The Mind of Xi Jinping

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Xi's strategy for China in a world in turmoil

Few Westerners have more insight into China and its ruler, Xi Jinping, than Kevin Rudd, the 26th Prime Minister of Australia. Fluent in Mandarin, former head of the Asia Society, and with years of personal experience interacting with Xi and other Chinese leaders, Rudd recently earned his doctorate from Oxford — after leaving office(!) — and published his dissertation, On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World. In what can only be described as a critically important work, he explains why Xi is driven by intense ideological views not seen since Mao that have resulted in profound changes in China’s behavior and aggressiveness, both domestically and on the world stage.

In our wide-ranging conversation below, Prime Minister Rudd shares his insights into how Xi will likely navigate the current landscape, including relations with the United States, China’s regional ambitions, and his plans in Taiwan.

[Ed. note: Mr. Rudd currently serves as the Australian Ambassador to the United States. This interview reflects his views as a private China analyst and not in his capacity as ambassador.]

President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (courtesy Office of Dr. Kevin Rudd AC)

Octavian Report: Having served as Prime Minister of Australia, why did you decide to go to Oxford and do your dissertation on Xi Jinping?

Kevin Rudd: It was probably one of the craziest decisions I've taken. But, mind you, I've taken a lot of crazy decisions in my life. I had spent a lot of time in the five years prior to that analyzing Xi Jinping's unfolding strategy from what he had said and what he had done and his policy course in the world and at home. And I outlined that in an earlier book entitled The Avoidable War.

But I had not spent time reflecting on why he had embarked upon such a strategy. What was his underlying ideational or ideological worldview which he advanced internally within the discourse of the Party about his change in direction? And that required a separate line of analysis. And the reason for doing it as a D.Phil program at Oxford was to get some adult supervision on the subject, people who actually knew the field like Rana Mitter, a world class sinologist. But secondly, once I'd actually publicly enrolled in a course like that, I knew I was applying the most universal and reliable motivating force in history, male vanity. Once you publicly enroll as a former Prime Minister to do a D Phil, there's no way on earth that you can then withdraw without completing it. Otherwise you'll be ridiculed completely.

Octavian Report: What did you learn about Xi?

Kevin Rudd: When I began the research project back in 2017-18, I thought what I'd discover were the contours of Xi Jinping's Chinese nationalism. What I was less prepared for were the deeper contours of Xi’s Marxist-Leninism. Here again I relied simply upon the internal discourse of the Party through its ideological and theoretical literature and its political statements about why it was doing what it was doing. The amount of time that Xi Jinping spends on Marxism and Leninism in his political life is quite remarkable. This was not the case with Hu Jintao. It was not the case with Jiang Zemin. It was not the case with Deng Xiaoping. The last time it was the case was under Mao Zedong.

“The amount of time that Xi Jinping spends on Marxism and Leninism in his political life is quite remarkable—something not seen since Mao Zedong.”

What I discovered was the depth of his Leninist analysis of current circumstances facing the Communist Party and a need to reassert Party control, the depth of his Marxist analysis about where Chinese society and the economy were evolving to and where China was at a certain stage in history, as well as his nationalist worldview, about how you take Chinese national wealth and power and assert it now for the first time unapologetically in the region and the world to change it to be more in China's image.

Octavian Report: Given that the economy seems troubled on the back of more state control, do you see Xi potentially changing his strategy in response?

Kevin Rudd: One of the questions I pose towards the end of the book was, given that the ideological course correction towards a more Marxist and more Leninist society, economy, and politics was profound, what set of internal or external circumstances might cause him to ideologically correct course. Course correction being what I describe as strategic course correction. It's fundamental and foundational as opposed to tactical shifts here and then.

You might think that given that we've now had a large number of years – leaving aside the uniqueness of the COVID interruption – of declining Chinese economic growth generally and private sector growth in particular, pressures would come on for him to execute some sort of course correction. But what we've seen so far is simply a series of tactical course corrections, by and large, over the last two years that have failed to change the nature of Chinese economic behavior.

