CNP Part III: Growing CNP Drove Foreign Policy Shift
Executive Summary:
- Beijing’s pursuit of a more assertive foreign policy in the 2010s followed official assessments that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had risen to become the second-ranked country globally in terms of comprehensive national power (CNP). This led to expectations that the PRC should be more active in shaping the international environment.
- Chinese assessments of a narrowing gap between U.S. and Chinese CNP start with the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some Chinese scholars have characterized the U.S. as beginning a “sustained decline” around 2005.
- Changed behavior preceded Xi Jinping’s rise to become Party General Secretary. Examples include trade restrictions to regional partners starting with cutting off rare earth metal exports to Japan in 2010, and the persistent presence of PRC vessels around Scarborough Shoal and the Senkaku Islands following incidents in the South China Sea—likely informed by Chinese assessments of the comparative balance of power.
- Frustration emerged across 2017–2020 as Beijing appeared to conclude that its accrual of CNP had not automatically bestowed upon it global recognition of a new leadership role. This was triggered in part by U.S. rejection of Xi’s framing of a “new type of great power relations” as the basis for the bilateral U.S.-China relationship.
- Beijing has responded by working to build “discourse power” commensurate with its international position. This involves undermining strategic rivals via public opinion warfare, finding common ground with willing partners, and deepening cooperation with those who have overlapping interests with the PRC.
Editor’s note: This is the third article in a four-part series. The first and second articles can be read here and here.
The Communiqué from the fourth plenary session of the 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central committee described the 14th Five-Year Plan period as a time in which the country’s “economic strength, science and technology strength, and comprehensive national power leaped to a new stage” (经济实力、科技实力、综合国力跃上新台阶) (Xinhua, October 23, 2025). The phrase “comprehensive national power” (CNP; 综合国力) appears once more in the document, where it is collocated with “international influence” (国际影响力)—echoing a formulation that appeared in Xi’s report to the 20th Party Congress in 2022, and has appeared frequently ever since (People’s Daily, November 8, 2022).
In conceptions of CNP within the People’s Republic of China (PRC), what matters is not just the measurement of one’s own national power, but where one sits relative to other countries within the international system. This is important, Chinese experts have argued, for informing policy decisions: Policies that the PRC pursues should differ depending on its CNP relative to that of other countries. The Party has therefore emphasized using measurements of comparative CNP to shape its understanding of the international system and shifts in the balance of power. Analyzing PRC foreign policy through the lens of official views of the country’s relative CNP provides a structural explanation of significant policy shifts in the 2010s, rather than ascribing policy changes to a more assertive and self-assured leader—Xi Jinping. Xi may be bolder than his predecessors. But changes based on scientific measures of the international system, domestic conditions in the PRC, and comparative CNP provide another plausible rationale for shifting Chinese behavior. These suggest that PRC foreign policy would have changed significantly in this timeframe, with or without Xi. This analysis provides additional evidence that changing assessments within the system on the direction the PRC should take predated Xi’s rise.
PRC Rises to Number Two
Beijing’s pursuit of a more assertive foreign policy in the 2010s followed official assessments that the PRC had risen to become the second-ranked country globally in terms of CNP.
This shift started with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. The 2003 invasion of Iraq further fueled assessments of shifting power dynamics. Chinese analysts viewed it as evidence of the decline of U.S. power due to the erosion of European alliances and the rise of social unrest in the United States as people came out in protest of the invasion. According to theorists of CNP, these factors—robust alliances and social stability—are important indicators of CNP that fall under the broader metric of political strength (China Brief, September 5, 2025).
By 2005, according to Hu Angang (胡鞍钢), an influential Chinese scholar, the United States had entered a period of “sustained decline” (持续下降型) while the PRC (along with several other countries) were experiencing a period of “sustained rising” (持续崛起) (Guancha, April 5, 2017). Over the following years, a raft of evidence across broad PRC-identified indicators of CNP measurement seemed to reinforce this claim. In 2008, the Olympic Games showcased the PRC’s soft power strength and political strength, while its economic strength was manifest as it became the top trade partner of more than half of the countries in the world and, by the end of 2009, surpassed Germany as the world’s top exporting country (General Administration of Sports of China, November 6, 2006; The Associated Press, January 10, 2010; Lowy Institute, accessed March 15, 2024). The fallout from the global financial crash accelerated the shift. Implicitly acknowledging these developments, General Secretary Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) noted in a 2009 speech that peace and development were still the main themes of the era, but that “[CNP] competition is becoming increasingly fierce” (但综合国力竞争日趋激烈) (FMPRC, July 20, 2009).
