Top Highlights

• Hu’s own speeches all conceded that adherence to the strategy was based on China’s assessment of the “international balance of power” [国际力量对比] and (implicitly) that it would therefore one day expire.
• The strategy was about more than avoiding the costs of international leadership; it was also about avoiding conflict with the United States, reducing the risk of encirclement by China’s neighbors, and creating space for Chinese development.
• Sino-American ties descend to a new post-Cold War low, Western analysts increasingly place the blame on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aggressive international activism
• Xi’s power consolidation and cult of personality is overshadowing important ways in which his foreign policy exhibits continuity with past trends
• Xi Jinping often receives credit from moving Chinese grand strategy away from Deng Xiaoping’s strategic guideline [战略方针] that China needed to “hide capabilities and bide time.”

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