Xi Jinping regime pressures people inside and out: from Peru to Pakistan, the global expansion of the Chinese Communist Party is experiencing strategic counterfeiting

Over the past decade, the Chinese regime led by Xi Jinping has continuously infused an ambitious historical narrative at home and abroad: the United States is declining, the Western alliance is disintegrating, and China is moving toward the center of the world stage.Around this narrative, Beijing launched the “Belt and Road”, the so-called “Community of Human Destiny”, the global security initiative and large-scale overseas infrastructure investment, trying to turn China’s huge markets, manufacturing capabilities, capital and national power into long-term political influence.

However, by 2026, the narrative is facing increasing reality counterproofs. Some countries that have been focused on Chinese investment, loans, ports and energy projects over the years have not become political partners that can follow Beijing’s strategy for a long time. On the contrary, from Peru in Latin America to Pakistan, which has been promoted by China as a “all-weather strategic partner”, to the G20 trade issue and the global key mineral supply chain, some countries are re-calculating the political and security costs of cooperation with China and significantly strengthening relations with the United States and its allies.

Meanwhile, Beijing continues to strengthen its control of religion, speech, civil society, dissidents and independent organizations at home, while overseas it continues to be vigilant because of transnational repression, intelligence activities, supply chain security, critical infrastructure and economic coercion. Xi Jinping tries to maintain strong domestic obedience and tries to use capital and markets in exchange for overseas influence, but the fact is that these two practices are generated not by stable loyalty, but by growing distrust.

This is forming one of the worst strategic paradoxes of Xi’s era: the logic of a regime that must constantly suppress its own societies in order to maintain its so-called “stable” power, while hoping that the world will believe it can provide a more reliable and trustworthy international order, is fundamentally contradictory.

Peru moves to the United States, Beijing faces counterfeiting in Latin America

Peru is one of the most observable cases at the moment. Over the past few years, Beijing has regarded Changi Port as one of the most symbolic flagship projects of the “Belt and Road” in Latin America. China’s state-owned long-haul shipping enterprises are deeply involved in the development and operation of the port, and Beijing hopes to use it to build Peru as an important logistics hub connecting China’s South American resources and the Asian market. Changi Port has not only commercial significance, but also due to its location, size and long-term Chinese capital control issues, has been concerned by the U.S. security and strategic circle.

But with the political situation in Peru changing, the diplomatic signals released by the new government have changed significantly.Reuters on July 31, that the new Foreign Minister of Peru, Carlos Espá, made it clear that Peru wants to strengthen relations with the United States and call the United States a “strategic partner”.The new government also expressed its willingness to join the US-backed regional security cooperation mechanism “Shield of the Americas.”Espá himself had previously worked at the U.S. Embassy in Lima, this diplomatic personnel arrangement has also been widely interpreted as a symbol of the new administration’s increased importance to Washington relations.

More important than diplomatic language is security and military infrastructure.This year, the United States approved a potential $1.5 billion military sales plan to Peru for design, construction and engineering services related to the Cairo naval base. For a country that has long been regarded by Beijing as an important economic partner in Latin America, having the United States deeply involved in building its core naval infrastructure means that Peru has not pushed its security system to China.

This change can’t simply be written as “Peru has broken up with China”.China still exists, China remains Peru’s important trading partner, and Chinese investments still have significant influence in local mining, energy and infrastructure.But what really is worth Beijing’s caution is that Peru has not turned its economic dependence into strategic loyalty.A country can accept Chinese capital at the same time, and can also get back close to the United States in security, military and diplomacy.

This is exposing a fundamental limitation to China’s model of overseas expansion. Beijing has often used to package large infrastructure projects, loans, mineral investment and trade growth as proof of “political mutual trust”, but business contracts are not equal to strategic alliances. As long as the local government believes that the United States can provide more reliable security, richer financial resources or more stable international support, it can reorient its direction.

