Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
The People’s Republic of China’s foreign policy under President Xi Jinping’s tyrannical reign cannot be understood adequately as either ordinary great-power competition or a simple continuation of Mao’s Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics. In reality, it is the fusion of four uniquely Chinese traditions: Confucian hierarchy and moral paternalism, legalist centralization and coercion, the imperial conception of China as the civilizational center of the world, and the Chinese Communist Party’s monopolistic organization combined with Chinese chauvinism and strategic realism. In this complex pot-pourri of Chinese political mentality, Confucianism supplies much of the vocabulary and political psychology, Legalism supplies the instruments of tyrannical control, the so-called “Century Of Humiliation” supplies the emotional Chauvinism, Maoist Marxism-Leninism supplies the one-party-state, and the People’s Republic of China’s material power supplies the opportunity. The ultimate chauvinistic objective is to conquer the world, but the more realistic strategic goal is to construct an international order, in which states remain formally sovereign, but increasingly accommodate themselves to the People’s Republic of China’s indisputably superior position. In short, Beijing officially advocates equality among states, while always practicing hierarchy among relationships.
Confucius’s philosophy is hierarchical and not democratic. He did not conceive society as an association of autonomous and politically equal individuals. He understood it as an interconnected system of relationships, each containing reciprocal, but unequal responsibilities: ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger, and teacher and pupil. The superior party in every relationship is obliged to behave benevolent and the subordinate owes respect as well as obedience in return. Authority is justified by moral conduct rather than popular consent. This distinction is absolutely critical. Confucianism is not merely authoritarianism. The ruler could lose moral legitimacy by becoming cruel, corrupt, or incompetent. Yet, the remedy is not a competitive election, constitutional limitation, or individual resistance. It is the restoration of virtuous government – generally under another supposedly virtuous ruler. In this political construct, three concepts are especially relevant. First, Li, which is proper conduct and observance of one’s appropriate place. Political peace exists when everyone behaves according to his or her proposed status. Second, Ren, benevolence or human conduct. The ruler is expected to act as a moral father, not merely as a coercive master. Third, the “rectification of names” requires that reality conform to properly defined roles. A ruler must behave as a ruler, a minister as a minister, and a subject as a subject. Applied internationally, this produces an order that is harmonious, but not equal. Smaller states may be respected, protected, and permitted considerable autonomy, but they are expected to recognize the superior status and essential interests of the most powerful state. That is the Confucian bargain. Deference from below in exchange for benevolence from above.
Guided by this internal Chinese political thought, the Emperor was not only the ruler of a territorially bounded state. He was the “Son of Heaven,” standing at the center of Tianxia – “All Under Heaven.” Accordingly, the Universe was understood concentrically. The tributary system reflected this outlook. Imperial China occupied the center and others adjusted their conducts accordingly. Yet, Confucius’s hierarchical moralism did not always comply with reality. Legalists such as Han Feizi distrusted moral persuasion. President Xi Jinping’s People’s Republic rejects pure moralism and emphasizes centralized authority, strict law and punishment regime, administrative surveillance, manipulation of reward and penalties, secrecy and strategic deception, and the ruler’s control over officials and institutions. The result might be called Confucian-Marxist-Leninist-Chinese paternalism with legalist enforcement.
And herein lies the disingenuous malevolence of the People’s Republic of China’s foreign policy under President Xi Jinping. It constantly invokes “sovereignty,” “noninterference’” and the formal equality of states. These principles are useful defenses against Western criticism of Beijing’s domestic government. Yet, Beijing’s practical diplomacy is highly relational. Countries are treated according to their political importance, economic usefulness, geographical proximity, and willingness to respect Chinese preferences. Beijing, therefore, accepts juridical equality, while seeking political gradation. A small country may retain its flag, government, and vote at the United Nations, yet become dependent on Chinese markets, investment, infrastructure, technology, or diplomatic protection. Beijing does not need to abolish the state’s independence. It merely needs those governments to respect Beijing’s interests. The real example of such a materialized hierarchy is the “Belt and Road” initiative. It is simultaneously an infrastructure program, an export mechanism for Chinese industrial capacity, an instrument of political access, a system of strategic connectivity, and a narrative of Chinese benevolent leadership. Also called the “Debt Trap,” the recipient countries are expected not to challenge the benefactor’s fundamental interests.