At around this time, Chinese observers and policymakers began to assess that the PRC’s CNP was second only to that of the United States. Hu Angang argued that 2008 was the year it had reached that status (China Education Daily, March 3, 2013), though the 2010 and 2011 volumes of China Study (中国情报), an annual journal published by Tsinghua University the Hu edited, both ranked the PRC as the number two power starting even earlier, in 2005 (China Study, 2010, 2011). Other experts, such as Men Honghua (门洪华), wrote in 2016 that the PRC had “reached number two status” (居世界第二位) in terms of CNP in the second decade of the 21st century (Men, 2016). [1]
One of the most significant changes at the time was the PRC’s surpassing of Japan to become the world’s second largest economy (The New York Times, August 15, 2010). Beijing understood this as a milestone in its economic strength, a key component of CNP. At the time, bilateral relations were worsening (China Brief, September 10, 2010, September 21, 2012). The 2012 “Yellow Book” on international politics and security, published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, attributed these growing complications to a “reversal of [CNP]” (综合国力发生逆转), and argued, in deterministic fashion, that prospects for improving Sino–Japanese relations consequently were not strong (Li and Zhang, December 2012). [2] This assessment is consistent with Xi’s framing of the importance of the Innovation-Driven Development Strategy—one of seven national development strategies enshrined in the Party Charter—which is based on an understanding that, as the PRC grew stronger, the West, and the United States in particular, would eventually cut it off from access to Western technology (Xinhua, February 28, 2016; Party Members Net, October 22, 2022; China Brief, September 26, 2025).
New Assessment; New Approach
The PRC’s rise to number two in the world in terms of CNP called for a shift in its approach to the international system. The CNP scholar Huang Shuofeng (黄朔风) lists contributions to international competition as a variable under the category of foreign policy power that is used to calculate CNP (China Brief, September 5, 2025). The changes that experts often suggested were for a more assertive and proactive foreign policy. Yan, writing in 2014, explained that “profound changes” (深刻变化) in the international landscape required the PRC to engage in “major power diplomacy” (大国外交). In the ensuing decade, he wrote, “the gap in [CNP] between China and the United States will narrow, but the gap in [CNP] between the two countries and other countries will also widen” (在中美综合国力将缩小的同时，两国还将拉大与其他大国的综合实力差距). The balance of power between the PRC and other countries, therefore, “is no longer ‘weak versus strong’ but ‘big versus small’” (不再是“弱对强”而是“大对小”), and so the PRC’s diplomacy should change accordingly (Tsinghua Institute of International Relations, June 5, 2014). This reflected earlier remarks made by then-foreign minister Yang Jiechi (杨洁篪) at the 2010 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum that “China is a big country, and other countries are small countries, and that is just a fact” (中国是一个大国，其他国家是小国，而这就是事实) (Reform Data, November 6, 2012).
Yang’s statement at ASEAN sparked debate as to whether China was abandoning its earlier “hide and bide” (韬光养晦) approach to foreign policy. Yan Xuetong alluded to this in a 2015 book in which he said that, in the coming decade, it would not be possible to conceal or avoid the PRC’s status as a major power and so its diplomacy had to change. Yan went on to explain that “not taking the lead” (不当头) in international affairs made sense in the 1990s when the PRC was comparatively far weaker than the United States, but that as the CNP gap between the two had shrunk significantly, the PRC had to “have the courage to participate in the game of great powers” (勇于参加大国博弈) (Yan, 2015). [3] This validated political scientist Rush Doshi’s analysis of the shift in leadership assessments in 2009–2010 away from “hide and bide” and toward a “new assertiveness” (Doshi, 2021). [4]
Figure 1: Hu Angang’s Rankings of U.S. and PRC Comparative CNP
These data were published on the State Council Webportal in 2015 and remained available as of 2024. The same data are tabulated in an article by Hu published in the Economic Herald (经济导刊) in 2016. (Source: Economic Herald)
Changed PRC behavior is exemplified by CCP reactions to the Scarborough Shoal incident in 2012 and the 2010 and 2012 Senkakus incidents, which included persistent presence of PRC vessels (See USNI News, October 16, 2012; AMTI, May 22, 2017). In 2010, the PRC cut off rare earth metal exports to Japan (the PRC then accounted for around 80 percent of Japanese rare earth imports) and imposed an embargo on Philippine fruit exports to the PRC in 2012. Both actions were demonstrations of the PRC seeking to translate elements of CNP, in this case economic strength, into power to effect change internationally. The writer Meng Lingwei (孟令伟) wrote in 2012 that “if a country with the second largest [CNP] in the world cannot or dare not defend its sovereignty, what is the point of development?” (如果一个综合国力居于世界第二的国家不能或不敢捍卫自己的主权，那发展还有什么意义?) (Aisixiang, May 30, 2012). Just a year after the Senkakus dispute, the PRC began construction on artificial islands in the Spratly islands, eventually building close to 3,000 acres that are now home to military bases.