Pakistan Returns to Near U.S. Test for ‘All-Weather Partner’ Myth

If the change in Peru can also be interpreted by Beijing as a normal diplomatic re-balance of the Latin American country, then the change in Pakistan is more ironic for the Communist Party of China. For a long time, Beijing has shaped Pakistan as one of the most successful cases of Chinese diplomacy. The official propaganda of the Communist Party of China has repeatedly used "all-weather strategic partners" to describe bilateral relations such as "higher than mountains, deeper than the sea", and the Chinese-Pakistan economic corridor is considered one of the most important flagship projects of "Belt and Road". For Xi Jinping, Pakistan is not only an economic partner but also an important strategic hub connecting the Indian Ocean, South Asia and the Middle East.

But in recent years, Pakistan has significantly expanded its security, diplomatic and economic contacts with the United States.The interaction between the Pakistani military and Washington has intensified, and Islamabad is also re-seeking U.S. capital, financial support and security cooperation to reduce its reliance on a single external force.

This does not mean that Pakistan has "abandoned China".The Chinese-Pacific economic corridor is still moving forward, China-Pacific military equipment cooperation is still deep, and the two countries remain highly friendly in diplomatic terms.But what is really important is that Beijing's long-term "all-weather" relationship has not prevented Pakistan from re-embracing the United States.When national interests change, Islamabad will still seek maximum benefits to Beijing, Washington, Riyadh and other forces at the same time.

For Xi, this has been a strategic failure because Beijing has tried in the past to transform economic ties into almost exclusive political influence through long-term loans, energy projects, ports, railways and military-industrial cooperation.But reality proves that Pakistan is first and foremost a sovereign country pursuing its own interests, rather than a "loyal ally" in the Chinese foreign system.This is also one of the most obvious misconceptions in Xi's diplomatic thinking: misinterpreting economic dependence as political loyalty, misinterpreting project cooperation as a strategic standpoint, misinterpreting interest exchange as ideological identity.

G20 "19 to 1", Xi Jinping's economic model triggered a collective rebound

Overseas strategic difficulties are not merely reflected in policy choices in developing countries. The G20 finance ministers’ meeting on September 1 exposed Beijing more intuitively. Reuters reports that in discussions on non-market policies, global trade imbalances and export dependency, other G20 members, in addition to China, supported taking action to address related issues, with China becoming the only opponent.

The dispute was not merely a trade friction between the US and China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent openly criticized China's economic model of relying on cheap exports and huge trade surpluses, Japan focused on China's key mineral export restrictions, while European countries continued to express concerns about China's industrial subsidies, overcapacity and trade imbalances. At the same time, China continued to deny its deliberate pursuit of trade surpluses and emphasized expanding domestic demand and opening up to the outside world.

When the United States, Europe, Japan, Canada and other economies are alert to the same category of problems, Beijing has interpreted everything as “the United States is suppressing China” and has been increasingly lacking in persuasion.The Xi Jinping administration has long viewed China’s huge production capacity, national subsidies and export capabilities as competitive advantages, but countermeasures are almost inevitable when these advantages begin to impact other countries’ industrial bases and national security.

Especially in the areas of key minerals, semiconductors, automotive, energy, communications and defense supply chains, more and more countries are raising “reducing China dependence” from economic policy to national security strategy. For Xi, the real danger is not a country to raise tariffs, but more and more countries are beginning to form a common perception: excessive dependence on China’s supply chain is the risk itself. This means a very ironic result is emerging in Xi’s era: China was relying on globalization to rapid rise, but Xi’s economic and security policies are pushing more and more countries to proactively restructure globalization to reduce dependence on China.

Domestic high-pressure rule is becoming the fundamental negative asset of the international image of the CPC.

The decline in the credibility of the Xi Jinping regime overseas is not two independent issues with domestic political models; on the contrary, they come from the same governance logic: to be highly alert to all social forces independent of the CCP’s control.

