Is Foreign Aggression the Next Step for China?

A flagging economy and rising instability may push China’s leadership to foreign adventurism as a way out of its legitimacy crisis

A paramilitary police officer stands guard in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on March 11, 2018. Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in crisis. That may seem to be an exaggeration, but it’s not. The Party is facing the greatest challenges to its leadership since Tiananmen Square in 1989. In fact, the risks to the Party’s legitimacy are even higher today because the Party could rely on rising levels of exports to the West and direct investment from it. That’s no longer the case.