China’s rage machine: Power or performance?
by Miles Yu · The Washington TimesOPINION:
The Chinese Communist Party is shouting again.
In recent weeks, Beijing has issued a fresh round of “stern warnings” to the United States, mainly over Taiwan, Venezuela, Iran and Washington’s broader global role.
The language is familiar, almost ritualistic. Military exercises with countries near Taiwan were described as a “stern warning” against “external interference.” U.S. actions in Latin America and the Middle East were condemned as “dangerous and irresponsible moves with punishing consequences.” Chinese officials cautioned against a return to the “law of the jungle.”
Taken at face value, this rhetoric, days before President Trump’s visit to Beijing, suggests a rising power prepared to confront the United States across multiple fronts.
Still, the louder Beijing becomes, the more it reveals the limits of its position. The Chinese Communist Party’s outrage is not a sign of confidence but a symptom of constraint.
Consider the geography of China’s complaints. In the Persian Gulf, where Beijing now lectures Washington about restraint, it is the United States that controls the sea lanes, deploys carrier strike groups and enforces blockades.
In Latin America, where China routinely condemns “interference,” it is still the United States that defines the strategic environment. Beijing habitually issues its most strident warnings on the Taiwan Strait, yet nearly eight decades later, American power, combined with regional allies, remains the central deterrent to conflict.
In each of these arenas, China is not the dominant actor; rather, it is more like an outsider.
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Still, Beijing speaks as if it were the guarantor of global order, the equal, or even the superior, of the United States. This dissonance between rhetoric and reality is not accidental. It is the core feature of CCP statecraft.
The party cannot afford to sound weak because its legitimacy and survival rest on the supreme fantasy of infallibility and invincibility. Any hint of hesitation or limitation risks puncturing that illusion, both at home and abroad. So it compensates with volume.
Every U.S. action becomes a provocation. Every policy becomes “hegemonic.” Every disagreement triggers a warning. The phrases repeat with mechanical precision: “external interference,” “serious consequences,” “firm opposition.”
Yet repetition has a cost. Over time, it hollows out meaning. A “stern warning” that is constantly issued ceases to warn. A threat that is never acted upon becomes background noise. The CCP’s rhetoric, once intended to intimidate, now increasingly signals something else: a lack of viable options.
This is especially evident in Taiwan. Beijing insists that the island is a “core interest,” a nonnegotiable red line, even though merely 6.4% of Taiwanese people consider themselves “Chinese.”
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Beijing condemns U.S. involvement as illegitimate “external interference.” It stages increasingly elaborate military exercises designed to simulate blockades or strikes.
Yet the fundamental reality remains unchanged. Taiwan is not under CCP control. The United States continues to support the island democracy. Regional deterrence still holds. As the latest demonstrations of U.S. military dominance in lethality, electronic warfare, counterstrike capability and, above all, the U.S. Navy’s blockade and counterblockade superiority in sustained large-scale operations, the CCP’s blatant threats against Taiwan and U.S. defense assistance sound increasingly anemic.
For all the noise, Beijing has not altered the strategic balance. It has only dramatized its frustration.
The same pattern applies beyond East Asia. China denounces U.S. military actions in the Middle East, warning against instability and unilateral force, but it lacks the capacity to replace the American security role it criticizes. Its influence remains selective, its power projection limited.
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Even in regions where China has expanded its economic footprint, such as Latin America, it continues to operate within a security architecture that is still overwhelmingly shaped by the United States.
This is the irony Beijing cannot escape. It condemns a global order it cannot yet displace. None of this means China is weak. Its military is growing. Its technological capabilities are advancing. Its global ambitions are clear. Still, ambition is not the same as dominance, and rhetoric is not the same as power.
The danger lies not in overestimating China’s strength but in misreading its signals. Too often, Washington and its allies treat Beijing’s language as evidence of imminent escalation, responding with caution or hesitation. That is precisely the reaction the CCP seeks to induce.
In reality, the pattern suggests something different. Beijing escalates rhetorically because it is constrained operationally. It raises the temperature in words because it cannot always do so in action.
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Understanding this distinction is critical.
The appropriate response to Beijing’s latest warnings is not alarm, and certainly not concession. It is steadiness. The United States should absolutely continue to support Taiwan without apology, maintain its presence in key regions and strengthen alliances that reinforce deterrence. It should take China’s capabilities seriously, but not its theatrics.
Every time Washington holds firm in the face of these warnings, the gap between Beijing’s rhetoric and reality becomes more apparent. Every time it wavers, that gap narrows.
The CCP’s greatest strength has never been its military or its economy. It has been the willingness of others to take its claims at face value and assume that its declarations reflect an underlying inevitability. That assumption is increasingly untenable.
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What we are seeing is not the quiet confidence of a secure power but the amplified voice of a regime that must project strength to conceal its limits. The tiger is still roaring, but the sound is beginning to ring hollow, more like the passive-aggressive wail of an aging and irascible panda.
• Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute. His “Red Horizon” column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.