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If you think of it, the concept of “strategic opportunity window(战略机遇期)” was raised on the 16th CPC National Congress in late 2002, when Jiang Zemin stepped down as the General Secretary. The concept refers to “the first 2 decades of the current century”. https://twitter.com/zzggww5/status/1342343423144030208
That means, in late 2022, when the 20th CPC National Congress is expected to be held, the 2-decade-window will expire. It is widely expected that incumbent General Secretary, Xi Jinping, will take on his 3rd term.
Now the advantage of being a big power is that you can choose your own fate. To the outside world, China always has two options to choose from: 1) being nice; 2) being scary. I think it’s fair to conclude that in late 2002, on that Party Conference, China choose to be nice.
But the choice between these two options lies in rational assessment of future circumstances and the possible outcomes of our own choice. To simply put, for China, whether to choose being nice or being scary depends on how we assess the cost and gain partition will be.
In 2002, we chose to be nice for the next two decades at least, because we assessed back then the future gains of being nice would far outweigh the cost. Fast forward 20 years, that assessment might have changed now. It’s looking more and more likely that being scary should be
the new correct choice. Or at least, substantially increasing the portion of being scary in our overall policy principles is. The trade war with the US, the HK riots in 2019, and the external attitudes towards China throughout the 2020 pandemic all point to the necessity of this
new thinking. The recent heated rhetoric for military reunification of Taiwan reflects this change of thinking from the Chinese side. But I don’t think the final pivot of policies is happening yet. Because all matters is a process. I suspect, that pivot will happen in late 2022,
where Xi is expected to take over his 3rd term. The reason is China is still eager to see what direction the US will take during the first years of the Biden admin, not to decide whether to carry out the pivot, but to decide, after the pivot, in what way we should be scary.