That's until the ninth of February this year, less than a month ago, when Xi Jinping convened a national convention of the Chinese private sector where Jack Ma was finally brought back in from the cold and seated on the front pew, facing Xi and the rest of the standing committee of the Politburo. Now Xi Jinping did not announce a redefinition of the ideological line that he pronounced back in 2017. But it's the first indication I've seen of him beginning to look carefully at the ideological fundamentals.

And there’s the question of whether he's identified the United States under the second Trump Administration as representing a new causal factor given the reality and depth and breadth of the possible trade war to redefine once again the ideological framework. That I put as an open question. But I can see how they would make use of this new, large external factor to say the course ideologically we set in 2017 is now in need of some adjustment. But I still on balance see this as not a change in ideology and strategy. I see it more as a change in tactics and temporary policy.

Octavian Report: How would you expect Xi to respond to the U.S. tariffs?

Kevin Rudd: Well, what we've seen so far from the first and second Trump Administration tariff actions against China is China's preparedness. And indeed, high levels of preparation to retaliate almost immediately in like form. We've seen the second wave of that this week. There are reasons for that. One of them is domestic and political. No Chinese political leader can easily navigate their own country's politics, and the CCP's politics, by seeming to be weak in response to U.S. policy actions.

"What we've seen from the first and second Trump Administration tariff actions is China’s high level of preparation to retaliate almost immediately in like form."

So these preparations have been long planned, long prepared, and long calibrated against the depth and clarity of President Trump's rhetoric during the campaign leading up to the November 2024 election. Looking to the future, I think there is an interest on the part of both sides, China and the United States, to see if there is some broader economic-trade-investment-technology deal. What many of us in the analytical community struggle to identify is the precise alchemy and content of such a deal. How do you manipulate the Rubik's Cube on tariffs, on subsidies, on purchasing agreements, on export restraints, on foreign investment, technology access and on currency stability, before you go to things like TikTok? How do you land those in a manner which is mutually acceptable? That is well beyond my own pay grade. There's a level of complexity involved with that which is like 9.9 on the degree of springboard high diving.

Octavian Report: How does Xi and the Communist Party think about the United States? Is it a mortal enemy, like the old Soviet view, or is it much more pragmatic?

Kevin Rudd: Strategically and ideologically, the United States is identified, and has been for a hundred years, as an ideological adversary, as representing the old decaying order of global liberal capitalism, against which first Soviet Communism and then Chinese Communism was in a state of continuing external and internal struggle. So that's the ideological frame. Within that ideological frame, however, there have been massive adjustments. You know historically, through the 35 years of Deng, Jiang and Hu, where their conclusion was to put that struggle to one side and unleash the factors of production to grow the Chinese economy and work within the U.S.-led rules-based system in order to achieve our own national wealth and power over time. And then let's reappraise what we then do next.

"Strategically and ideologically, the United States has been identified for a hundred years as an ideological adversary—representing the old, decaying order of global liberal capitalism."

Whereas with Xi Jinping what I see in the ideological literature – and here I'm just quoting from the primary sources in the Party's theoretical journal, which is called Seeking Truth [Qiushi]– is without explicitly naming the United States it's quite clear that the period of external struggle continues, and not just in terms of systems, but in terms of frameworks for the international system as well. What the Chinese under Xi Jinping have called the struggle for the future of the international system. Within that ideological and strategic frame, there are opportunities for tactical political pragmatism, to use the term you used before. and Xi Jinping will constantly adapt and adjust according to circumstances. But we should be under very little illusion that the Chinese Communist party sees the United States and the set of alliances the United States has historically led and, more importantly, the democratic political system and the liberal capitalist economic system that we proclaim as anything other than ideologically opposed to the underlying worldview of the CCP.

