Upside Down View of Red China’s Global Ambitions

For all its renown, Foreign Affairs magazine tends to run some quirky pieces.

For instance, for policy makers who want to believe that Red China poses us no threat, Foreign Affairs is serving some comfort food called “What China Doesn’t Want: Beijing’s Core Aims Are Clear—and Limited” (September 19, 2025). This meal might also satisfy some appetites in the America First movement. But beware, for these are empty calories.

Authors David C. Kang, Jackie S.H. Wong, and Zenobia T. Chan are academics at U.S. schools in the fields of international relations, political science, and government, and they should know better. Their thesis is that the People’s Republic of China “is a status quo power with limited global aims, not a revisionist state seeking to dramatically expand its power and reshape the world order.”

Let’s break this down into its various propositions.

Red China is a status quo power and not a revisionist state.

Actually, Beijing has territorial disputes with every contiguous neighbor and even distant neighbors like Japan. In each case, it seeks to revise past treaties in its own favor. In some cases, these efforts involve armed clashes.

It seeks to revise the practices of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in order to substitute its own law of the sea, “building domestic legal institutions, bureaucratic organizations, and a naval and maritime law enforcement apparatus to establish China’s preferred maritime rules on the water and in the diplomatic arena.” This engenders conflict with the United States on the principle of freedom of the seas.

The communists seek to induce any state that still recognizes the Republic of China to recognize the People’s Republic instead.

Beijing seeks to replace the existing “unipolar” world order with a “multi-polar world order.”

These are some of the items that make Red China a revisionist state—by definition.

Red China has limited global aims.

In fact, Red China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in 2024.

Beijing has built a naval base on the horn of Africa at Djibouti.

It owns an “active signals intelligence site at Bejucal, located in the hills near Havana,” Cuba. A year ago, it was building a radar site next to the U.S. base at Guantanamo.

“State and party leader Xi Jinping announced China’s ambition to become a ‘major polar power’ ” back in 2014.

“To the extent that any nation may be said to have a grand strategy, China certainly has one,” Andrew Erickson concludes.

Red China is not seeking to dramatically expand its power.

And yet, “China’s navy is expanding at breakneck speed—and catching up with the US.”

“China Flaunts New Hypersonic Missile for Critical Strikes.”

“China has fundamentally restructured its approach to space, cyber, and information warfare capabilities, demonstrating a clear ambition to establish leading capabilities.”

And: “The modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal has both accelerated and expanded in recent years.” Nuclear Notebook estimates that China “now possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads, with more in production…. China is believed to have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal among the nine nuclear-armed states; it is the only Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that is significantly increasing its nuclear arsenal.”

Red China is not seeking to reshape the world order.

The communists have initiated their Belt and Road initiative to restructure international trade.

They founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with a wide-ranging charter.

They were cofounders of BRICS, “a major political force” in the world.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said that “Equal rights, equal opportunities and equal rules should become the basic principles of a multipolar world” and called for “greater democracy in international relations”.

And just a few weeks ago, “Chinese President Xi Jinping presented his vision of a new world order…one where Beijing’s military and diplomatic might supersedes the U.S.-led status quo. From a two-day summit focused on bolstering East Asian investment to a military parade with high-profile guests, Beijing is hoping to signal the emergence of a new multipolar world shaped heavily by China and its allies.”

Ergo

So, to recap: Red China is a revisionist state with broad global aims that is seeking to dramatically expand its power and reshape the world order. The thesis presented by Kang, Wong and Chan is upside down.

Interestingly, the authors spill little ink on Xi’s recent proposal “for a so-called Global Governance Initiative, which he unveiled in early September,” which they claim “is explicit that it seeks to preserve the United Nations–based international system rather than to overturn it.”

And yet Xi placed two of his organizations at the center of the GGI: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road Initiative.

CCP site scochina25.org notes that Xi “also made an appeal for SCO countries to defend international fairness and justice, saying they should continue to unequivocally oppose hegemonism and power politics, practice true multilateralism, and stand as ‘a pillar in promoting a multipolar world and greater democracy in international relations.’ ”

And by the way, what is it with all these initiatives? Scochina25 also tells us that Xi “expounded on his fourth global initiative, after the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative….”

Not much wiggle room left for the UN in this menagerie. Lots of room, though, for Red China’s global aims. □

James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.

Also see:

StoptheCCP.org: “China, the Crazy Neighbor Who Just Won’t Leave People Alone”

StoptheCCP.org: “The Failure and Success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative”

StoptheCCP.org: “The Shanghai Agendas”

StoptheCCP.org: “With IOMed, China Becomes a Wise and Judicious Peacemaker Hailed by All”

StoptheCCP.org: “A Fake Neighbor’s Fake Neighborliness in the Arctic”

StoptheCCP.org: “U.S. and China: Our Navy, Their Navy, and the Parity of Disparity”

StoptheCCP.org: “Laggards Gonna Lag; or, American Hypo-Hypersonic”

StoptheCCP.org: “How to Thwart China’s Cyberattacks”

StoptheCCP.org: “Why U.S. Universities Accept Spying by the Chinese Communist Party”