Understanding Sinocentrism: China’s Strategic Worldview Under Xi Jinping
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Written by Gilbert Rozman, one of the authors of Xi Jinping’s Quest for a Sinocentric Asia, 2013–2024
What is Sinocentrism?
Sinocentrism is often traced to imperial China’s tianxia (all under heaven), but that only loosely applies to our era. It is not explained by official Chinese sources, which pretend it does not exist. Familiarity with the Monroe Doctrine leads us to seek false equivalents, failing to grasp the economic and cultural webs that China is weaving. As the popular Chinese saying advises, our best approach is to “seek truth from facts.” To grasp the actual meaning of Sinocentrism, we need to examine how it has been applied over time to China’s relationships with neighboring countries. Our book does that over the first twelve years of Xi Jinping’s leadership, revealing the increasingly brazen manifestation of this worldview in China’s strategic thinking about foreign relations.
The new book traces the intensification of Sinocentrism in four directions and across three, distinct time frames. Three chapters by Yun Sun follow Chinese strategic thinking toward the US role in Asia, recognizing that for Beijing to reshape its neighborhood to its liking the United States presence must be curtailed. Resolve to do so hardened from 2013-16 to 2017-20 and to 2021-24, each marking a new phase in Sinocentrism. The same time periods are examined in the chapters Gilbert Rozman authored, covering the three parts of Northeast Asia: Russia, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula. As Sino-Russian relations tightened, China kept pressuring Japan while often shifting its stand on the peninsula to the disadvantage of South Korea. In the third set of three, chronological chapters, Danielle Cohen traces shifts in strategic thinking toward India, Southeast Asia, and Australia. A final chapter by Gaye Christofferson surveys the application of Sinocentrism to Central Asia over the entire time span. Putting all of this in perspective is an introduction explaining what was revealed about Sinocentrism through this volume, as a fundamental element in China’s national identity.
The book demonstrates that Sinocentrism is an overarching framework, applied flexibly to different countries, evolving as China’s power expands. Its essence is hierarchical, dismissing sovereignty on matters territorial or cultural, if China’s “interests” are involved. Making countries economically vulnerable provides critical leverage to insist on more. Different from “America First,” Sinocentrism relies on integrated supply chains, albeit with China at the top, and takes a long-term approach toward transforming the existing order. It calibrates responses to other states, often deferential to Russia as an essential partner, while capable of “wolf warrior” hysterics toward defiant states such as South Korea and Australia. The degree of pressure applied depends on the “respect” shown toward “core interests,” including censorship of any criticism of China’s politics, human rights, and foreign policy. In the history of the PRC, Sinocentrism took center stage in the response to the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, Japan in the mid-1990s, the United States when Obama pursued his “pivot to Asia,” and South Korea in the mid-2010s. China was intent on repulsing challenges to its long-term agenda, growing increasingly insistent from the 2010s on realizing its “destiny” as the civilization towering over Asia.
Stages of Sinocentrism
Under Xi Jinping our co-authored book detects three stages of increasingly assertive Sinocentrism. In 2013-2016—the take-off stage, it took the form of: Xi’s appeal to Obama for spheres of influence, Xi’s pressure on Putin with the Silk Road Economic Belt, Xi’s demonization of Japan over the Senkaku dispute and for “remilitarization,” and Xi’s flaunting of the arbitration ruling on the South China Sea. Xi’s “China Dream” feigned multilateralism as it focused on bilateralism.
In 2017-2020 the book describes Sinocentrism taking flight, accelerating beyond anything seen previously. Although the failure of Trump to boost US alliances gave Xi a new opening, his diplomatic overtures were overshadowed by aggressive moves: siding with North Korea after the failure of Trump’s Hanoi Summit, launching a border skirmish with India, taking relations with Putin to a new level while keeping up pressure on Russia as on the Northern Sea Route, and militarizing the South China Sea. Xi’s opposition to Abe’s minilateral initiatives in the Indo=Pacific region came to symbolize his Sinocentric aspirations. The Korean Peninsula tested tolerance for defiance of critical Sinocentric aspirations.
Hostility to Biden’s Indo-Pacific framework agenda and support for Putin’s war in Ukraine distinguished the period 2021-2024, when Sinocentrism took full flight. Biden’s efforts to find a balanced approach to “de-risking” with emphasis on economic security were labeled “containment,” threatening Sinocentrism, but not actually China’s security. In this period, we see: unmitigated antipathy toward US foreign policy, cozying up to Russia mixed with new pressures to alter the balance of relations in China’s favor, demonization of South Korean leaders for defying “balanced” relations between China and the United States, and new signs of readiness for coercion against Taiwan. If some Chinese regretted overreacting to Obama when Biden was worse and, by early 2025, overreacting to Biden when Trump 2.0 promised to be much worse, restraint proved difficult when the logic of Sinocentrism left little margin for interference in China’s arena. Yet, China cooled “wolf warrior” rhetoric when it saw an opening to use economic blandishments.
Through scrutiny of Chinese publications on the US role in Asia and China’s relations with its neighbors, our new book found that Sinocentrism is a wholistic, hierarchical regional order not just led by Beijing but shaped by China’s leaders to give China maximum economic leverage and to eliminate any chance of a “color revolution,” interpreted to mean a shift toward the US-led international order and associated values. It presupposes a dominant civilization insistent on subservience from the states within its sphere. Nonetheless, China’s thinking is couched in the language of economic globalization and is tempered by a long-term perspective on the process of transformation. To counter Sinocentrism a similarly “long game” cognizant of diverse national interests must be followed.
Xi Jinping’s Quest for a Sinocentric Asia, 2013–2024: Deciphering Chinese Strategic Thinking in a Pivotal Period
Recognizing Sinocentrism as the core motivation behind Xi Jinping’s vision for the reconstruction of Asia, Rozman, Sun, and Cohen present a comprehensive and updated analysis of Chinese foreign policy toward Asia, uncovering the deep-seated calculations behind Xi’s policies across four arenas of distinct interest in the last decade.