What Does China Want? Depends Which China You’re Talking About.
What does China want? There is a massive industry of academic and analyst products proclaiming to offer insights into what China wants, more often than not appearing to assert some longtime, deep and abiding desires. But the fact is, despite its growing influence and prominence, China’s foreign policy often appears inconsistent. The messages it sends seem sometimes to contradict one another.
This tension was on full display at China’s latest military parade, where President Xi Jinping showcased fearsome advanced weaponry while claiming China had “saved human civilization” and declaring its “national rejuvenation” unstoppable, all under the banner of peace.
To make sense of China’s behavior, we need a new framework. Viewed in aggregate, Beijing’s conduct produces contradictions that are hard to reconcile with the idea of a single, unwavering national goal. Rather than assigning China to one category, a more useful heuristic would be to see its international behavior as manifesting the interplay of three international personas: Moral China, Defensive-Assertive China, and Striving China. These personas coexist, sometimes reinforcing one another and sometimes colliding. The surface at different times – and behave differently toward other international actors.
Moral China
Moral China positions itself as a global benefactor. This is the persona that discusses building a “community of shared future for humankind,” a slogan now embedded in U.N. resolutions and speeches as the overarching banner for Beijing’s foreign policy. It is a China that is seeking a larger global leadership role, to “move closer toward the center of the world stage” (走向世界舞台中央) as official jargon would have it.
In this mode, China presents itself as a provider of development, stability, and fairness in a system supposedly skewed by Western hegemony. Indeed, Moral China often frames itself in stark opposition to a capricious, bullying United States that wantonly wields its power over others.
Over the past decade, Moral China has accumulated a significant list of initiatives to complement these efforts. The Global Development Initiative, launched at the United Nations in 2021, framed China’s development finance as a way to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals and “leave no one behind,” while the Global Security and Global Civilization Initiatives claim to offer China’s “solutions” to developmental, security, and cultural challenges. Most recently, China has proposed a Global Governance Initiative for “reforming the global governance system and institutions.” Much about these initiatives remains at the level of abstract rhetoric, suggesting dissatisfaction with the status quo ante of a U.S.-led liberal order while not necessarily offering concrete alternatives.
That said, there is also some substance to China’s efforts. China-backed infrastructure has, in some cases, filled glaring gaps neglected by other actors. For example, China’s finance and firms have helped build ports in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, power plants in Africa, and railways from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe when Western development banks were slow or absent. During COVID-19, China’s vaccines and medical teams traveled to dozens of countries, and more recently, Beijing has co-chaired creditor committees to restructure sovereign debts in places like Zambia.
Taken together, this produces a moral narrative that is part reality, but also part aspiration, and part branding. Ultimately, Moral China wants to be seen as a peace-loving, responsible major power (负责任大国) that speaks on the behalf of the interests of the Global South, rejects “hegemonism and power politics,” and is working toward reform of the international system.
Defensive-Assertive China
Defensive-Assertive China emerges when Beijing’s self-proclaimed “core interests” (核心利益) appear threatened. Within this persona, China tends to depict itself as a besieged victim, forced to respond to an external provocation. This persona is heavily rooted in a narrative of historical humiliation and by the Chinese Communist Party’s claim to be the shield that prevents it from happening again. It is a China that “dares to struggle.”
Nowhere is this more apparent than in reactions concerning Taiwan. When then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August 2022, China responded with live-fire drills encircling the island, missile overflights, and sanctions on U.S. officials. In April 2025, the People’s Liberation Army again staged large-scale exercises simulating a blockade after President Lai Ching-te reiterated that Taiwan would not accept Beijing’s “One China” framework, with state media branding him a “parasite” and drawing comparisons to historical villains.
Most recently Defensive-Assertive China has shown its face in response to comments by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae about possible Japanese involvement in a Taiwan contingency. These actions may generate sharp global criticism, but domestically they play into a familiar narrative, that is, China resisting humiliation and Western “provocation” and “bullying.”
Diplomatically, this persona manifests in “wolf warrior” social media posts, outraged demarches, and threats that countries will “pay a price” for crossing China’s red lines — a “diplomacy of anger,” so to speak. For example, this persona is particularly present in the Foreign Ministry’s regular invocation of “struggle” as a necessary response to “Cold War mentality” and in defense ministry warnings to Taiwan that Beijing will “come and get you, sooner or later.”
This pattern is also increasingly coupled with economic coercion. After Australia called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, China rolled out tariffs and informal barriers on barley, wine, beef, coal, and more, driving some export flows close to zero before restrictions were gradually lifted. In a separate case, when Lithuania allowed a “Taiwanese Representative Office” to open in Vilnius, China downgraded diplomatic relations and disrupted trade, Lithuanian exports and supply chains that used Lithuanian components.