In this light, Beijing’s position on Taiwan is simply the rectification of historical order. There can be only one China. Taiwan must return to the political center. This resembles the Confucian rectification of names: political reality must be forced into conformity with the authoritative definition of the relationship. Yet, Taiwan also exposes the limits of the Confucian explanation. Beijing’s policy is driven by chauvinism, Communist legitimacy, military strategy, and the unfinished Chinese Civil War – not merely ancient philosophy. Equally, the South China Sea conundrum. Beijing always presents itself as Asia’s natural stabilizer. Yet, its maritime claims, artificial islands, coastguard operations and pressure against neighboring claimants indicate that Beijing expects smaller countries to accommodate Chinese power. Here the Confucian dictum of benevolent hierarchy encounters a fundamental paradox: who determines whether the superior is behaving benevolently?
In Beijing’s preferred order, the People’s Republic of China is always entitled to judge its own conduct. In a rule-based order, independent treaties, tribunals, and institutions provide universal standards. Beijing accepts international law when it reinforces sovereignty, but resists adjudication when it constraints claims regarded as historically, or politically essential.
The same uniquely Chinese perspective applies to the Russian Federation. Publicly, Beijing treats President Putin’s Russia as a major strategic partner. Yet, the Kremlin’s growing economic and technological dependence increasingly favors Beijing. President Xi Jinping need not humiliate the Kremlin, or demand formal subordination. Confucian-style hierarchy works more effectively when ceremonial respect conceals material inequality. Russia receives diplomatic support, markets, and strategic reassurance. Beijing gains energy, geopolitical leverage, and a partner against American power. The relationship is not a formal alliance, but its structure is moving steadily toward the People’s Republic of China as the stronger elder partner, and the Russian Federation as the increasingly dependent one.
Beijing’s diplomacy in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific appeals to resentment of colonialism as well as conditionality. Here, Beijing portrays itself as a responsible major power assisting developing countries, while respecting their chosen political systems. President Xi Jinping’s preferred slogan, a “community with a shared future for mankind,” is perhaps the clearest modern adaptation of Tianxia. Yet, the crucial ambiguity is whether this “community” would be governed by genuinely equal rules, or by an implicit hierarchy, in which Beijing defines harmony, and labels resistance “confrontation.” Viewed from this perspective, Beijing regards BRICS as much more than an economic association. For President Xi Jinping, it is an instrument for gradually transferring political, economic, and normative influence from the Western-led international system to a more China-centered order.
This policy also rests on a distinctive mixture of Marxism-Leninism, Chinese chauvinism, anti-imperialism, Confucian political hierarchy, and pragmatic economic statecraft. These elements do not always fit together logically, but they converge on a single overwhelming objective – the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and the “restoration of China as one of the principal organizing powers of the international system. BRICS, therefore, provides Beijing with a peaceful mechanism for changing what Soviet strategists called the “correlation of forces.” Beijing need not destroy the Western system directly. It can progressively reduce Western leverage by creating parallel institutions, payment systems, development banks, supply chains, technological standards, and diplomatic coalitions. This is a Leninist strategy without Leninist revolutionary language. The second ideological root is Mao Zedong’s concept of “united front.” Mao understood that the Chinese Communist Party could cooperate temporarily with groups that did not share its ultimate objective, provided they oppose a common adversary. BRICS functions internationally in much the same way. Its members are profoundly different. India is a democracy and a strategic competitor of the People’s Republic of China. Brazil does not want Chinese domination. The Russian federation wants recognition as an independent great power. The Islamic Republic of Iran is revolutionary and anti-American, while the United Arab Emirates maintains close Western security relationships. South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia have their own regional ambitions. What unites them is not a common ideology, but dissatisfaction with aspects of Western power. The weakness of this Chinese strategy is equally Maoist. Members of the “united front” cooperate as long as their interests overlap. India will never accept Chinese supremacy. Brazil will always prefer reformed multilateralism to an anti-Western block. The Gulf states want strategic flexibility, not permanent subordination to Beijing.
