China's Three Global Initiatives and the Arrival of an Alternative Globalism

Xi Jinping's “Chinese Dream” is about realizing “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” This dream denotes an ambitious schema that includes both intangible aspirations and tangible agendas pertaining to domestic political culture, political economy and the country's place in the world. Thus, it has several aspects, providing vast opportunities for intellectual exploration. Culture is a fundamental aspect that provides resources to make the dream appealing, and it has been a quite complex theme in communist China. Suffice to say, the quest for “socialist spiritual civilization” that began in the early 1980s seems to have culminated in a Chinese exceptionalism that inspires Xi's “Chinese Dream.” Essentially, this exceptionalism believes in the inherent goodness and greatness of Chinese culture and nation and strives to introduce Chinese power as a fundamentally different power that is a morally superior alternative to US power. Indeed, China has had a tradition of this moralizing streak. However, previously, during the Maoist period, it was expressed in socialistic terms, whereas, at present, under Xi Jinping, the reliance is heavily on what the contemporary Chinese discourse terms as “fine traditional Chinese culture” to highlight the so-called inherent goodness and greatness. The rise of Chinese power makes the projection of this belief a much more serious affair in the present than ever before. Xi has turned out to be a great adherent and proponent of this belief. In this chapter, the author argues that Xi, through his three global initiatives—the Global Development Initiative (2021), the Global Security Initiative (2022), and the Global Civilization Initiative (2023)—takes his “Chinese Dream” forward to the world stage, declaring the arrival of an alternative global power. The author contextualizes the three global initiatives in Xi's “Chinese Dream” foreign policy and analyzes the reach and limitations of the presentation of China as an alternative global power.