Octavian Report: So what are the short, medium and long-term foreign policy goals for Xi?

Kevin Rudd: I would categorize them probably in these terms: One, ensure that China's fourteen neighboring States are as compliant as possible to Chinese strategic interests and cause those states to become increasingly economically dependent on China and if they can, foreign policy compliant with China. And if you look at the surrounding fourteen from Russia down to Myanmar, there has been, from Xi's perspective, a high degree of success. Outside that, Xi sees as a second set of foreign policy objectives pushing the United States back from the Western Pacific and East Asia, so that the band of water within what is called the First Island Chain – the Japanese archipelago down to the Philippine archipelago and through the East China Sea, the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea – becomes increasingly uncontested Chinese waters. Let's call it a sphere of influence. And the Chinese would view that as an operation that is underway.

The third goal is, if you look not towards China's eastern maritime periphery but beyond, in the other direction, to its western continental periphery, the zone from which it has often historically faced real threats to its security from the time of Genghis Khan and the Mongols through to Russian territorial depredations in the seventeenth century under Peter the Great through to the present, they would see now Russia, Central Asia, and even the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. in China's economic and geopolitical sphere of influence as anchored in the Belt and Road initiative.

Then, if you go beyond that again to the rest of the world beyond the maritime periphery, the continental periphery, and the surrounding States, what you see in Xi Jinping's foreign policy priorities again is a parallel intention for China to become the indispensable economic power with Europe, with the rest of Asia, and certainly around Latin America and Africa. And again they would see themselves as having achieved reasonable progress with the Europeans. certainly with the Africans, certainly with the Latin Americans, certainly with the Southeast Asians, much more problematically with countries like India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, for example, and certainly America itself.

Then, finally, his set of foreign policy priorities would be a renewed effort, really, from 2015, to begin redesigning the institutions, norms and procedures of the institutions of global governance in a manner which is more compatible with Chinese interests and values. And we see that through Chinese diplomatic activism in the UN, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank. And in parallel institutions, which are sinocentric, like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Belt and Road initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization where China is seeking to redesign the institutions of multilateral governance in a direction more compatible with Chinese power, interests, and more importantly, values, and challenging the fundamental tenets of the liberal international system through its engagement in the deep ideational debates within the institutions of the United Nations and beyond.

I think it's important to see these as a series of concentric circles starting with the peripheral States, fourteen of them, moving to the maritime periphery, because that's where Taiwan is located, as well the continental periphery where China has had historical national security concerns with Central Asia and with Russia, and then with the rules of the international system. I think that's probably the best way to conceive of his priorities.

Octavian Report: How do they think about Ukraine and the warming U.S. relationship with Putin and Russia?

Kevin Rudd: I think there are two sets of considerations in China's mind, or Xi Jinping's analytical mind. Because there's no explicit literature from Xi Jinping on these questions, we need to deduce from other evidence as to how they view These questions.

“Less than a month ago, Xi Jinping finally brought Jack Ma back in from the cold.”

Number one, it's very important to understand why Xi Jinping cast his lot with Vladimir Putin in February of 2022 at the time of the original invasion of Ukraine. You remember the agreement of the “alliance without limits,” their meeting at the Beijing Winter Olympics before the invasion unfolded? And that's because, going back to what we discussed before about the importance of the continental periphery, China under Xi Jinping and under previous leaders, has seen enormous value in having a compliant Russian neighbor. If you look at the grand sweep of Russian and Chinese history, this has rarely been the case since the Russians moved across Siberia under Peter the Great. For 400 years this has been an adversarial relationship. The exception has been the ten years of Sino-Soviet cooperation between 1949 and 1959, and that blew up spectacularly. So from the grand sweep of history, in Xi's mind is this overriding imperative of having not just a benign border with the Russian Federation but also a Russia which is increasingly compliant to Chinese interests and dependent on Chinese economic largesse and foreign policy support and material support vis-a-vis certain aspects of the campaign in Ukraine. We need to understand the depth of the mutuality of these interests.

