In an article for Foreign Policy, two experts in international politics explain that the greatest geopolitical disasters occur when ambition intersects with despair.
Hal Brands, professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, and Michael Beckley, associate professor of political science at Tufts University, say that China under Xi Jinping will soon be driven by ambition and desperation.
In their joint article in the magazine - which they quoted material from their new author entitled "Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China" - the two authors see that the reason for this despair is due to a slowing economy, and a growing sense of siege and decline.
Explaining those ambitions that Beijing is trying to achieve, the authors stress that it is difficult to realize how difficult it is for China to collapse without knowing the height of the position Beijing wants to reach.
The Chinese Communist Party is currently engaged in an "epic" project to reshape the rules of the world order in Asia and beyond, as Beijing does not wish to be a superpower among many superpowers, but rather the "superpower, or the geopolitical sun around which the system revolves."
This ambition is evident in the party's projects, from the naval shipbuilding program that outperforms its peers in the world, to its efforts to reshape the strategic geography of Eurasia.
China's grand strategy includes working towards goals close to its borders, such as strengthening the Communist Party's grip on power and restoring the parts that split when the country was weak.
It also includes more comprehensive goals such as establishing a regional sphere of influence and competing with American power on a global scale.
In their article, Brands and Beckley go on to argue that the Communist Party's agenda blends a sense of China's historical destiny with a focus on modern tools of power in the 21st century.
This feeling is rooted in the timeless geopolitical ambitions that motivate many of the great powers, and the insecurity of China's "authoritarian" regime.
Although China's drive to rearrange the world was prior to Xi's assumption of power, it has greatly accelerated in recent years.
4 goals
China's grand strategy is usually more evident in the opinion of elites than in its detailed, step-by-step plans for the future.
However, there is ample evidence that the Communist Party pursues a tailored, multi-level grand strategy with 4 main objectives:
First, according to Brands and Beckley, the Communist Party has the "eternal" ambition of any "tyrannical" regime, which is to maintain its iron grip on power.
Second, the party wants to unite China again by regaining the lands it lost in previous eras of domestic turmoil and foreign aggression.
Third, creating a regional sphere of influence in which China is paramount because external actors - especially the United States - are pushed to the margins.
As for the fourth goal of Beijing's strategy, it is to focus on being the global power, and then eventually ascend to the international lead.
The pursuit of regional and global power should bolster the Communist Party's power at home, which would give it legitimacy to fuel Chinese nationalism at a time when the regime is abandoning its original ideology of socialism, the article argues.
In this context, the Chinese grand strategy includes much more than a narrow defense of the state and its ruling system. Rather, its goals are closely linked to attempts to bring about a historic change in the regional and global rules of the road, the kind that occurs when one dominant power collapses and another emerges.
The role of the United States
Brands and Beckley caution, however, that Chinese policymakers cannot lose sight of the fact that the United States has a distinguished record of destroying its most dangerous global rivals, such as the German Empire, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, as well as a host of less dangerous rivals.
Officials in Beijing cannot forget that the United States is prepared to thwart all designs of the Communist Party.
The article notes that the United States stands on China's path to "greatness," and that the Communist Party will not be able to unite China again without restoring Taiwan, which Washington protects from Beijing's pressure through arms sales, diplomatic support and the tacit promise of military assistance.
The authors conclude that international powers at their height usually become aggressive when their wealth diminishes and their enemies encircle them.
The article concludes that China is on a path that often ends in tragedy, with a rapid rise followed by a danger of a sharp collapse.