Once Xi came to power, it became even clearer that Beijing was seeking a role in the international system that was commensurate with its relative power. In 2013, Xi said the PRC would provide development aid “as China’s economic strength and [CNP] continue to improve” (随着中国经济实力和综合国力不断提高) (FMPRC, March 25, 2013). In 2014, he explained that the country’s rising CNP would increase its “ability and willingness to provide more public goods to the Asia–Pacific region and the world” (Xinhua, November 9, 2014). These statements were followed by substantial policy responses, in the form of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, launched in 2013, and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), launched in 2016. These are both part of a program designed to advance CCP views of the principles and values underpinning global development aid. PRC contributions to the United Nations have also increased exponentially, from $12 million in 2000 to over $380 million in 2021. It is now the second largest contributor to the UN overall budget and to its peacekeeping budget (CSIS, accessed December 1, 2025).
Chinese assessments of shifting comparative CNP also underpinned Xi’s push for a “new type of great power relations” (新型大国关系) with the United States in 2012–2013. By that point, according to a 2021 assessment by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank under the Ministry of State Security, analysts assessed that the United States had been in decline for almost a decade (CICIR, 2021). [5] Calls for a “new type of great power relations” (新型大国关系) represented an outward push for recognition that the PRC was an equal great power. A 2012 Xinhua article noted that “the substantial increase in China’s [CNP]” (中国综合国力大幅提升), among other factors, had led to “important changes in the balance of power between China and the United States and in the world structure” (中美实力对比及世界格局发生重要变化的大背景下) (Xinhua, December 19, 2012). A 2013 Xinhua article, meanwhile, explained that the PRC’s proposed “new type of great power relations” would “increase [Beijing’s] shaping and leading role in Sino–U.S. relations” (增加对中美关系的塑造和引领作用). It explained that, as the CNP gap between the two narrowed, the PRC should not “passively adapt” (被动适应) but rather proactively set the agenda for the relationship (Xinhua, June 9, 2013). Hu Angang, writing in 2015, also pointed to fundamental changes in U.S. and PRC CNP as key to establishing a new type of great power relations. Hu and his co-authors went so far as to assess that, based on comparative CNP calculations, the PRC had actually surpassed the United States in 2013, though no other analysts had shared this assessment to date (Hu et al., 2015, p. 26). [6]
The “new type of great power relations” framing became a central feature of PRC messaging around the 2013 U.S.–China Summit President that President Obama hosted in Washington, D.C. At the summit, Xi told Obama that their countries’ relations had entered “a new historical starting point,” and he called for a “new model of major-country relations” (Obama White House, June 7, 2013). This was perhaps the clearest instance of the PRC’s changing assessment of the international balance of power, based on CNP calculations, driving foreign policy.
Frustration Prompts Push for Discourse Power
Frustration emerged across 2017–2020 as Beijing appeared to conclude that its accrual of CNP had not automatically bestowed global recognition of a new leadership role for the PRC. The United States had not accepted Xi’s framing of the relationship, which Beijing viewed as a rejection of its right to leadership in the international system. Observers in the PRC seemed surprised that the sheer size of the country’s CNP did not cow regional neighbors and instead was followed in the United States by a shift to a much more competitive approach that Beijing was unable to prevent. Jia Qingguo (贾庆国), a professor at Beijing University and a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, explained in a 2022 People’s Tribune article that “the outside world, especially countries led by the United States, is not adaptable to and does not accept China’s rapid rise in strength” (外部世界，特别是美国为首的西方发达国家，对中国快速强起来的不适应和不接受) (People’s Tribune, October 25, 2022). [7]
At the heart of this frustration, according to PRC experts, was an inability to control global narratives about the PRC or proactively shape broader international discourse. The China Institute of International Security (CIIS), a prominent think tank under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained in 2011 that competition between the “China threat theory” (中国威胁论) and the “peaceful development theory” (和平发展论) reflected the competition for the “right to speak” (话语权) (Shen, 2011). [8] “The root cause of the ‘bottleneck’” (瓶颈的根源) in the country’s international communication work, according to one research article, is that the “colonial system” (殖民主义) still dominates the world. Breaking this “monopoly” (垄断) of Western communication discourse is therefore key to breaking through the existing “international communication pattern” (国际传播格局) (Chen and Liu, 2022). [9] As Xi has argued in reference to discourse power competition, the PRC has not resolved the issue of “being shouted at/scolded” (挨骂) (People’s Daily Online, September 7, 2021).
