China operates under a model of flexible authoritarianism. In this system, the central leadership sets broad strategic goals while granting state agents operational autonomy—within unwritten but well-understood boundaries—to pragmatically advance national interests.

For decades, scholars have described China’s political system and policy process through the lens of fragmented authoritarianism. According to this model, policymaking in China is shaped by a multitude of competing actors including central ministries, local governments, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), resulting in inconsistent, disjointed, and even chaotic governance. In recent years, the fragmented authoritarianism framework has also been applied to China’s international behaviour, with claims that foreign policy emerges from internal fragmentation and contestation rather than a coherent national strategy.

Our recent research suggests that this picture no longer holds true when it comes to foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Instead, we argue that China has moved toward a model better described as flexible authoritarianism. This model captures how China’s top leadership defines broad strategic goals, especially pertaining to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while granting operational autonomy to state agents to implement those goals within certain unwritten boundaries.

Why fragmented authoritarianism falls short

The fragmented authoritarianism model had the greatest explanatory value in the earlier decades of China’s reform era, particularly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. During this period, the central party-state pursued a strategy of decentralisation, deliberately delegating authority to provincial governments, ministries, and SOEs. This diffusion of power enabled local and corporate actors to experiment with policy implementation and economic initiatives. Rather than signalling a loss of control, it was a pragmatic effort to stimulate growth and innovation in what was previously a centrally planned economy.

Under Xi Jinping, however, power has been recentralised—not only back toward the central government, but more decisively to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself. The Party has reasserted its authority across all major sectors, from foreign policy to military, energy, and technology. While many observers continue to use fragmented authoritarianism to interpret not only China’s domestic, but also foreign policy, we believe it paints a misleading picture of disarray and policy incoherence. China may indeed appear inconsistent at times, but these apparent inconsistencies are often the result of deliberate strategic decisions intended to disorientate rivals, rather than being symptomatic of internal disunity.

Understanding the bounds of the permissible

What we identify instead is a top-down, yet flexible, system in which state agents—whether SOEs, ministries, the military, or even nominally private sector companies—are empowered to implement national strategy, provided they remain within the “bounds of the permissible.” These boundaries are not formally codified, but they are well understood through long-established Party norms, performance expectations, and the prevailing political climate.

Crucially, nearly all of the relevant decision-makers, such as the chairmen and senior executives of SOEs or senior military officers, hold CCP membership or occupy dual roles within the Party-state apparatus, ensuring that their loyalty is both expected and constantly reinforced. This internalisation of Party priorities means that actors are acutely aware of the limits of acceptable behaviour. When they transgress, for example, by engaging in corruption, damaging China’s international reputation, or drifting too far from strategic directives, they are swiftly disciplined or replaced. Take, for example, the CEFC case in the Czech Republic, in which senior figures at a private company which was supposed to promote Chinese interests were accused of corruption. They also failed to produce finance for agreed investments, necessitating their removal and the replacement of CEFC as China’s agent in the Czech Republic by an SOE. In such instances, the Party moves decisively to restore strategic alignment and reassert its ultimate authority.

Flexible authoritarianism, top-down yet adaptive

China’s approach is not rigid authoritarianism. Rather, the Chinese system under Xi blends top-down strategic direction with pragmatic, adaptive implementation. The South China Sea island-building campaign and China’s energy diplomacy both illustrate this. Multiple actors may be involved, and operational/tactical decisions may vary, but the overarching goals—expanding influence, securing energy, asserting sovereignty—remain tightly aligned with the CCP’s enduring vision. The unpredictability of certain actions by the military and other Chinese actors acting as agents of the state (such as coastguards) is part of an overall package intended to generate uncertainty and catch rival states off-guard.

In this sense, the model of flexible authoritarianism helps explain how the Chinese state can appear decentralised in practice while still pursuing a remarkably consistent and effective long-term strategy. If fragmentation were truly the defining feature of the system, leading to incoherence or even chaos, then it would be difficult to account for China’s consistent strategic focus and its demonstrable capacity to deliver outcomes such as sustained economic growth, technological innovation, and expanding soft power influence abroad.

A model with broader relevance?

We believe this model opens up new ways of thinking about authoritarian governance beyond China. Political scientist Anna Schwenck has recently applied the concept of flexible authoritarianism to contemporary Russia, describing how the state selectively adopts elements of neoliberalism to maintain control while fostering a sense of consensus. Our contribution builds on this foundation but shifts the focus to foreign policy implementation, where flexibility is less about societal consensus and more about enabling state agents to act pragmatically, within limits, in pursuit of strategic goals.

Flexible authoritarianism avoids simplistic binaries between rigid centralisation and institutional fragmentation and incoherence. It captures a mode of governance in which actors are empowered to innovate and seek profit, so long as their actions remain closely aligned with state-defined interests.

Rather than a fragmented struggle between competing interests, Xi’s China reveals a more coherent foreign policy architecture that balances control with certain amounts of flexibility and adaptation to ensure that state-backed actors take actions which fall within the bounds of the permissible.

This article draws on our peer-reviewed research published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs: Taylor, M., & Garlick, J. (2024). ‘Flexible’ versus ‘fragmented’ authoritarianism: evidence from Chinese foreign policy during the Xi Jinping era. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 79(2), 189–208.

Dr Monique Taylor is University Lecturer in World Politics at the University of Helsinki. Associate Professor Jeremy Garlick is based in the Department of International and Diplomatic Studies at Prague University of Economics and Business.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.