The silent rise: how China struggles for global control with “limitless warfare”
- Gabriele Iuvinale
- 7 giorni fa
- Tempo di lettura: 6 min
Since 2020, the world has entered a new era of great power competition, with China aiming for global hegemony in commerce and military affairs. Beijing leverages its economic power and internal authoritarianism to project influence. Its key strategy is "Liminal Warfare": a total conflict operating "below the threshold" of perception, combining economic, diplomatic, technological, and non-military means.
The weapons of this warfare include predatory mercantilism (control of supply chains, technology acquisition, industrial dominance), influence operations (United Front, assertive diplomacy), and internal authoritarianism (repression, surveillance). This strategy, extensively described in "Unrestricted Warfare," a 1999 essay by Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, aims to make states dependent and reshape the world order, raising growing concern from the United States and NATO, who identify China as a strategic threat.
February 24, 2020, marked the dawn of a new historical era with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, signaling the definitive return of great power competition and a broader wave of authoritarian power projection. In this context, China emerges as a central player, driven by a declared ambition for global hegemony. As early as 2012, President Xi Jinping proclaimed, "Our time has come: we Chinese are a global community with a shared future for humanity," announcing Beijing's aspiration to become the world's foremost power in both commerce and military might.
China's Economic Ascent and Its Risks
Over the past two decades, trade with China has boomed, offering the United States and the European Union lower consumer prices and higher corporate profits. However, this relationship has also generated significant risks, costs, and damages. Due to the sheer size of the Chinese economy, the enormous extent of government involvement, and the resulting distortions to the global economic order, the disruptions inflicted upon trading partners operating under free-market principles are immense.
To make other states more dependent and amenable to its new world order, Beijing employs every available tool to project strong power, seeking to infiltrate the "soft underbelly of democracies" and gain their acquiescence through hidden, coercive, and corrupt means. This combination of China's internal repression and its external ambition makes its growing global power, including military capabilities, particularly concerning.
The Nuclear Threat and "Mutual Assured Destruction" (MAD)
As is well known, China, Russia, the United States, and other countries possess nuclear weapons. This reality, termed Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), has thus far prevented conflicts from escalating to the threshold of nuclear war. However, the risk of escalation profoundly shapes their current strategies. While Beijing has rapidly bolstered its nuclear arsenals in recent years, its primary strategy for achieving global dominance in both trade and military affairs unfolds through "Liminal Warfare."
American Strategic Conception and "Liminal Warfare"
The American strategic conception of warfare relies on the evolution of technological dominance and the joint integration of land, naval, and air components. David Kilcullen suggests that this Western military evolution triggers a "survival instinct" and a subsequent "counter-evolution" in the strategies and tactics of adversaries, whether state actors (like Russia and China) or non-state actors (like terrorist groups such as the "Islamic State" and organized crime). "Liminal Warfare" fits within this counter-evolution.
In general, "Liminal Warfare" concerns "threshold manipulation." It is a style of warfare that involves "riding the edge of observability, not crossing the threshold of detectability." Much of this activity is "subliminal" (below the threshold of perception), making it difficult to even realize what is happening. The Chinese approach to liminal warfare also includes "conceptual envelopment," expanding the ideation of war to the point of being able to maneuver in a space outside our traditional definition of conflict. Unlike the Russians, who favor a more vertical escalation, the Chinese embrace horizontal escalation.
Drawing from millennia-old cultural art of deception, for the geopolitical and geo-economic purposes outlined above, China has been conducting its "Liminal Warfare" for years. The spectrum of competition and confrontation with the West is so broad that the battlefield is everywhere, and the war is total.
The Weapons of Chinese "Liminal Warfare"
he 1999 book "Unrestricted Warfare" (written by Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui) describes how controlling technological means, 5G systems, strategic real estate acquisitions, bridges, highways, and ports worldwide, as well as investments in critical supply chains and infrastructure, are all considered "trans-military" and "non-military" war operations. The authors discuss strategies that blend lethal and non-lethal, military and non-military means (including criminal networks or civilian organizations), combining them into a seamless architecture.