International attention on PRC activities in the South China Sea is a clear example of this. One analyst, writing in 2017, explained that the PRC’s 2014 deployment of an offshore oil rig off the coast of Vietnam received wide international condemnation because the PRC lacked maritime discourse power. They noted that the international community did not respect the PRC’s “marine rights and interests” (海洋权益) and that some “foreign major countries” (域外大国) supported Vietnam by distorting the facts through media channels they control, while deploying the military around the area to threaten PRC national security interests (Sun and Wu, 2017). [10] More recently, in 2023, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) scholars explained that the United States uses “media propaganda” (媒体宣传) to hype the PRC’s “extraordinary actions” (“出格”的举动) in the South China Sea (PLA Daily Online, June 30, 2023).
Winning the competition over global narratives is now a central focus of what Xi has tasked the system to accomplish. This reflects efforts to leverage the country’s growing CNP to build influence around the world, based on assessments that CNP is the basis of discourse power. As such, this demonstrates a use case for how the Party thinks about using CNP rather than simply tracking how the country is building CNP (People’s Tribune, November 10, 2019). As Xi explained in 2021, the PRC must “form an international discourse power that matches the PRC’s [CNP] and international status” (形成同我国综合国力和国际地位相匹配的国际话语权) (Xinhua, June 1, 2021). Chinese analysts talk about the “right to speak” as an asymmetry of public opinion warfare, and an extension and important manifestation of national power, national interests, and national image. They advocate enhancing the PRC’s right to speak amid efforts to “squeeze the space for peacefully rising powers to exist” (挤压和平崛起大国的国际生存空间) (People’s Forum, November 10, 2019). According to a 2017 article published on the PLA’s official website, the PRC offered an alternative development path for countries “hoping to accelerate development while maintaining independence” (希望加快发展又不希望走依附式道路) (Guangming Daily, December 8, 2017).
To do this, efforts target three camps, according to Li Xuanliang (李宣良), Deputy Director of the PLA Branch of Xinhua News Agency. In the first camp are those who see the PRC as a strategic rival. The PRC should have no illusions here, put itself first, and “fight but not break” (斗而不破). Second are those who largely agree with the PRC’s values and want to cooperate. Li suggests that the PRC should seek to find common ground with such countries. Third are those with common interests and “emotional responses” (情感共鸣点多) to Chinese ideas. With this last group, the PRC should strengthen cooperation and deepen its friendship (PLA Daily Online, accessed December 1, 2025).
Efforts targeting the first camp are evident in PRC attempts to undermine U.S. narratives in the South China Sea. It criticizes U.S. “navigation hegemony” (航行霸权) and “militarization of the South China Sea” (南海军事化) and calls the United States the “biggest destroyer” (最大破坏者) of peace and stability in the region. Chinese analysts believe these efforts constitute an improved approach to “public opinion warfare” (舆论战), as it tries to counter what it calls U.S. “hyping and exaggerating” (炒作渲染) of the threat Beijing poses to the international order (PLA Daily Online, November 25, 2023). This shift also explains the more proactive release of videos of air and maritime encounters with the U.S. military (and others). It is also central to the ongoing, persistent efforts to frame Taiwan’s status within U.N. Resolution 2758 and the “one China principle.”
Efforts targeting the latter two camps can be seen in CCP attempts to push a new approach to the international order. Xi emphasized in the 20th Party Congress Report that the PRC “advocated for and practiced true multilateralism” (倡导践行真正的多边主义), “opposed all hegemonism and power politics” (反对一切霸权主义和强权政治), and worked for the “reform and development of the global governance system ” (全球治理体系改革和建设). By extension and as a result of that growth, he said, the PRC’s role in shaping the international system would evolve (Xinhua, October 26, 2022). A week later, Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) penned an article in the People’s Daily, in which he emphasized the “significant increase” (显著提升) in the country’s CNP and international standing (综合国力和国际地位) over the preceding decade and called for forming an “international discourse power to match” (匹配的国际话语权) (People’s Daily, November 8, 2022).
