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 Sixth, Beijing allocates extraordinary sums to internal security. The PRC refers to these expenses, which include central-government and regional-level costs, as “national domestic security spending.” One open-source analysis suggests that China directs approximately 18% more to internal security than to external defense. PRC spending on national domestic security grew from 348.6 billion RMB ($57.2 billion) in 2007 to 1.24 trillion RMB in 2017 ($197 billion in nominal dollars). These estimates “exclude billions of dollars spent on security-related urban-management and surveillance initiatives” even as China’s lower wages and costs “render Chinese security capabilities much higher per dollar spent” than U.S. security spending.

Seventh, China’s military lacks popular legitimacy. The PLA’s purpose is to fight for the CCP, not the people. Consistent with Mao’s motto, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” the party presides over military decision-making. Nevertheless, as the PLA has modernized, ideological conviction within the ranks has declined while corruption has increased. Xi has sought to restore party allegiance — more specifically, allegiance to him — by reinstituting mandatory ideological training and purging the military’s most senior generals. The “re-redding” that the PLA must frequently undergo highlights the tension between the party’s need for a professional military and its demand for unquestioned loyalty.

Eighth, the CCP faces questions about leadership succession. Uncertainty surrounds the person who will follow Xi Jinping as China’s paramount leader. The party’s practices under Xi have diverged from the CCP’s norms for leadership succession established after Deng Xiaoping. Whereas in the past, the party would have given some indication at this point in the paramount leader’s tenure as to his successor, that question remains under Xi shrouded in mystery.

Ninth, China’s conduct of foreign affairs generates distrust abroad. According to an October 2020 Pew Research Center survey, “Views of China have grown more negative in recent years across many advanced economies, and unfavorable opinion has soared over the past year.” Before the global pandemic, Beijing faced a backlash from foreign capitals springing from its authoritarian schemes of economic co-optation and coercion, intellectual-property theft, rejection of reciprocal treatment, lack of transparency, and egregious human rights abuses. The global pandemic has amplified international discontent with the PRC. The new coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan in late 2019 quickly spread to peoples and nations around the globe, Rh