"Liminal Warfare" therefore implies the seamless integration of economic, diplomatic, geopolitical, legal, military, intelligence, and cyber policies into a single mix of activities and maneuvers. The goal is to define operations with the adversary before the launch of any potential military operation. To achieve this, Beijing leverages the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including its maritime and digital components, and macroeconomic plans devised by powerful planning commissions, also for implementing self-sufficiency and internal and external authoritarianism.
Global Expansion and International Reactions
China is pursuing an ambitious and profound strategy in its quest for global hegemony. It began by targeting emerging markets across Africa and Latin America, but also in the United States and Europe with its BRI. It focused on developing countries, adopting a soft power policy through seemingly benign offers to build infrastructure projects like ports, oil pipelines, and power plants, and even offering seemingly generous loans. The objectives are multifaceted: gaining control of crucial raw materials (e.g., cobalt in Congo, lithium in Chile), strategic territories such as maritime hubs (Djibouti at the southern end of the Red Sea and Suez in the north, Panama) to ensure access to the world's two largest markets (United States and Western Europe), and control over ports scattered across these countries (China now owns well over a hundred ports located in every maritime country globally).
The colossal trade deficit with China, which has reached an incredible $500 billion annually since its reawakening in 1980, has provided Beijing with trillions of dollars to acquire American and European companies.
This global rise of Sino-Russian authoritarianism has not gone unnoticed. The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) of the United States, drafted by the Pentagon, identified China as the number one "threat." Similarly, on June 29, 2022, NATO Heads of State and Government approved a new Strategic Concept in Madrid, defining the Alliance's priorities, core tasks, and approaches for the next decade. The Concept describes the security environment facing the Alliance and accuses China of pursuing "coercive policies" that threaten NATO's "interests, security, and values."
The Specific "Weapons" of "Liminal Warfare"
China has been conducting "Liminal Warfare" for years—an incremental war where the spectrum of competition and confrontation with the West is so vast that the battlefield is everywhere, and the war is total. In this logic, control of technological means, strategic infrastructure, and the most important global supply chains integrate "trans-military" and "non-military" war operations, as described in the 1999 book "Unrestricted Warfare."
To make states more dependent on Beijing and more amenable to "a new authoritarian world order with distinctive Chinese characteristics," Liminal Warfare includes economic, diplomatic, legal, military, intelligence, and cyber operations, implemented seamlessly. For this, Beijing uses every possible means.
Below is an overview:
Predatory Mercantilism:
State-controlled economy: State control to orient the economy for strategic purposes.
Acquisition of technology, intellectual property (IP), and know-how: Through coercive or secret means.
Control of vital international supply chains and essential goods.
Global industrial dominance: Especially in critical high-tech sectors and the global internet.
Extension of economic power also through "military vehicles": The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a tool for projecting influence.
Unlimited access to Western capital markets.
Exploitation of the freedom and openness of liberal democracies.
Overcapacity: Creation of excess production capacity to stifle competition.
(Dis)information campaigns: Targeted propaganda and misinformation.
Economic coercion: Use of economic leverage to compel other states to take specific actions.
Further asymmetric practices.
Influence Operations:
The "United Front" (UF) and the "Three Warfares" doctrine: Tools for political, psychological, and legal influence.
Use of international organizations and assertive diplomacy: Beijing actively seeks to use international institutions to advance its political preferences by introducing concepts like "community with a shared future," promoting the BRI, or redefining human rights.
Bilateral agreements and multilateral forums: Beijing exerts influence through alternative organizations and initiatives, particularly the BRI, promoting informal bilateral agreements.
Extension of sovereignty: Attempts to expand its jurisdiction.
Illegitimate possession of territories: Controversial territorial claims.
Authoritarianism for Maintaining Internal Stability:
Internal repression: Tight control over the country through systematic use of indoctrination, censorship, disinformation, and high-tech surveillance.
The "Drug War": An example of an internal campaign with international implications, such as in the case of Fentanyl.
In conclusion, China is pursuing a complex and multifaceted global strategy that goes far beyond traditional definitions of conflict, seeking to reshape the world order through both overt and subliminal means. This strategy, termed "Liminal Warfare," represents a profound challenge to Western democracies and requires an equally complex and integrated understanding and response.
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