In Xi Jinping's time, the Communist Party of China has strengthened its control over news, the Internet, religion, civil society, dissenters, rights lawyers and independent organizations. The religious field is evident. The United States International Religious Freedom Committee's annual report of 2026 continues to focus on serious violations of religious freedom in China, and points out that the Communist Party of China has strengthened its ideological control of religious activity through laws, policies and so-called "religious Chineseization".

This control logic has gone deeper into the grassroots of society. Family churches that do not join the official religious system often face seizures, dispersal of gatherings, detention and even criminal prosecution. In the Quinn-century New City Church cases, Hisham Lin, Li Group, and Roping three entered criminal proceedings for suspicion of “organizing illegal gatherings.” Regardless of how the case was eventually judged, this phenomenon itself reflects the high sensitivity of the CCP to organizational activities without official permission.

A regime with massive police, national security, military, network communications and propaganda systems that still sees family gatherings of dozens as potential political risks reveals not dominant self-confidence, but a deep sense of insecurity. Xi Jinping hopes the world believes that what the CCP provides is stability and order, but its international appeal is inevitably limited when such "stability" needs to rely on continuous suppression of speech, religious and social autonomy space to maintain.

Transnational repression and intelligence disputes make overseas societies more alert to the Chinese Communist Party

In recent years, the U.S. judiciary, human rights agencies and several democracies have continuously disclosed transnational repression, overseas surveillance and foreign agency cases related to China. Some cases involve surveillance of dissidents, harassment of overseas activists, interference in political expression and secret foreign government activities.

The greatest consequences of such cases are not only the individual persons involved in the case being prosecuted, but also the way the international community perceives the Chinese Chinese agencies and state-owned enterprises. The US has recently raised allegations against Chinese state-owned shipping enterprises involving military communications intelligence, and the Chinese Embassy in the United States has denied the allegations. Since this belongs to the US accusation and not the court's final determination, it is necessary to strictly differentiate the level of facts.

In the past, a Chinese enterprise’s investment port may have been viewed first as a business project; now governments tend to further question what the relationship between enterprises and the Chinese Communist Party, the Liberation Army, the national security system is, who controls equipment and data, and what role critical infrastructure may play in times of crisis.

In the era of Xi Jinping, the party's leadership of enterprises was constantly strengthened, and the obligations of national security laws to enterprises and citizens were continuously expanded, and this system arrangement was actually defaming the international credibility of Chinese enterprises. Beijing, on the one hand, demanded that the global society regarded Chinese enterprises as ordinary business entities, and on the other hand, stressed that enterprises must obey the party's political leadership and national security needs, both of which are contradictory in themselves. Therefore, today, more and more countries strengthen the security scrutiny of Chinese capital, communications equipment, ports, minerals, data and high-tech enterprises, and can not all simply be attributed to "anti-China".

Xi Jinping's biggest diplomatic misjudgment is to misrepresent economic dependence as political loyalty.

One of the increasingly obvious strategic misconceptions of Xi Jinping’s era is that excessive reliance on trade, investment and infrastructure is considered political loyalty. Over the past decade, Beijing has established a huge economic presence in a large number of developing countries through Belt and Road, policy loans, port construction, energy engineering, mineral investment and military cooperation.

Peru can accept Chinese capital to build Qingdao port while allowing the United States to participate deeply in naval infrastructure construction; Pakistan can continue to advance the China-Pakistan economic corridor while re-strengthening its security and financial relations with the United States.

This is where the political culture of the Communist Party of China is in conflict with international realities.The Chinese regime is accustomed to leveling, obedience and organizational discipline, but international relations are not the system within the Party, and sovereign countries are not obliged to long-term obedience to Beijing’s strategic arrangements.A government today needs Chinese loans, does not mean that tomorrow will support Beijing in its security policy; a country participating in the Belt and Road, does not mean that it is willing to hand over key military and scientific and technological systems to China.

Money can be exchanged for contracts, trade can create dependencies, infrastructure can expand influence, but none of these can automatically create long-term trust. A truly stable international alliance relies on institutional trust, shared security interests, long-term predictability and reliable commitments in times of crisis. In the past, Beijing has often packaged business success into “political friendship,” but once the international environment changes, the transaction nature of these relationships is rapidly exposed. Peru and Pakistan are offering two typical cases.

