China has ‘unprecedented levels of confidence’ in US decline, Kevin Rudd tells Davos

The Chinese Communist Party believes it is prevailing in its superpower competition with the United States and has unprecedented levels of confidence in the decline of the West, former prime minister Kevin Rudd has said at Davos.

Mr Rudd made the comments at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, in his first public engagement since announcing he would quit one year early as Australia’s Ambassador to the United States from March.

He joked that in his new role as President of the US-based Asia Society he would have “freedom” and told the world’s elite that he was speaking in his private capacity as a scholar and not as an Australian official, however, he was continually addressed as “Ambassador.”

He spoke shortly after US President Donald Trump addressed the summit, telling leaders he would not use military force to acquire Greenland, but was serious about acquiring the territory, which is administered by NATO-ally Denmark.

Later that evening, Mr Trump dropped his threat to hit Europe and the UK with tariffs if they did not let him purchase Greenland, saying he had “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” during talks with NATO boss Mark Rutte.

Mr Trump, in his second term, has emerged as a reconstructed 19th-century imperialist who has spoken warmly of his personal relationships with the leaders of authoritarian regimes, including China and Russia, but has hit allies with tariffs and his most recent threat to take over European-governed land.

Mr Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in April where the two are likely to thrash out a trade deal.

Mr Rudd said that China had grown more confident ahead of that key meeting.

“What I see underneath the Chinese posture towards, not only the April Summit, but more generally in the status of US China relations is unprecedented levels of Chinese self-confidence,” Mr Rudd said.

“This is palpable when you read the internal Chinese literature; it’s transparent when you read your People’s Daily.

“It’s transparent when you read the theoretical literature, which the Party, engages in its own code language communications with itself, that the rise of the East and the decline of the West — which is a euphemism for the rise of China, and the decline of the United States — so, whereas China is in search of a stabilisation arrangement, it actually, in its own internal political literature, believes its prevailing in this competition at present.”

Alongside his threat to acquire Greenland, the US launched a stunning raid on Venezuela earlier this month and captured its indicted leader, Nicolas Maduro, putting him on trial in the US for drug smuggling.

President Trump, meanwhile, has said he wants the US to profit from Venezuela’s vast, and mostly untapped, heavy oil reserves.

The CCP’s propaganda outlet Xinhua wrote this week that Washington had “officially dropped the pretence of upholding the global order” and was now openly pursuing an “imperial agenda.”

“This is imperialism distilled to its predatory essence. Power has shed its fig leaf of justification; it is now a purely extractive superpower.

“The world map is no longer a political chart of alliances and sovereignties, but a crude inventory of assets. A country’s status -- ally, rival or neutral -- is irrelevant beside the fundamental question of its utility.”

Mr Rudd said the US and China relationship was governed by the “three ts” of tariffs, technology and Taiwan.

He said he did not know what was possible for the two countries to achieve when they sat down, but whatever Mr Xi and Mr Trump negotiated would only be relevant for about 12 months and that it was impossible to project beyond that.

But he said that China’s President Xi Jinping was “not a status quo politician” and that he wanted to “change the game” as well as take Taiwan.

“What he wants in the Indo Pacific is for China to have a balance of power in the Indo Pacific which advantages China, rather than the current arrangements which advantage the United States,” he said.

“He does want to take Taiwan, that’s clear, it’s in the Party’s doctrines, in the print and political literature, it’s every day and every week in The People’s Daily and everywhere else.”

But Mr Rudd said that despite talk of President Trump wanting to strike a “spheres of influence” bargain, whereby the US would dominate the Western hemisphere, China would be allowed to control the Indo-Pacific, and Russia emboldened to exert its power across Europe, was wrong.

He said that convening of the Quad Foreign Ministers from Australia, the US, India and Japan immediately after the inauguration showed that the United States intends to remain the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific.

“I was there,” Mr Rudd told the audience.

“This is seen as a core element in sustaining overall strategic balance in the wider region.”

The Quad did not meet in Mr Trump’s first year as President because of the tariffs he imposed on India, including on oil, which Indian companies buy from Russia to refine and sell, helping the Kremlin trade to third countries the oil that they have sanctioned and cannot buy directly as punishment for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking alongside Mr Rudd was the Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who is one of the US Congress’s dedicated champions of AUKUS.

He pointed to the Chinese Navy’s decision to send “an entire armada all the way around Australia” as just one of the many hostile acts from the People’s Republic of China that meant there was a significant number of tensions in the bilateral relationship.

The US State Department’s Agency Strategic Plan for the next year set out the Trump Administration’s priorities for its foreign policy.

It said it would use the Quad to “counter attempts by China to establish a hostile and exclusionary economic system.”

But it did not mention Taiwan once. However, last year’s National Security Strategy released by the White House said that “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military over match, is a priority.”

The State Department sought a gentler tone and said that in its competition with China that it did not want to create instability but that a “morally sound” United States would outlast any competitor and “dissuade them from military adventurism.”

“We will secure the vital lanes of commerce which run through the region, keeping them open for our ships to navigate unimpeded,” the strategy said.

“If obstructed, we will ensure the United States has appropriate capacity to counter these efforts so that these crucial lanes are not able to be taxed or closed by any one country.”

It said that while it did not support regime change in Asia, it believed Europe “must abandon the disastrous experiment of mass migration” and “remain as useful partner for the United States.”