"Xi Jinping’s overriding imperative is to ensure Russia is increasingly compliant to Chinese interests and dependent on Chinese economic largesse."

The second factor is the Chinese at an analytical level will be acutely conscious of the reverse Nixonian strategic play of 1971, when Nixon and Kissinger, accommodated by Mao, in that period between the early Seventies and formal diplomatic recognition in 1979, were able to re-pivot, to then push strategically off balance the Soviet Union. Not just Mao, but Deng Xiaoping as well, both saw an international balance of power at the time moving in the Soviet Union's favor leading up to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and furthermore, China's problems on the Sino-Soviet border during the 1960’s. So the strategic analysis underpinning the pivot to the United States in the late 60’s through the 70’s was well entrenched in Chinese thinking. It wasn't simply the product of Nixonian, Kissingerian brilliance. The Chinese had actually navigated this through their own internal thought processes, and knew precisely what they were doing.

But here is the dilemma with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union: the underpinning strategic rationale for what had occurred effectively over the previous twenty years collapsed. There was no longer a deep Soviet threat to China because there was no longer a Soviet Union. And so what we've seen in some respects since that time is the unraveling of that strategic logic. There has been a parallel thirty-year period of economic accommodation with the United States as China became nationally more powerful. But the strategic assumptions underpinning the critical actions for Sino-U.S. normalization, rapprochement back in the 60’s and 70’s, had dissipated.

Which brings us thirdly to the present and how Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin view their current relationship, with or without the resolution of Ukraine. My argument is that both leaders see an enormous mutuality of continued strategic interest between them. Given that they still see external forces, including the United States, the Europeans, and others, as representing a different ideological, ideational, and frankly systemic challenge to the forms of government and the systems represented by those two countries, it will take a lot, a profound amount, to unshake the Russian Federation from those conclusions, in my judgment. So I leave to one side as to whether the Chinese are concerned about that analytically, they always are operating 360 degree radar. That's the nature of their system. I doubt at this stage they would see themselves as fundamentally concerned about the prospect of U.S.-Russian rapprochement.

Octavian Report: Many people are concerned with the events regarding Ukraine that it may embolden Xi to make a move on Taiwan. With everything going on, does he see this as an opportune moment to do invade?

Kevin Rudd: The Chinese analytical processes, anchored in the Central Military Commission, seek to incorporate all lines of analysis and all factors which impact on strategic decisions such as, for example, whether to pull the lever on unilateral military action over Taiwan. So they look at the surrounding foreign policy environment. They look at their own military and the Taiwanese military and the U.S. military and Allied militaries. They look at questions of domestic politics and domestic economic preparedness. They factor all these things in. It's a very complex piece of analysis. Before algorithm became a popular term in Western discourse in the last several years, the Sino-Soviet analytical world had developed their own set of algorithms for understanding where they stood in the world, in the power balance through what they used to call the correlation of forces in the Soviet system, or what the Chinese call comprehensive national power. A Chinese term for it is [Donghe Goulin]. This is a rolling set of analyses about where China stands in the power stakes in the region and in the world.

"Xi Jinping’s calculus has been that the risk is still too great to roll the dice on Taiwan.”

So when you look at Taiwan scenarios, it's not just waking up one morning and saying, Well, how do I feel? It is grounded in deep analyses of changes in the underlying power structures of the international system and how those manifest regionally. So within that frame, what are the three big factors?

Number one is China's calculation of Taiwan's own military capabilities and Taiwan's preparedness to fight. Because, remember, this is the first line of military contact. Think through the Ukrainian analogy. It was Ukrainian forces interdicting Russian forces on the road to Kyiv which effectively stopped the Russian advance. It was not through any other level of foreign intervention.

