China’s lesson in correcting itself

The regime may have learned that its hyped rhetoric of war on COVID-19 and Taiwan can backfire.

The Monitor's View

Twice in the past half-year, China has pulled itself back from the brink of disaster, offering up a lesson for any country where extreme official rhetoric can get out of control.

Last December, Chinese leader Xi Jinping abruptly reversed his “zero-COVID” policy – which relied on metaphors of war – after mass protests against its draconian effects on society threatened his rule. China has since fared well with a fading pandemic.

Then in recent months, Mr. Xi made an even more important about-face. Official media now allow commentary arguing against the regime’s own statements about taking Taiwan by military force, even allowing some articles to call the notion of war “stupid.”

Last year, Mr. Xi himself instructed his military to be prepared for an invasion by 2027. Chinese warplanes often flew into Taiwanese airspace. Yet the rhetoric of a war may have become too close to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Some ordinary Chinese have come to sincerely believe that war will break out over Taiwan in the near future,” says China expert Katsuji Nakazawa in the Japanese publication Nikkei. “It became necessary to calm, for now, a groundswell of public opinion inflamed by wolf-warrior propaganda.”

China will now “push for the peaceful development” of ties with Taiwan, said Wang Huning, a new and powerful official in charge of policy toward Taiwan. “Cross-strait exchanges should be restored and expanded step by step, and friendship with people from all social strata in Taiwan should be cultivated,” he said this week.

Mr. Xi has many reasons to cool the propaganda. He may want to influence the outcome of Taiwan’s democratic election next year – the country’s eighth presidential election – perhaps hoping for a Beijing-friendly leader to be chosen. He sees how badly Russia botched its invasion of Ukraine and the united Western response in defending a democracy. China’s threatening posture toward Taiwan has also brought many Asian countries, from India to South Korea, into formal or informal alliances.

China faces so many domestic problems – a low birth rate, increasing economic isolation by the West, and a dependency on Taiwan-made computer chips – that an invasion seems as threatening to the Communist Party as the protests against the harsh COVID-19 policy.

Mr. Xi has been “sobered” by the Russian invasion and the economic implications of an invasion of Taiwan, says CIA Director William Burns. That soberness is now reflected in the ruling party’s official rhetoric. Perhaps a more pacifistic tone will lead to more peaceful actions.