In 2020, a former senior Chinese Communist Party official warned of six major risks facing China, including a dramatic deterioration in US-China relations, supply-chain disruption, financial decoupling, and a global food crisis.
Commentator Seki Hei argued that China itself had created its worsening external environment and that the fundamental problem was its complete absence of self-reflection.
The argument remains relevant amid continuing technology controls, economic de-risking, and geopolitical tensions in 2026.

July 17, 2020
It is perfectly clear that China itself has created the causes of the deterioration in its external environment.
China’s despair lies precisely in its complete lack of self-reflection concerning those causes.
On July 3, the Global Times, a newspaper affiliated with the People’s Daily, published a noteworthy article.
Its author was Zhou Li, a former Vice Minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
The article was entitled, “Let Us Make Six Preparations for the Deterioration of the External Environment.”
The International Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee is responsible for dealing with foreign political parties and political organisations.
It also advises the Party on foreign policy and international decision-making.
Because Zhou formerly served as a vice minister of that department and is a senior figure well versed in international affairs and diplomacy, his article on the “deterioration of the external environment” attracted considerable attention.
The principal points of the article, which identified six areas in which China’s external environment was deteriorating and called for preparations to meet them, were as follows.
First, China should prepare for a dramatic deterioration in US-China relations and a comprehensive escalation of the struggle between the two countries.
Second, China should prepare for shrinking external demand and the fragmentation of supply chains.
Third, China should prepare for the spread of the novel coronavirus to become a permanent condition.
Fourth, China should prepare for the decoupling of the renminbi from the US dollar.
Fifth, China should prepare for the outbreak of a global food crisis.
Sixth, China should prepare for a resurgence of international terrorist organisations.
Zhou’s reference to a “comprehensive escalation of the struggle between the United States and China,” in connection with the “dramatic deterioration” of bilateral relations, is particularly interesting.
In the view of this former senior Communist Party official, the relationship between the United States and China has already moved beyond what would ordinarily be described as a “confrontation.”
It has reached the level of a “struggle.”
The Chinese side’s perception of the gravity of the US-China conflict is therefore more serious than we may have imagined.
The second aspect of the “deterioration of the external environment” raised by Zhou was the combination of “shrinking external demand” and the “fragmentation of supply chains.”
This refers to the contraction of the international markets upon which Chinese exports depend and to the movement of many global companies to withdraw or relocate their production bases from China.
Both developments are naturally inflicting serious damage upon the Chinese economy and causing grave domestic unemployment problems.
Zhou also warned about the adverse effects upon China, a major food-importing country, of worldwide food shortages arising from the effects of the novel coronavirus and locust damage in Africa and the Middle East.
He further warned of the danger that international Islamic forces connected with Uyghurs in Xinjiang might direct terrorist attacks against China.
Viewed as a whole, the article may be regarded as an expression of the Communist Party elite’s acute sense of crisis concerning the deterioration of China’s external environment.
To use a four-character Chinese idiom, China appears to be “besieged on all sides.”
At the same time, Zhou’s article entirely lacks any analysis of the causes of this deterioration.
Still less does it contain any reflection upon the fact that the deterioration was originally brought about by China’s own misconduct and acts of aggression.
The underlying logic of Zhou’s argument is the characteristically Chinese claim that everyone else is at fault and that China itself has done nothing wrong.
Without an objective analysis of the causes and without self-reflection, however, it is impossible to improve the deteriorating situation.
On the contrary, the self-righteous attitude that “we have done nothing wrong” is likely to cause an even greater deterioration in China’s external environment.
Indeed, only a few days before the publication of Zhou’s article, the Chinese government forcibly imposed the extraordinary and pernicious Hong Kong National Security Law.
By doing so, it further deepened its confrontation with the United States and Britain, provoked opposition throughout the developed Western world, and was likely to encourage international capital and corporations to accelerate their movement away from China.
It is perfectly clear that China itself has created the causes of the deterioration in its external environment.
China’s despair lies precisely in its complete lack of self-reflection concerning those causes.