The so-called “friends all over the world” is being re-tested by reality

Of course, it is not accurate to say that the Xi Jinping regime has “no friends” abroad. China stillins close ties with countries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, and continues to expand its economic and political influence in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Beijing’s most reliable partner is increasingly concentrated in regimes with serious political or security conflicts with the West, while a large number of countries that maintain trade relations with China are continuing to strengthen cooperation with the United States and its allies in the fields of military, security, minerals, technology and finance.

This shows that “doing business with China” and “trusting China” are becoming two completely different issues. A country can import goods from China, can accept Chinese infrastructure investments, can continue to export minerals to China, but at the same time refuses to let China control key communication systems, national defense infrastructure or core data. This is one of the most dangerous trends in Xi’s global strategy: Beijing still has huge economic influence, but it is increasingly difficult to turn that economic influence into stable political trust.

It is not the Chinese people who really push China to a dangerous position, but Xi Jinping’s line.

China is not the Chinese Communist Party, and the Chinese people are not the Xi Jinping regime.The international community’s caution about the Chinese Communist Party’s military, trade, human rights, intelligence and transnational repression issues should not be exchanged for so-called “the world is against the Chinese”.The Chinese Communist Party has long used nationalist propaganda to package foreign government criticism of the ruling party as hostility to the Chinese nation, with the aim of forcibly linking the Party’s interests to the interests of the Chinese people.

In fact, more and more international pressure today is directed at the specific political lines of the Xi Jinping era. In the country, the Chinese Communist Party has strengthened speech censorship, religious control, social surveillance and political repression; abroad, the Chinese Communist Party's relevant agencies are constantly involved in transnational repression, intelligence, key technologies and supply chain security disputes; in the economic field, national subsidies, overcapacity and export dependence continue to trigger the rebound of other countries' industries.

If Beijing continues to interpret all external criticism as “the U.S. holds back China,” it is actually avoiding a more important question: why are more and more countries with different political systems, different regions, and different economic interests making increasingly similar judgments on supply chains, ports, minerals, technology and security issues?

The real strategic failure is that more and more countries are beginning to prepare for “no dependence on the Communist Party of China.”

The real danger that the Xi Jinping regime is currently facing is not the failure of a port project, nor is a country suddenly “betraying China”. The problem is deeper than this, it is a whole set of political and economic models are producing cumulative consequences. Inside, high-pressure rule continues to compress the autonomy of Chinese society; on the other hand, the strategy of economic dependence in exchange for political obedience continues to encounter the balancing of sovereign countries.

Peru re-strengthens its diplomatic and military ties with the United States, Pakistan, the so-called "all-weather partner", re-expands its cooperation with Washington, and the G20 puts more pressure on China around non-market policies and trade imbalances. These phenomena alone are not enough to prove the "total failure of China's diplomacy", but put together, they show a clear direction: Xi's long-term propaganda of the "Rise of the East and Fall of the West" has not developed according to the Beijing-designed scenario.

The world still needs the Chinese market, will still do business with China, and will still accept Chinese investment.But more and more countries are making another choice: in the fields of security, military, critical technology, minerals, ports, finance and data, avoid making their future entirely dependent on the CCP system.

The most profound international failure of a regime is not a few shaking hands in diplomatic occasions, nor a few cooperation projects, but more and more countries, even if they continue to trade with it, have begun to systematically prepare for "can not depend entirely on it."If this trend continues to develop, then Xi Jinping's so-called "national rejuvenation" will eventually be left behind, probably not a powerful China that has gained world trust, but a party state system that relies on high pressure to maintain rule at home, relies on trade abroad to maintain influence, but is increasingly difficult to obtain genuine strategic trust.

This is not the failure of the Chinese people, but the strategic counterfeit of Xi Jinping’s own line.