There is one more central contradiction of Beijing’s BRICS strategy. Beijing presents BRICS as a movement for sovereign equality, democratized international relations, and liberation from hierarchy. Yet, Beijing’s own ideological tradition and material interests point toward a different outcome: a new hierarchy with the People’s Republic of China in its center. The question is, therefore, not whether BRICS will abolish power politics. It will not. The real question is whose power will shape the rules in the long run. BRICS is, therefore, designed by Beijing as an incubator of post-Western Chinese-organized centrality. The difference between those two concepts is the key to understanding Beijing’s entire BRICS strategy.
Beijing’s foreign policy contains a central contradiction inherited from Confucian hierarchy itself. Confucianism holds that authority is legitimate when exercised virtuously. Yet, international politics contains no universally accepted procedure for determining “virtue.” Consequently, “harmony” can acquire two meanings: genuine accommodation of competing interests, or the absence of visible resistance to Beijing. Likewise “mutual respect” can mean either reciprocal recognition, or recognition of Beijing’s special sensitivities without equivalent Chinese restraint.
Beijing does not seek merely to resurrect the ancient tributary system. Nor is President Xi Jinping mechanically implementing Confucius. Modern China is a nuclear-armed industrial power governed by a single party with convoluted ideologies that is competing within a Westphalian international system. Nevertheless, the Confucian inheritance matters profoundly. It shapes Beijing’s assumption that order is relational, that hierarchy can coexist with benevolence, that duties differ according to status, and that harmony is preferable to adversarial pluralism. Clearly, Beijing seeks a formally multilateral, but substantively hierarchical international order – one, in which states remain sovereign, yet increasingly defer to Beijing on questions the ruler defines as essential. This worldview is not the restoration of the old Chinese empire, but it is unmistakably the modern reconstruction of a tyrannical Sinocentric order.
Personally, President Xi Jinping does strive to establish personal relationships with foreign leaders, but those relationships are always subordinate to – and instruments of – Chinese state policy. He is neither personally indifferent nor naturally sociable in the diplomatic sense. He practices highly calculated leader-to-leader diplomacy because he believes that relations among powerful states can sometimes be managed more effectively through direct understandings among dominant leaders. His basic principle might be summarized as follows: Personal trust is useful when it advances the People’s Republic of China’s strategic interests, but no personal friendship takes precedence over the Communist Party’s objectives. The balance differs considerably among President Trump, Prime Minister Modi, and leaders of smaller states.
President Xi’s highly centralized domestic rule has affected his foreign relations. Because he personally controls the most important Chinese decisions, he tends to assume that other leaders, especially strong presidents and prime ministers, exercise comparable authority. He is, therefore, naturally drawn toward direct dealings with powerful national leaders. Such personal diplomacy serves several purposes. First, it can bypass hostile or suspicious bureaucracies. Second, it allows broad political understandings to be reached before officials negotiate details. Third, it flatters foreign leaders by treating them as historic statesmen. Fourth, it creates reluctance in the other leaders to take actions that might “betray” the relationship. Fifth, it allows President Xi to present the People’s Republic of China as respectful of national sovereignty and different political systems. Sixth, it enables Beijing to distinguish between an opposing government’s leader and allegedly “anti-Chinese forces” within that leader’s administration. This last method is especially important with American presidents. Beijing may imply that President Trump and President Xi understand each other, while attributing confrontational policies to Congress, the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, “bad” advisers, or “Cold War elements.” President Xi’s personal diplomacy is, therefore, partly relationship-building and partly political triangulation.
