Proving CHINA'S Moment

The Chinese leadership is currently meeting in Beijing to set economic and political goals for the next five years—a plenum at which, as usual, the outcomes are already agreed. On the agenda: a “Vision 2035” program that will likely cement a new focus on domestic consumption and technology, as well as an increased role for Chinese Communist Party leadership in the private economy. It may also cement Xi’s place as a president-for-life.

More conventionally, the plenum will also set the official five-year plan, a feature of communist governments since the days of the Soviet Union. The strongest influence of the five-year plan comes in the first and the last year of its implementation. In the first year, leaders try to show that they’re following the new line, by the second year things slip back to existing structures, and in the final year officials scramble to meet targets at the last minute. (The Soviets had a term for this: shturmovshchina, or “storming.”)

Growing ego. In the run-up to the plenum, speeches by President Xi Jinping and others have demonstrated a bold confidence, which this is China’s moment. As economic policymaker Liu He put it, “Bad things are turning into good ones.”

Despite the damage to China’s global reputation this year, its leaders seem to believe that Western economic weakness and mishandling of the coronavirus have created opportunities. That may be true, but it may also encourage overconfidence, as happened in 2009, when the Chinese leadership was convinced the economic crisis had significantly weakened Washington.

What will China do? That overconfidence is most frightening when it comes to Taiwan, where recent saber-rattling has again raised the specter of an invasion. Distinguishing signal from noise on Taiwan is difficult, but the traditional restraints on Chinese military action—fear of U.S. intervention, reputational damage, and corruption inside the People’s Liberation Army—have weakened.

The odds of Chinese action in Taiwan increase if the U.S. election doesn’t produce a clear result, or if a lame duck President Donald Trump embarks on a scorched-earth program on his way out—since Beijing may be convinced that a distracted Washington has no will to block it.