I think the intention was clear? To have the US back down. China wants to be the dominant power in Asia. It despises the US alliance (Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia) that projects force along the entire Pacific Rim. However, much of China's growth is dependent on trade with the US and its allies. So it's in a bit of a pickle.
Xi thought China could win the political battle without losing the economic one. He assumed the alliance would split apart, and the US would be forced to back down. At that point China would be free to project it's power across most of Asia without interference from the West. Whether that's taking back Taiwan, or at least the entirety of the nine-dash line islands. The US or any other foreign vessel couldn't transit the South China sea without the OK from China.
He tried to pick off the members of the alliance one by one (the trade battle with Australia is a great example), but failed. Eventually the US and other nations said "enough is enough" and instituted sanctions on China. In addition private companies decided the political uncertainty was too high a risk. Combine that with the demographic bomb the country is facing, the debt-bomb from Chinese real estate and Xi realized he lost his gamble. The Chinese economy couldn't survive long enough under sanctions for China to win the political battle.
But to be honest, he burned too many bridges. The Chinese economy is struggling. The embargo on technology is going to hurt China way more than it hurts the West. He came to San Francisco in hopes of repairing enough of the relationship as to not entirely sink the Chinese economy.
It's not that clear and much more complex. If you follows the whole history of China's foreign policy, it's surprisingly consistent and the focus is never "competing with someone".
To the topic of ‘Wolf Warriors’, the policy dropped as early as May 2021 so it's highly possible that the change itself is not economic related (https://thediplomat.com/2022/01/is-china-putting-wolf-warrio...). The targeted audience (of the foreign policy) may not be the West, but global south. There is a paper (I'm too lazy to find the link) claim that the ‘Wolf Warriors’ rhetoric used by China's diplomats in non-west country doesn't change much.
If you are intrested in the changes under Xi, Kevin Rudd has a series of deep analysis: https://viet-studies.net/kinhte/WorldAccordingtoXi_FA.pdf. Generally China's decision making process doesn't care too much about winning or competing or any particular goal especially in short term. They are based on long-term analisys of "what will happen inevitably" and back track from that conclusion. Many of these decisions make no sense from West's perspective under a cost-benefit analysis.
Your article by Kevin Rudd (which is quite interesting) lays out some of the same ideas that I shared.
>"Xi’s ideological beliefs have committed China to the goal of building what Xi describes as a “fairer and more just” international system—one anchored in Chinese power rather than American power"
>"Xi has communicated to the party a crystal-clear message: China is much more powerful than it ever was, and he intends to use this power to change the course of history."
This being in the underlying goal (or as your put it - inevitability) of China being the predominant power in Asia.
>"But Xi is not completely secure. His Achilles’ heel is the economy"
And this comment reflecting the idea that he can only accomplish all this with a strong economy. And with the string of bad news coming out of China lately, one can't help but noticed Xi's much more conciliatory tone in the past few months compared with the image of a couple years back.
I think his point is not that this being the underlying goal. Instead the China’s foreign policy is designed based on the analysis that inevitably at some point, China will be the predominant power in Asia. The policy is not designed to realize the goal, but prepare / accommodate the inevitable future (which makes no sense from a cost-benefit model because you do something for the sake of its result).
> one can't help but noticed Xi's much more conciliatory tone in the past few month
It maybe more relates to the fact that diplomas advocating for a more hawkish foreign policy being slowly wiped out from the power centre after mid 2021. Though a full swing policy change may only possible after the first plenary session of the 20th Central Committee (which was October 2022).
Xi never hides that he is just reading what was decided within the party for many of these foreign policies. SCMP has reported that during the Xi-Biden meeting for any issue not directly related to China, he will read the notes.
I would argue the 2nd quote directly contradicts the idea that the policy is to just "prepare". From the article I got the sense in the "inevitability of the triumph of Marxism over capitalism", not necessarily that China will rise to be a power regardless of what it does.
It’s inevitable because of the CCP’s leadership and the objective conditions by their analysis. Remember CCP is an ideological party which means core party members do believe CCP as a party is more important than anyone including Xi. All decisions are made because the party’s ideology, not because anyone’s personal decision.
It doesn’t make sense from outside the party as I said so I think your feeling is probably why Kevin Rudd is lobbying in both U.S and Australia for better understanding the situation.
Also you can only go so far ideologically before stopped by the reality (or vice versa in realism because ideology is a larger part of our self-identity). A more ideological CCP only means they are more willing to afford the cost, push as far as they can, and retreat a little bit after over doing it. IMO cost-benefit analysis (or usually, who is the winner / the winning scenario) isn’t very helpful in such context because that’s not CCP’s calculation.
