Given the geopolitical events of the last few days, the 19th Congress of the CCP risks going unnoticed despite the possible implications. If it is true that every five years the party organizes its plenum, it is equally true that this year's one is particularly significant given that at least 5 of the 7 members of the Standing Committee will leave office and the new ones will ratify the second term of Xi Jinping. allowing him to dictate a political succession.
The signals arrived from the last demonstrations induce to believe that Xi is reaching its maximum akmè after having eliminated, for corruption, a series of high profile executives. Its value is significant and is based on the strategy of "four in total": A prosperous society, reforms, rule of law, strengthening of the political executive. If Xi manages to shape the new leadership, his future withdrawal from the political scene will indicate the completion of the reforms despite the opposing internal resistance of the apparatus and by the FF.AA. The reforms will be aimed at the realization of a socialism with Chinese characteristics according to a moderate collective level of prosperity to be celebrated in the 2021 on the occasion of the centenary of the establishment of the CCP. The programmatic report will serve Xi as a guideline for the future CCP, combining issues of domestic politics with those of foreign policy, concerning aspects which, despite the uncertainty generated by the election of Trump, with Brexit and North Korea, they aim to ensure China a significant leading role.
Chinese political thought is expressed in Xi's statements, when he says that China's struggle against the world crisis is his "greater contribution to the human race", and that "First, China does not export the revolution. Second, China does not export hunger or poverty. Third, China does not export nuisances. What else is there to say?". The tacit agreement signed with the post Tienanmen people (in the photo on the right a moment of a ceremony of 30 in memory of the massacre, ed) to obtain political support in exchange for economic and wage growth, facilitated the executive tasks with a mixture of nationalism, traditional Confucianism and Marxism Leninism thanks to which the CCP enjoys the rare merit of being able to adapt to every circumstance, and to keep the reins in the grip even when the economy slows down and signs of social discontent manifest themselves. Meanwhile, the traditional politics of Washington consensus has been replaced by a Beijing consensus, with an unprecedented form of state capitalism combined with a calibrated political interventionism, where an authoritarian regime supports a liberal economy without abandoning the socialist ideal that proposes China as an emerging power with significant foreign exchange reserves, but with a political weight still relatively small compared to its economic potential.
Thanks to the availability of cheap labor, China has succeeded in replacing the Asian tigers, affecting the bargaining power of workers in developed countries and those still developing. The Chinese transitional work has learned from the experiences of others, avoiding the abrupt liberalization of Russia, and learning from Japan the management of foreign companies capable of transmitting large amounts know-how technology. However, this did not prevent anomalies, such as growth with relative development, wage tensions, ecological compromise, excessive liberalization and privatization, creation of special economic zones who have put young western-educated elites in contact with low-income disqualified labor. The picture that appears promises to be complex especially if it is observed from a historical and cultural perspective to which China has never abdicated, and which has transformed its foreign policy from introjective to eager to challenge the domination of the old powers, animated by a ( apparent) "peaceful rise" capable of creating consensus but claiming full territorial sovereignty and respect for the decisions taken, as in Tibet and Taiwan. Politics, economy and will of power then meet and try to temper themselves among the geopolitical actors of the BRICS, even if the crises that follow one another as in Brazil, the geostrategic developments in Ukraine and North Korea, the never dormant rivalries with India , put the bar at ever more dizzying heights.
North Korean nuclear experiments, carried out at the last summit held in China, put the hosts in serious political and diplomatic difficulty, never so displaced by the "whims" of an ally difficult to control but that, despite everything, "must" being able to continue to exist as a political subject, on pain of disrupting regional assets. Internal political initiative cannot disregard a geopolitical evaluation that leads to reconsider the official lines; growth and development cannot ignore two fundamental directions, namely the search for energy resources and the opening and achievement of receptive markets. China is developing cooperative processes at regional level with programs that involve the construction of railway networks as with the initiative Band and Way which intends to cover the south-eastern region with a transport system linked to its own. The privileged area state is Thailand, capable of allowing valid solutions for carrying out tasks related to energy security and project implementation Belt and Road Initiative, intended to wrap the globe with a system of commercial communications of interest to Eurasia, Africa and South America.Sea Silk Road"Thus becomes an ambitious project founded on the development of global maritime communications, and which has the intention of creating alternative" doors "to Suez, Panama and Malacca, with new parallel channels under Chinese control. There Belt and Road Initiative and its subsidiaries, "New Silk Road "and" 21st Century Silk Road", Give rise to the impression that China is close to defining the creation of the aforementioned transport system thanks to the convergence of regional interests, aimed at fighting the Islamic danger.
