Xi Is Taking a Page Out of Mao’s Playbook—Waging War to Protect Himself at Home

Taiwan is in “a dangerous situation.”

That’s how the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council saw the island republic after President Joe Biden signed an aid package that included money for Taiwan on the 24 of this month.

Who could disagree with the Chinese government’s assessment of the situation? Xi Jinping, after all, has been readying his military for an invasion across the Taiwan Strait and talks all the time about going to war. “Dare to fight” is his new favorite phrase.

Xi, however, chose not to fight in February, when he had the perfect opportunity to do so. Two Chinese fishermen drowned that month after being chased by the Taiwan Coast Guard. Instead, China’s military engaged in theatrics, provocative air and sea exercises near the site of the incident, Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen Island. At the same time, Beijing’s propaganda organs huffed and puffed, but Xi did not send his ships and troops to Taiwan beaches.

Here’s a puzzle: China’s militant leader constantly speaks as if he is about to attack neighbors and authorizes belligerent acts all the time, but his current moves are not designed to accomplish his stated goals.

Xi’s actions are even counterproductive, because countries on his periphery, from Australia in the south to South Korea in the north, are responding by seeking America’s protection and spending more on defense.

Xi, in effect, is creating large, formidable, and durable coalitions against his China. For instance, in 2021, Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. formed AUKUS, and Japan may soon sign on. Japan and the U.S. have also organized two informal groupings, JAROKUS, which includes the Republic of Korea, and JAROPUS with the Republic of the Philippines.

Because China’s leader is engaging in external behavior that does not make sense—Barbara Tuchman called it “folly” when countries adopt policies contrary to self-interest—we know that something must be terribly wrong in the magnificent capital city of Beijing.

So what is wrong?

There is evident turmoil inside the regime. Charles Burton of the Prague-based think tank Sinopsis told me this week that “a significant portion of China’s military leadership oppose action on Taiwan.” There are reports that Liu Yazhou, a former Chinese air force general considered one of the country’s leading military thinkers, received a death sentence in 2022—revealed early last year—for opposing an invasion of the island republic.

Since then, there have been wholesale purges in the military, particularly the Rocket Force, which controls almost all of China’s nuclear weapons. Last year, the top two Rocket Force officers were replaced. At least 70 in that branch have reportedly been disappeared in the last half of last year. Last July, prior to the mass firings, it appears the chief of the Rocket Force’s Third Department committed suicide, by hanging.

At the end of December, we learned that five current or former commanders of that branch were removed from both the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and from China’s top legislative body itself.

Apparently, the chiefs of the largest state military contractors have been sacked. Three of them were removed from China’s top advisory organ, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, also in December.

And then there is something exceedingly strange: The last defense minister, General Li Shangfu, was appointed March 12 of last year, was last seen in public August 29, and was formally removed October 24. His replacement was named only on December 29. Li’s short tenure—he was considered to be Xi Jinping’s pick—and the long and unexplained interval between disappearance and replacement indicates severe wrangling.

The discord at the top of the military—the People’s Liberation Army reports to the Communist Party and not the Chinese state—is matched by unexplained personnel movements at the highest levels of the political system. Most surprising is the disappearance of another Xi associate, former foreign minister Qin Gang. There are rumors that he’s alive as well as rumors that he’s been executed or committed suicide.

“The extraordinary disappearances of the foreign minister, Qin Gang, and of senior military figures appear to be coming out of nowhere, without any viable explanation whatsoever,” says Burton, who once served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing. “Their randomness and the fact that the newly purged have all been closely associated with Xi Jinping suggests the start of an out-of-control political upheaval that is unprecedented in Chinese communist history.”

The political turmoil in the Chinese capital does not bode well for the world. Xi looks like he is taking a page out of his hero’s playbook. Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic, on many occasions threatened neighbors as a means to mobilize the Chinese people and to prevent his political enemies from attacking him. Mao was fond of quoting the ancient Chinese sage Mencius on the critical need for a country to have an enemy. Mao did not want war with the Soviet Union in March 1969 but almost provoked one nonetheless at Zhenbao Island—the Soviets called it Damansky—because he ordered the killing of Soviet troops as a means of unifying the Chinese people.

Xi’s actions fit the Mao pattern—a sign that the situation inside China is worse than it appears.

Moreover, the pattern warns us Xi may not be deterred by the U.S., no matter how many coalitions Washington forms or how many arms it delivers to Taiwan. It looks like China’s leader is reacting primarily—maybe even solely—to domestic pressures. If so, there is not much others can do to stop the next war in Asia.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.