President Xi’s relationship with President Trump is probably the clearest example of a personal relationship being used to manage an essentially adversarial strategic relationship. The two men have important differences in temperament too. President Trump is spontaneous, public, personal, and transactional. President Xi is controlled, secretive, methodical, and institutionally strategic. President Trump emphasizes deals and visible options. President Xi emphasizes trajectories, long-term power, and the preservation of the People’s Republic of China’s freedom of action. He also understands President Trump’s psychology unusually well. He recognizes President Trump’s appreciation of ceremony, grandeur, and the appearance of concluding agreements that lesser politicians could not achieve. President Xi, therefore, employs several methods. Beijing has historically given President Trump elaborate receptions and emphasized his status as the indispensable American decisionmaker. This appeals to President Trump’s preference for personal summitry. President Xi also seeks to maintain a line through which major disputes can be elevated above ordinary bureaucratic negotiations. This is useful because President Trump frequently believes that he can solve difficult international problems through direct conversations between leaders. Even when condemning tariffs, technology restrictions, arms sales to Taiwan, or American alliances, Chinese messaging can preserve the possibility that President Trump and President Xi personally remain capable of reaching an understanding. President Xi is always prepared to offer purchases, market openings, counternarcotics cooperation, investment possibilities, or diplomatic assistance when these can secure concessions on tariffs, technology controls,Taiwan, or other strategic questions. The recently renewed summit diplomacy in 2026 illustrates this pattern. President Xi’s September 23-25 state visit to the United States of America was presented as a means of managing disagreements and stabilizing the relationship, following reciprocal high-level engagement in the year.
Yet, President Xi’s personal relationship with President Trump has strict limits. It did not prevent the first trade war, American technological restrictions, intensified strategic competition, or disputes over the Democratic Republic of China, also known as Taiwan. Nor would President Xi sacrifice the People’s Republic of China’s principal objectives merely to preserve President Trump’s goodwill. For President Xi, his relationship with President Trump can be best described as personally managed strategic competition. He believes President Trump may be more negotiable than the national security establishment, but he does not mistake President Trump for a dependable friend. Indeed, President Xi probably regards President Trump simultaneously as a formidable negotiator, a potentially useful bilateral partner, an unpredictable risk, a source of tension within the Western alliance system, and a leader with whom personal engagement may produce concessions unavailable through conventional diplomacy.
The relationship between President Xi and President Putin is the closest, but not an alliance of sentiment. Their relationship appears to contain genuine personal respect, repeated familiarity, and a considerable degree of political identification. Both see themselves as restorers of historically great civilizations injured or constrained by the Western-led order. They share opposition to American strategic predominance, hostility toward Western democracy-promotion, suspicion of “color revolutions,” insistence upon state sovereignty, except where their own territorial claims are concerned, control over media and civil society, resentment of Western sanctions, a desire to weaken Western alliance cohesion, and a belief that liberalism is politically as well as culturally is exhausted.
There is probably more genuine affinity here than in President Xi’s relationship with any other major leader. President Putin treats President Xi as the leader of an indispensable great power. President Xi treats President Putin as an experienced strategic partner whose survival helps prevent the People’s Republic of China’s geopolitical isolation. Yet, even here, policy remains supreme. President Xi has not turned his country into Russia’s unconditional ally. Beijing has generally avoided assuming direct responsibility for President Putin’s wars. It has protected Chinese economic interests, watched carefully for secondary-sanctions risks, and taken advantage of Russia’s growing dependence upon Chinese trade, technology, finance, and diplomatic support. The relationship has therefore become structurally unequal. President Putin may value President Xi personally, but Moscow increasingly needs Beijing more than the latter needs the former.
President Xi does not want President Putin defeated, or his regime overthrown because such an outcome could remove Beijing’s most important strategic partner, strengthen the United States of America, NATO, produce instability along the People’s Republic of China’s northern frontier, or generate a more Western-oriented government in Moscow. Yet, neither does President Xi desire a Russia so powerful and independent that it could challenge Chinese influence in Central Asia, or resist becoming Beijing’s subordinate partner. Thus, President Xi’s friendship with President Putin is real, but it is a real friendship resting upon convergent authoritarian and geopolitical interests. If those interests were diverged decisively, President Xi would choose his country over President Putin without hesitation.
