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Xi Jinping has transformed China at home and abroad with a speed and aggression that few foresaw when he came to power in 2012. Finally, he is meeting resistance, both at home among disgruntled officials and disillusioned technocrats, and abroad from an emerging coalition of Western nations that seem determined to resist Chinas geopolitical and high-tech expansion. With the United States and China at loggerheads, Richard McGregor outlines how the world came to be split in two.

Richard McGregor is a Senior Fellow at the Lowy Institute and a leading expert on Chinas political system. He is an award-winning journalist and author reporting on the top-level politics and economies of East Asia, primarily China and Japan. His book The Party: The Secret World of Chinas Communist Rulers won numerous awards, including the Asia Society in New York award in 2011 for best book on Asia. His latest book, Asias Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century , won the 2018 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

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For a discussion on Xi Jinping: The Backlash with Richard McGregor and leading commentators on China, visit the Lowy Institutes daily commentary and analysis site, The Interpreter : lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/debate/xi-jinping-the-backlash .

When did the world wake up to China? It is hard to date precisely the moment the backlash against Xi Jinping and the party state in Beijing took hold. The construction, and then militarisation, of islands in the South China Sea from 2013 galvanised hawks in Washington and allies in the region, not least because of its sheer audacity and scale. Foreign businesses, once advocates of engagement with Beijing to open the Chinese market, became disillusioned when they saw their access truncated. The seemingly ceaseless theft of trade secrets and technology hardened cynicism in governments and companies alike. The detention of up to a million Uighurs in re-education camps in Xinjiang in the name of anti-terror from 2017 highlighted human rights abuses in a way the jailing of individual dissidents never could. Donald Trumps election was a game changer by itself, as it gave cover to a broad-based coalition, bringing together Americas rust belt, democracy activists and the deep state in Washington, all demanding a tougher line against Beijing. On the front line in Hong Kong, more than one million citizens took to the streets in June 2019 to protest against a proposed extradition law.

The contest between the United States and China, to take the prime battlefield, is multifaceted, including over ideology, technology, economics, trade and military superiority. Germany, by contrast, is focused not on military might but industrial competitiveness. Australia, like many countries in Asia, fears being left to fend for itself in a region unanchored by US power. Japan worries that China wants not just to dominate the seas surrounding it but settle historical scores as well. Taiwan, a self-governing island for decades, thinks it will be gobbled up, on terms dictated by Beijing. Singapore and Southeast Asian nations already feel marginalised in Chinas shadow. For Canada, the wake-up call came as late as December 2018, when Vancouver police detained a senior executive from the telco giant Huawei for extradition to the United States, only to see Beijing arrest Canadian citizens in China in retaliation and take them as virtual hostages.

However, if there is a period that crystallised perceptions of Xi, and his world view and ambitions, that moment was in late 2017 and early 2018 when foreigners, and many Chinese as well, finally started to take him at his word. Xi was reconfirmed as leader of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017 and then abolished term limits on his presidency in March 2018, removing any obstacles to his remaining in power in perpetuity. On renewing his oath of office, he extolled the absolute leadership role of the Party to the exclusion of all other institutions. Government, military, society and schools, north, south, east and west the Party is the leader of all, Xi said at the opening of the once-every-five-years party congress in October 2017. Unlike any Chinese leader of the reform era, Xi touted the virtues of Beijings development model not just for China, but for other countries as well. China has always competed against democracy at home. Xis promotion of what he called the China solution suggested that it was girding itself for the same contest in defence of Beijings growing interests abroad.

All the complaints that helped turn the tide overseas against China were familiar. Beijing has long had expansive claims in the South China Sea. Foreign businesses have struggled with barriers in the Chinese market since the country began opening up in the late 1970s. US, European and Japanese leaders have protested about the theft and transfer of technology for decades. Similarly, criticism of Chinese policies towards religious and ethnic groups, though principally focused on the treatment of Christians and Tibetans, is not new. But Xis clarity of purpose provided a sharper lens through which the rest of the world could view Chinas actions. Not only had Beijing become more powerful and less willing to hide its disdain for its critics views. Xi has articulated a willingness to leverage Beijings elevated power to press the ruling communist partys ambitions with a force and coherence that his predecessors lacked.

There is another way of looking at the backlash against Xi, of course. To begin with, has the world turned against China, or is it just the United States and a few of its allies? China is more aligned with Russia than at any time in half a century and has forged close ties with multiple nations in Africa, as an investor in resources and builder of infrastructure. The Belt and Road Initiative, Beijings vast political and economic plan to develop, fortify and dominate its hinterland and the sea routes connecting Europe, Eurasia and the Indian Ocean, is bringing new countries firmly into Chinas orbit, albeit not without problems. In March 2019, Xi signed Italy up to the Initiative, driving a political wedge into the top levels of the European Union itself. In the Pacific, Beijing has showered small island nations with attention and aid, inflating their bargaining power with their traditional benefactors, Australia and New Zealand. The United States and a handful of allies might be hanging up on Huawei and its advanced mobile technology but the rest of the world isnt. In addition, steadfast US allies such as Japan and Australia continue to sustain their economies through trading with China, even as they grow more wary of it.