The opening of the land routes does not disregard the consideration of maritime boundaries. The Chinese will of maritime domination, presented as peaceful, is manifesting itself with a significant deployment of forces aimed at protecting national interests, and is reflecting a breaking behavior with respect to the doctrine of growth conducted by the previous leadership. The disputes, centered on the claim of island sovereignty, now extend above all to an area rich in natural resources which constitutes a strategic point of world trade; the opposition of the PRC with the other coastal states extends over almost 90 percent of the South China Sea, considering the area that develops according to the Nine Dash Line for hundreds of miles to the south and east of the southern province of Hainan, and which overlaps with the territorial waters of Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines where the Spratly archipelagos are located (notes for the creation of a great wall of sand, and for the illegal occupation of numerous coral reefs) and the Paracels, not relevant as landing places but as merchant transit points from the West. The construction of artificial islands on submerged rocks to create useful bases for the use of air forces, has led to frictions that could lead to "compensatory" US interventions aimed at supporting potentially threatened countries, and sometimes inducing them to enter into trade agreements with Russia , aimed at the joint exploitation of resources; to this must be added the Japanese Senkaku Islands which, despite trade, despite being under American protection, continue to be claimed by the PRC. Even the legislation established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has never produced a multilateral code of conduct suitable for the resolution of disputes, a fact that has led to constant tensions and bilateral crises marked by the asymmetry of the Dragon's political, military and economic power and which led to decisions of the International Arbitration Court often unfavorable to Chinese requests. The dispute over the control of the area brings out the logic of power among the states that claim their sovereignty in Asia-Pacific, and involves a race for naval armaments aimed at ensuring a significant degree of deterrence.
The economic attractiveness of the Far East has aroused international interest by determining a revaluation of the individual strategies, even if the financial factor manages to explain the rearmament promoted in the regional area only if placed in relation to the perception of China's power policy; case apart from the Philippines and the role played by President Duterte who, interrupting the exercises with the USA, is carrying out a new policy of rebalance. The Chinese maritime projection thus assumes connotations of geopolitical relevance: although starting from a regional area perspective, China turns towards the Pacific thanks to leadership that, over time, has led the Navy from an under-dimension brown one-dimensional coastal and defensive Blue oceanic projection. Already at the beginning of the 21st century, the Chinese state has established itself in the ports of the region weaving a "string of pearls" reinforced by strategic partnerships in the infrastructure sector.
La Weltpolitik Chinese naval, witnessed by the existence of a maritime Silk Road covered by Admiral Zheng He already in the 1400, was expertly exhumed by Xi Jinping through a dense logistic-economic-commercial network with a red line that, from the South China Sea to the Bay of Bengal, to the Indian Ocean, it reaches the Red Sea to Suez to enter the Mediterranean and reach Venice to join the Earth Silk Road, interpreting some of Mahan's theories on maritime strategy: the conquest of support points from which to control the routes.
In the same way as the US policy of Soviet containment during the Cold War, the Chinese strategy aimed to isolate India, its main competitor, securing navigation rights and protection of tankers of Middle Eastern origin to influence the partners economically and politically, but going to impact with the Indian strategy that, by regulating Chinese access to the Indian Ocean, has long been guaranteeing the defense of routes crossed by oil tankers. China is therefore providing for both Anti Access / Denial Area, designed to prevent access to common spaces in the event of conflict with increasing capacity for interdiction, both to an evolution of the sea control thanks to creation of a deep-sea fleet capable of projecting operations in depth as well as protecting the aircraft carriers.
Beijing, having narrowed its vision to its quadrant, is now turning towards the African coasts, and for this reason it has begun to move its Squad to the Gulf of Aden in an anti-piracy function, while it is preparing to launch the second aircraft carrier fully set up at its own national yards. The base acquired in Djibouti represents a further joint for a country qualified as the main trading partner of almost all African countries, for whose needs it has allocated funds for tens of billions of dollars. The vigilance and security of the obligatory passages (Bab el-Mandeb, Aden, Hormuz) are basic for a rising power: the waters of the Indian Ocean are affected by a huge import-export that Beijing makes from Africa and the Middle East. Beijing is not the only actress who intends to affirm a military presence: France has a contingent of the Foreign Legion; Japan has established a base for its Self-Defense Forces, and Saudi Arabia has expressed interest in building an arrangement in the Djibouti territory, strengthened by its common membership in the Arab League; another member of the League, the UAE, entered into an agreement to establish a base with neighboring Somaliland.