The rollout of four global initiatives, related to development, security, civilization, and governance, reflect Beijing’s boldest attempt to date to challenge the international order. The first two of these attack key principles underpinning the global order, calling for “common values” (共同价值观) to replace “universal values” (普世价值). This undermines documents such as the UN Declaration on Human Rights, which Beijing rejects as demonstrating U.S. values hegemony. The Global Development Initiative also seeks to undermine the values and norms that underpin much international aid and development assistance. Western countries, including the United States, have long tied provision of aid to certain levels of human rights protections, transparency on governance and how assistance aid is applied, and democratic governance. PRC leaders view these conditions as interference in countries’ internal affairs and as tools to protect U.S. hegemony. Beijing continues to press hard on its initiatives, using them as instruments of discourse power to undermine U.S. positions globally and damage the image of the United States on a global scale. By doing so, it frames the United States as a “warlike” (好战的国家) country that causes instability around the world (People’s Daily, June 16, 2022; MND, December 26, 2024).
Conclusion
The documented shift in PRC foreign policy behavior in the 2010s is likely the result of a confluence of factors. The theoretical literature from PRC academics on how comparative CNP is supposed to shape and drive policy and strategy, coupled with the Party’s emphasis on the importance of CNP to a number of its critical ideological positions, provides strong evidence that one likely driver of behavioral change was a change in calculations of comparative CNP. This was driven by assessments that the PRC had risen to be the second most powerful country in the world. As such, the CCP expected certain perceived benefits in shaping and leading the international system to follow.
As the PRC continues to grow confident in its assessments of the international balance of power and the PRC’s place in it, those growing expectations for the PRC may not be met. How Beijing responds should the region not meet its expectations could challenge regional stability. As the country looks to its 2035 goals of becoming a leading power in CNP, navigating to an expected more regionally dominant position while avoiding costly conflict will be a critical test of the PRC leadership.
All views expressed in this article ore solely those of the author and do not reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government, Department of War, or U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Notes
[1] Men Honghua [门洪华], “China’s Rise and the Transformation of the International Order” [中国崛起与国际秩序变革]. Quarterly Journal of International Politics [国际政治科学], 2016, 1(1), p. 60–89.
[2] Li Shenming [李慎明], Zhang Yuyan [张宇燕], eds., Global Politics and Security Report (2012) [全球政治与安全报告 (2012)]. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, Beijing, China, 2012. p. 53.
[3] Yan Xuetong. The Transfer of World Power: Political Leadership and Strategic Competition. Peking University Press, Beijing, September, 2015.
[4] Rush Doshi. The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2021. Doshi does a good job marking the shift in language to a more assertive and more proactive foreign policy. Where this research shifts from Doshi is by centering the focus on Chinese assessments of these changes globally as being driven by comparative CNP between the PRC, the United States, and the rest of the global community. Doshi’s framing of political, economic, and military instruments for “building” (see Page 179) identify three of the 7–8 central elements of CNP shaping PRC understanding CNP.
[5] China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. Changes Unseen in a Century and National Security [百年变局与国家安全]. Beijing: Current Affairs Publishing House, 2021. p. 81.
[6] Hu Angang [胡鞍钢], Zheng Yanfeng [郑云峰], Gao Yuning [高宇宁], “An Assessment of the Comprehensive National Power of China and the United States, (1990–2013)” [对中美综合国力的评估 (1990—2013年)] Journal of Tsinghua University [清华大学学报:哲学社会科学版], No.1, 2015 (30). p. 26.
[7] The People’s Tribune (人民论坛) is a platform under the People’s Daily, and consists of three periodicals, three websites, and a think tank (People’s Tribune, accessed December 15).
[8] Shen Yamei [沈雅梅]. “Thoughts on Western Media’s Hot Discussions on ‘China’s Image’” [对西方媒体热议“中国形象”的思考]. International Issues Research [国际问题研究]. 2011(4):8–1470.
[9] Chen Yunsong [陈云松], Liu Jiankan [柳建坤], “Contemporary Chinese International Communication: Audience Characteristics and Improvement Path” [当代中国国际传播:受众特征与提升路径]. Journal of the China Executive Academy, Pudong [中国浦东干部学院学报]. Pudong, Shanghai, 2022,16(3):129–13684, p.130.
[10] Sun Kai [孙 凯] and Wu Hao [吴昊], “Thoughts on Building China’s Maritime Voice-Taking the ‘981’ Platform Incident in the South China Sea as an Example” [关于构建中国海洋话语权的思考—以南海“981”钻井平台事件为例] Journal of China Maritime University [中国海洋大学学报], 2017. No.1., p. 23.
