China's Xi proves keen student of U.S. power

Xi Jinping is China's first U.S.-style president.

Many commentators have noted Xi is the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping and even Mao Zedong. But a better comparison might be with the style and powers of the American president.

He wields enormous personal power, in contrast to the more collective leadership style of Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, has assumed an unprecedented profile abroad as the country's chief diplomat and has been heavily promoted at home as the responsible face of the party and the government.

Xi is regularly portrayed in the domestic media carrying out ceremonial functions, inspecting military parades, welcoming foreign dignitaries, and demanding explanations from lower level officials in the event of disasters and political controversies such as the stampede in Shanghai at New Year, all the sorts of things that a U.S. president does.

Xi's image-makers show the same obsession with controlling perceptions of the leader as the West Wing staff of President Barack Obama, presenting him as a strong, dynamic, well-informed and singular leader who takes responsibility for all decisions carried out by the party and the government in his name.

"He is the first leader to employ a big team to build his public profile. But he also has a flare for it - thanks to his stature, his toughness and his common touch," the Economist magazine noted last year ("Xi who must be obeyed" Sept. 20, 2014).

Xi has also cultivated a distinctly presidential approach abroad. In 2014, Xi and Premier Li Keqiang - the number two in the Chinese hierarchy who combines the functions of vice-president, secretary of state and secretary of the treasury - spent a total of 85 days on high-profile visits to 30 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Oceania.

Xinhua, the official news agency, likened this flurry of top-level summits and meetings to a "Chinese whirlwind" ("China's active diplomatic posture wins global applause" Dec. 28, 2014).

Putting top leaders on the international diplomatic circuit so much is no accident. "The year 2014 is a bumper harvest for China's diplomacy," Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced proudly to a year-end reception of foreign diplomats in Beijing.

"Aiming to build a global network of partnerships, we have established partnerships of different types with 64 countries and five regional organisations," Wang told his hearers ("Toast by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at New Year Reception for 2015" Dec. 11, 2014).

The foreign minister promised that in 2015 China will continue to "actively practice a distinctive diplomatic approach befitting China's role as a major country to provide strong support for realising the Chinese dream of national renewal and make a new contribution to peace and development of the world."

It has often been remarked that the United States' global network of alliances (military, diplomatic and economic) is its biggest asset as a superpower. Now China is determined to build its own diplomatic network befitting its role as what officials prefer to call a "major country" but which means a superpower.

For the United States, presidential diplomacy has always played a crucial role in nurturing relationships and building influence abroad.

Foreign leaders get carefully graduated visits from military commanders, top diplomats, cabinet secretaries, the vice-president and even the president himself to cement ties, as well as carefully controlled invitations to visit the State Department, the White House and even the Oval Office itself.

China is developing a similar system. The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has started to send warships on port calls around the world.

In 2014, the PLAN paid its first port call to Bandar Abbas in Iran, the first time its warships have entered the Middle East Gulf. In 2015, the PLAN will conduct joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean with Russia's navy.

On the diplomatic side, lesser partners get a visit from the foreign minister. More important ones get a visit from Premier Li. And the most important ones get the full treatment with a personal visit from the Chinese president.

Choreography is vitally important and the trips are stage-managed with growing care, harnessing the full resources of China's diplomatic service, domestic and foreign media to convey carefully controlled messages about China's aims and the importance of particular countries.

China's leaders have developed their own foreign policy doctrines around the country's "peaceful rise", the "Chinese dream" and the "Belt and the Road" to promote a vision of peaceful economic development with China at the center - much as the United States earlier developed diplomatic doctrines around free trade, global finance and individual freedom.

White House incumbents like to have a doctrine named after them to summarise their posture and strategy in foreign affairs. Xi has developed something similar with his "Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road" ("China's initiatives on building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road," Xinhua, undated).

Just as the United States has used free trade agreements, military assistance, aid and lending by policy banks to reward allies and deepen diplomatic relationships, China's leaders have been busy doling out trade deals as well as billions of dollars of loans and investments to selected strategic partners in the hope of winning greater influence and support.

President Xi and China's diplomatic corps seem to be consciously copying the American model of international relations, adapted to meet their own strategic priorities and resources, seeking to put China at the heart of a web of diplomatic, economic and military influence equal but different to the United States.

XI WHO MUST BE OBEYED

At home, too, China's top leader appears to have learned important lessons from the United States about the importance of very visible and singular presidential leadership.

Xi has become adept at using the presidential bully pulpit to advocate a clear policy direction and agenda in a manner that would be instantly recognisable to U.S. presidents from Theodore Roosevelt (who coined the phrase) to Ronald Reagan.

Even the anti-corruption campaign and the president's repeated focus on strengthening the rule of law are clearly designed to centralise political and administrative control as well as remove rivals and rebuild the party's legitimacy.

Reducing corruption and strengthening the rule of law are not about making the political system more participative, let alone democratic. They are primarily focused on making the party-government system more effective, efficient and stable.

In many instances during the Hu and Jiang years state enterprises, provinces and local administrations ignored directives from the top leadership with impunity. Extensive corruption, intra-party factions and weak legal controls meant that the entire party-state system was becoming increasingly unresponsive.

If President Obama issues an executive order from the White House there is a fair chance it will be carried out by the federal bureaucracy. But under the collective leadership of Hu and Jiang it was increasingly unclear whether commands from top leaders would be obeyed. The party-state system was decaying from within.

Xi's campaigns for more discipline, rule of law, and against factionalism are a blunt reminder to lesser officials that there are serious consequences for failing to obey instructions from above. As in foreign policy, China's internal reforms are meant to equip it with the economic, political and military decision-making structure necessary for a modern economic and diplomatic superpower.

The priority is not transitioning to democracy but making the existing system work effectively, enabling it to deal with the challenges of running one of the world's largest economies and countries, as well as what the foreign minister described as increasingly close interactions with the international community.

© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015.