The base of Djibouti has been considered by India, as yet another pearl of the diadem and as a possible prelude to a more volitional foreign policy than the one adopted so far; even the Americans have shown real concerns, also due to the fact that, in Djibouti, they hold their only permanent military base in Africa, opened immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, lavishly financed by the Pentagon, and from which operations against targets start sensitive throughout the Middle East, especially against Yemenite jihadists and al-Shabaab militias in Somalia. Should the new US administration fail to strengthen its "resident power" policy, or even give up a containment work by curbing Chinese expansionism, the pivot to Asia of Obama and Clinton, a maritime rebalancing could occur that would allow China to play the role of global superpower, also in relation to the American protectionist policy that would allow further Chinese possibilities of expansion, supported by FFAA high tech. In this way, that element of essential linearity is being established to support the project of an alternative political and strategic balance to the Western one and which has led to 21th Century Maritime Silk Route Economic Belt, a "belt" for which funds have been allocated for tens of billions of dollars with the participation of 50 Countries that have formed theAsian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIb). If in the past few years, mathematical indicators based on economics, political guidelines and strategic intentions of international players have been available, the effective growth of Chinese naval potential would have been perceived not only from a quantitative point of view but also from a qualitative one. hypothesize, within the 2020, its supremacy in the Pacific area to the detriment of American maritime power. An American evaluation foresees a Chinese increase of approximately 350 new UU.NN, between aircraft carriers, fighters and boats partly already delivered to the Squad, which should be contrasted with a strengthened presence with no less than 70 ships and a number of combat units equal to at least the 60% of the Fleet.
Beyond the predictable differences of opinion based, on the one hand on financial cuts deemed too substantial, and on the other on the current numerical preponderance of aircraft carriers in the field, the fact remains that the strategy “centric missile"Would force American ships to keep away from Chinese seas; the qualitative improvement would concern in particular the weapon systems, surface-to-surface missiles and boats (even nuclear-powered) in a number equal to almost double those of the Americans, in addition to the “Cyber espionage"Asymmetric in character, based on hacker attacks on American computer systems linked to military programs; in this regard, speculatively, we report the rumors concerning the incidents recently occurred to US ships in the Pacific Ocean, which would like these events not the result of accidental errors but, given the dynamics, the outcome of actual hacker attacks by States that oppose the American presence in the Asian seas.
According to an old popular adage we can say that, even for us, China is really close with naval presence on the North African coast, and in Greece, with the privatization of Piraeus and the purchase of infrastructural assets. As it is no longer so premature to speak of Chinese neo-interventionism, it seems legitimate to affirm that the role of China has now changed and has overcome the pacifist rhetoric of non-interference. The Mediterranean, far from the strategic reference centers, could become a laboratory from which to give life to the new course of Chinese foreign policy, especially if correlated with the situation linked to the deterioration of Russia's relations with the West due to the Ukrainian affair and the Beijing's territorial claims against its fellow states in the South China Sea.
Although fears about the birth of a new Sino-Russian axis should not be underestimated, the reasons for the Chinese presence in the Mediterranean reflect the coexistence of economic interests and strategic considerations that are only partially functional to the realization of the former. In any case, it is the geoeconomics that determines the geopolitics of Chinese diplomacy. Both in the Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood and in that of Al-Sisi, Beijing has continued to invest in the energy, agricultural, communications and infrastructural upgrading of the country, particularly in the Suez area. The presence in Algeria is significant, interested in a strategic-global partnership agreement and where there are tens of thousands of workers engaged in the oil and infrastructure sectors. The very strong instability of the Mediterranean area, on which the Islamic threat in an anti-Western function weighs more than any other, and with respect to which Europeans show little capacity and / or willingness to intervene, is of great concern to Chinese diplomacy, which sees in threat both its strategic targets of the New Silk Road and the network of land and sea connections at an intercontinental level.
China makes the Royal Navy model its own: a force rooted in its region but capable of projecting itself outside its area. It was Sir Walter Raleigh himself who said that "Who dominates the sea, dominates the trade. Who dominates the world trade dominates the world resources and, consequently, dominates the whole world".
(photo: Xinhua News Agency / KCNA / Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China / Russian Fed. MoD)