President Xi has made serious efforts to build a personal relationship with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Their informal summits at Wuhan in 2018 and Mamallapuram in 2019 were deliberately designed to create a civilizational and leader-to-leader connection outside the constraints of ordinary diplomacy. The optics were carefully chosen: two ancient civilizations represented by two strong leaders discussing history, culture, development, and the future international order. President Xi saw several potential advantages: preventing India from becoming firmly aligned with the United States of America, weakening the Quad, reserving Chinese access to the Indian market, reducing tensions along the disputed borders in the north,encouraging Indian support for a more “multipolar” world, and positioning the People’s Republic of China and India as joint representatives of the developing world.
Yet, the experiment has exposed the limits of leader-to-leader relations. Chinese and Indian troops clashed violently in the Galwan Valley in 2020. The confrontation destroyed much of the trust created by the informal summits. India subsequently tightened security of Chinese investment, restricted Chinese applications, strengthened strategic cooperation with the United States of America, Japan, and Australia, and accelerated military preparations along the northern frontier. The important point is not simply that the personal relationship failed. It is that President Xi did not subordinate Beijing’s territorial and military policies to preserve it. This, in turn, suggests eitherPresident Xi approved the coercive pressure despite the risk to relations with Modi, the Chinese military acted within general directives that prioritized tactical advantage, or President Xi’s centralized system failed to reconcile military actions with his diplomatic objectives. Whichever explanation is correct, the result is the same. Strategic priorities prevailed over personal rapport.
Yet, President Xi treats Prime Minister Modi respectfully and continues to use civilizational language, BRICS cooperation, and Global South solidarity, while the relationship is now guarded, and instrumental. Neither leader appears to believe that personal warmth can resolve the underlying border dispute, or their competition for Asian influence.
With leaders of less powerful countries, personal diplomacy has another function: creating durable elite relationships that may outlast particular agreements. Therefore, President Xi offers those leaders highly visible access to himself, infrastructure finance, investment and trade, inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative, diplomatic support, protection against Western criticism, and the prestige of being treated as an important international statesman. This can be especially effective with leaders who feel ignored, criticized, or patronized by Western governments. President Xi does not publicly lecture them about democracy, or human rights. Instead, he emphasizes sovereignty, mutual respect, noninterference, and development. Yet, this apparent personal respect is embedded in a highly asymmetrical relationship. Beijing expects reciprocal support on matters it designates as “core Chinese interests,” including: the Democratic Republic of China (Taiwan), Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, Chinese positions in international organizations, and resistance to Western investigations, sanctions.
President Xi appears emotionally reserved and institutionally cautious. His experience during the Cultural Revolution, his long rise through the Party, and his years of internal political struggle taught him that apparent friendships are unstable, and that loyalty must be tested continuously. Generally, he appears more comfortable dealing with leaders who possess strong domestic authority, can make and enforce decisions by themselves, emphasize sovereignty and nationalism, resist external criticism, and conduct foreign policy for the executive center. This does not mean that President Xi admires every tyrant. Rather, he finds centralized interlocutors more predictable and useful. A strong leader can potentially deliver an agreement. A democratic government constrained by parliament, courts, elections, coalition partners, media, and public opinion may make promises that cannot be guaranteed. His diplomacy, therefore, contains an inherent bias toward personalist government. This mirrors his domestic belief that centralized political authority produces coherence and strength.
Yet, this approach also creates serious analytical errors. President Xi may overestimate how much a democratic president controls. A warm relationship with an American president cannot bind Congress, the courts, future administrations, private companies, or allied governments. Similarly, a favorable European prime minister cannot always redirect the policy of the European Union. The best example is the former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. A deeply corrupt and immoral scoundrel, Viktor Orban was a highly compromised leader of a country that possesses full membership in NATO as well as in the European Union. For sixteen years, he was the blindly obedient Chinese tool in President Xi’s hands. Yet, Viktor Orban and his FIDESZ Party lost the April 12, 2026, national elections decisively to the Peter Magyar-led TISZA Party. As a consequence, President Xi had to learn again that personal relationships are ephemeral. Personal diplomacy, therefore, should not be an alternative to President Xi’s China-centered strategy.