Number two is Xi Jinping's analysis of China's own military preparedness. And it's important to understand that back in 2015, he said to the Chinese military leadership you need to have prepared a set of capabilities that will be able to execute a Taiwan military mission by 2027. So he gave them 12 years to do it, and there is no evidence that the Chinese military leadership has done anything other than assiduously build up those capabilities, prepare them, exercise them, and now rehearse them.

I think the third set of considerations is the Central Military Commission's calculation of U.S. military preparedness, capabilities. and political will to deploy those capabilities in a fight, the key to deterrence. And that is the deep axiom at play. Here is Xi's calculus about Taiwanese, American and Allied military preparedness, military capabilities and political resolve: so far deterrence has worked because Xi Jinping's calculus has been that the risk is still too great to roll the dice. How that evolves over the next several years is difficult to predict. I call it the “shaving mirror test of Xi.” I wake up in the morning. I have a shave. I'm looking in the shaving mirror at Zongnanhai, which is the Chinese equivalent of the White House. And I look in that mirror and say, “Can I get away with it today?” The success of deterrence really over the last seventy-five years has been to cause successive Chinese leaders to conclude that the risk is too great. That remains the case as of today. But we watch carefully how this evolves in the immediate years ahead given. We're approaching the military preparedness deadline he set a decade ago.

Octavian Report: How does Xi view Donald Trump?

Kevin Rudd: I think his view is one of deep respect for President Trump's power. Remember Xi Jinping is a Marxist. Marxist-Leninist parties are deep respecters of the power of the State and the power of leaders within the State. When he looks at President Trump, he looks at a powerful leader who is now president of what he's always known to be a powerful country, as well as commander-in-chief of an exceptionally powerful U.S. military. Secondly, I think he would also conclude that that there is, based on President Trump's own documentary record, a preparedness to respond to a Chinese action over Taiwan, which the President has said in multiple public interviews. That “the United States under his leadership, could do anything.” That actually is quite a powerful deterrent message. And so, therefore, my argument is that at present deterrence continues to hold. For those reasons it's important to look at the essence of these things rather than get distracted by too much of the ephemera of public commentary.

"Xi Jinping respects Trump’s power. Marxist-Leninist parties deeply respect the power of the state, and Trump has demonstrated his willingness to use that power."

Octavian Report: Mao used to very like flippantly talk about the use of nuclear weapons. When you look at the nuclear buildup in China, and AI and other kind of similarly frightening technologies, do you think they are a dangerous power?

Kevin Rudd: It's important that the United States and its allies understand full well not just our own doctrines of deterrence, but China's doctrines of deterrence as well, which are alive within their own literature. And therefore, where they see the active use of their armed forces, both conventional and nuclear, as their own instruments of both deterrence and what the strategic literature would also call “compellence.” I've done recently a series of lectures on Chinese concepts of deterrence. And the reason I've done that is to try and enter into the Chinese strategic military mind rather than simply projecting that U.S. or collective Western assumptions of deterrence automatically apply because the logic is universal.

If you look into their own literature, there are a couple of key distinctions with what we define as deterrence. The Chinese term for deterrence is called weishe. We assume that equals Western deterrence, which is causing your opponent or adversary to conclude that the risks of doing something like invading Taiwan are far greater than the rewards that could be yielded from that action so as to deter you, or, as it were, prevent you from embarking upon that action in the first place. So that's what we understand by deterrence.

And we assume that when the Chinese use the word weishe, they mean the same thing. That's where some of this gets lost in translation. Because weishe includes all that I've just said, but it also includes what Westerners separately categorize as compellence. Which is, if the initial act of deterrence has failed and the other side continues to do things which you wanting to stop, not prevent, but then stop, then Chinese military doctrine involves levels of kinetic escalation (that is use of force at a lower level) to communicate clearly that this these actions must stop. That forms also a part of the Chinese concept of deterrence which we do not share as a concept. We would define that as deterrence having failed, whereas they see this as part of a continuum within their doctrine of deterrence. So it's important we're aware of that, because that goes immediately into conflicting doctrines of escalation management as seen from China, on the one hand, versus the United States on the other. Where sliding through the conflict prevention phase through to the conflict management phase is seamless whereas in our worldview these are seen as radically different missions.