The drivers behind Defensive-Assertive China are relatively straight forward. Taken together, narratives of grievance over past foreign domination, concerns about attempts to harm Beijing’s interests or break up China, and fear of appearing weak all push Beijing toward harsh responses when it senses a challenge to its red lines. This escalation in tone sends a signal to foreign governments and to the Chinese public that the CCP will not be pushed around.
Striving China
In contrast to Moral China and Defensive-Assertive China, the Striving China persona is less concerned with grand narratives and more focused on getting ahead and reaping benefits. It is the external face of China that seeks opportunity and market share, drives hard bargains and is fiercely competitive, and pushes into economic spaces and markets the West has vacated or neglected.
Consider China’s relationship with Russia. Official propaganda speaks glowingly of the “China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era” and images of friendly relations between Xi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. And yet, despite such bonhomie, China has not been above taking advantage of Russia’s predicament. It has driven hard deals on oil and natural gas prices, paying only a fraction of what Europe paid for the latter. And as the Financial Times reported, “Prices of export-controlled products shipped from China to Russia rose 87 percent between 2021 and 2024 on average… The price of similar goods shipped elsewhere rose only 9 percent.”
China has similarly played hardball with states in the Global South. Granted, where Western development banks move slowly or avoid political risk, China’s state-owned enterprises and policy banks have been willing to step in. But as AidData has found, Chinese creditors have – among other things – collateralized loans by requiring escrow accounts and access to revenues from commodity sales until their debt is repaid. This ensures that Chinese creditors will have be repaid regardless of the distress of the debtor country.
And China-based actors also show opportunism in their approaches in tech, mining, energy, and digital infrastructure. Chinese firms have stepped in to purchase distressed firms in the West to get access to their technology and IP. In parts of Africa and Central Asia, Chinese companies have acquired stakes in mines and built railways and power plants as Western firms scaled back. Certainly, some of these ventures have brought jobs and reliable electricity. Yet others have triggered protests over labor standards, displacement, or environmental damage.
To be clear, Striving China is in many ways driven by economic incentives that are shared by many actors in the international system. In various cases, it may also be the product of fragmented incentives inside China itself. Provincial leaders want overseas projects that help local firms. State-owned enterprises chase contracts and resources abroad. And firms rendered hyper-competitive by a combination of domestic industrial policy and the unforgiving economic environment within China may appear quite ferocious when they emerge onto the international stage. The result is an ecosystem of actors who are broadly aligned with Beijing’s priorities but not always tightly coordinated in these efforts.
Colliding or Aligning Personas?
Despite their differences, these personas are not neatly separated. At times, they can reinforce each other, as when Moral China’s rhetoric provides the ideological justification for Striving China’s commercial expansion. Moral China preaches noninterference and solidarity against Western hegemony; Striving China follows up with infrastructure loans and construction contracts. Defensive-Assertive China reinforces the partnership by validating the recipient’s sovereignty against external criticism. For illiberal leaders in need of both a highway and political legitimacy, this package is highly attractive: the moral narrative validates the commercial deal, and the defensive posture protects the relationship from Western pressure on human rights.
Similarly, within the technology industry, Striving China offers cost-effective 5G infrastructure while Moral China frames this as democratizing digital access for the developing world. When Western nations impose bans, Defensive-Assertive China reframes legitimate security concerns as unfair suppression, rallying nationalistic support at home and sympathy abroad.
However, the central paradox of China’s foreign policy, and the primary source of confusion for outside observers, is how frequently these personas sabotage one another. The demands of domestic legitimacy often force the Defensive-Assertive persona to take actions that obliterate the goodwill built by the Moral persona and the market access sought by the Striving persona.
This collision is especially obvious in Southeast Asia. While Moral China speaks of Asian kinship and Striving China seeks deeper economic integration through trade pacts like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, Defensive-Assertive China deploys militarized coast guard vessels to harass Philippine supply ships or Vietnamese oil operations. In this instance, the result of these conflicting personas is strategic incoherence. Here the security anxiety caused by the Defensive persona overrides the economic attraction of the Striving persona, thereby driving neighbors into closer security alliances with the United States – the very outcome China seeks to avoid.
Moral China’s generosity is also offset by the efforts of Striving China. When projects go sour, either because feasibility studies were weak, local governance was poor, or environmental and labor standards were ignored, China’s reputation as a responsible leader may take a hit. And there is no shortage of such cases: across BRI projects, there are numerous examples of corruption allegations, labor disputes and environmental damage.
The costs are significant. The claim that China is a leading defender of sovereignty and noninterference looks much less convincing when paired with coercive pressure and sanctions designed to punish parliamentary votes, foreign visits, or even independent research.
Ultimately, asking what China wants yields a confusing answer because China is pursuing different things simultaneously. It seeks to both be perceived as a peaceful, moral actor and as a vigorous defender of its core interests, while at the same time pushing for gain and profit where possible. These personas can reinforce one another, but they are also often at odds. These contradictions show no signs of disappearing anytime soon.