"We now see in China a debate unfolding about whether their longstanding 'no first use' nuclear doctrine should be made more ambiguous."

On the question of China's nuclear arsenal, what concerns many of us in the collective West is the decision in recent years by Xi Jinping to modernize the arsenal, make it more mobile. That is, make it harder to target and also to expand its size. We do not yet know fully the expanded size of this arsenal. And there is a parallel debate within China about changing its own nuclear doctrine, which historically has been no first use. That is a declaratory position that the purpose of China's nuclear arsenal is only to respond to an attack from elsewhere using nuclear weapons and to retain sufficient second strike capability in order to inflict unacceptable damage on the adversary in order to deter them from launching any first strike in the first place. What we now see in the Chinese literature is a debate unfolding about whether that nuclear doctrine should be changed and made more ambiguous for the future. We do not know where that's going to land, nor do we know the precise force structure in nuclear weapons the Chinese will have in the years ahead, because that, too, is growing and changing. But it should give us all pause for concern, as we understand how that potentially fits within Chinese doctrines of escalation, escalation management and broader deterrence/compellence.

Octavian Report: Looking at Europe at the moment, and what has been the undermining of NATO in a very, very rapid manner, if you think about the Pacific and China, and our allies like Australia, Korea and Japan, do you think the West can survive without United States leadership? Does Xi see U.S. pulling out of the Pacific?

Kevin Rudd: First of all, as I said before, the Chinese leadership, in my observation looking at the literature, and discussions with Chinese officials, conclude that President Trump is, in fact, a strong political, and prospectively a strong military leader. As I said before, it's important not to the distracted too much by the excited nature of a whole lot of surrounding political commentary.

Second, on the question of NATO, It reminds me of Mark Twain. Rumors of my death have been both premature and exaggerated. The North Atlantic Treaty continues to exist. It's an American statute. NATO organizations continues to exist. Trip deployments continue to exist. And on the upside, despite recent political frictions, European NATO military contributions and budgets are on the increase. And frankly, that's been a response to President Trump's critique over a long period of time.

In the Indo-Pacific, if you look across Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, the three principal American allies in East Asia, each of these military budgets has been increasing over a long period of time. In Australia, for example, we've been well north of 2% of GDP on defense for some period of time. The AUKUS agreement whereby we are buying and then building nuclear powered attack class submarines is already well underway. The quadrilateral strategic partnership between Japan, India, Australia, and the United States is well underway. Trilateral collaboration between the ROK, Japan and the United States is well underway.

"Rumors of NATO’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific remain strong."

So when we put aside all the noise of the current political debate and look at the substance of these strategic arrangements, they remain in place. And, in fact, the first action of Secretary of State Rubio, the day he was sworn in, was to convene a meeting of the Quad foreign ministers in Washington. So I think it's important not to be swept away by headlines on these questions. It's important to keep our eye fixed on the reality beneath the headlines.

I'm not being Pollyannaish here about the reality of political frictions. They exist. We've seen many of them on display recently. But underpinning strategic arrangements with NATO and Europe, underpinning strategic arrangements with U.S. Indo-Pacific allies and partners remain in place, and in many respects are being strengthened.

So I go back to Mark Twain's cautionary tale. Yes, there are tensions. Yes, there are challenges. Yes, there are difficulties to be resolved most acutely over Ukraine, as you've seen in the disagreements of last week. But let us not reach grand conclusions about each of these, when the underlying strategic realities have not fundamentally changed.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

These comments are made in Mr. Rudd’s capacity as a private scholar of China and not in his capacity as Australian Ambassador to the United States.