分类： politics

As Israel heads to snap parliamentary elections on October 27, three months out from polling day, the country’s political landscape has been upended by cascading crises that have left long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing the greatest electoral challenge of his decades-long career. A confluence of fallout from the devastating October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, the ongoing controversial military campaign across Gaza and the wider region, and mass public anger over the stalled policy of conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men has gutted support for Netanyahu’s right-wing governing coalition, opening a clear path for a newly emerged opposition leader to claim power. That leader is Gadi Eisenkot, a retired 35-year Israeli military veteran and former chief of staff, who has rapidly grown into Netanyahu’s most formidable opponent to date. Public opinion polling has consistently shown that Netanyahu’s right-leaning Likud party and its existing far-right allies are on track to fall well short of the 61-seat Knesset majority required to form a new government. In contrast, Eisenkot now leads a cross-ideological broad opposition bloc that unites right-wing, centrist, left-wing Jewish factions and even Palestinian-majority parties, with recent surveys indicating he holds the strongest chance any challenger has had in years to end Netanyahu’s extended grip on Israeli leadership. Middle East Eye has profiled the former military commander who is on track to become Israel’s next prime minister. Born in 1960 in the northern Israeli city of Tiberias to Moroccan Jewish immigrant parents, Eisenkot grew up in Eilat, Israel’s southernmost Red Sea port city. He enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1978 after completing secondary school, launching a 41-year military career that culminated in his appointment as IDF Chief of Staff in 2015, before he retired from active service in 2019 after four years in the service’s top role. Over his decades-long military tenure, Eisenkot rose steadily through the ranks to hold a series of key senior command positions. During the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, he led IDF operations across the occupied West Bank, before going on to head the military’s influential Operations Directorate and later its Northern Command, which oversees borders with Lebanon and Syria. It was during his tenure leading Northern Command that Eisenkot became closely linked to the controversial “Dahieh Doctrine”, a military strategy named after Beirut’s predominantly Shia Muslim southern suburbs, which was developed during the 2006 Lebanon War. The doctrine calls for the use of overwhelming disproportionate military force against civilian infrastructure in any area from which attacks on Israel are launched, with the explicit goal of inflicting widespread destruction to achieve strategic military goals. In a 2008 interview with Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Eisenkot laid out the framework of the strategy in plain terms: “In every village from which they fire at Israel, we will use disproportionate force and cause tremendous damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are military bases.” Seven years after outlining that doctrine, Netanyahu tapped Eisenkot to become IDF Chief of Staff, appointing him to the role after he served four years as deputy to outgoing chief Benny Gantz. During Gantz’s tenure, with Eisenkot as his second-in-command, the IDF killed more than 2,000 Palestinians during the 2014 Gaza war, which stood as Netanyahu’s largest military campaign until the 2023 offensive that followed the October 7 attacks. At Eisenkot’s 2015 swearing-in ceremony, Netanyahu framed the appointment around shared priorities of countering regional threats, stating: “The Middle East is falling apart. States are collapsing. Into this vacuum an empire is charging: Iran. It aspires to arm itself with nuclear weapons. The people of Israel trust you, the government of Israel trusts you, and Gadi, I trust you.” Upon taking command, Eisenkot echoed that commitment, saying: “We will strive to deter the enemy, keep war at bay, threaten and win.” A decade later, what began as a cooperative relationship between the two men has evolved into bitter political rivalry. While Eisenkot’s tenure as chief of staff did not include a large-scale military offensive on the scale of the 2014 Gaza war, violence across the occupied Palestinian territories escalated significantly during that period. During the 2018-2019 Great March of Return protests along the Gaza-Israel separation barrier, IDF forces killed more than 200 Palestinian protesters and wounded thousands more, many of whom were shot while approaching the fence. One of the most defining moments of Eisenkot’s military career came in 2016, after IDF soldier Elor Azaria shot and killed injured Palestinian Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron. Sharif, who had carried out a stabbing attack on Israeli soldiers, was already incapacitated and lying on the ground when Azaria shot him in the head, an incident captured on viral cellphone video that sparked international condemnation. Despite intense public and political pressure from right-wing parties and protesters to drop charges against Azaria, Eisenkot insisted the soldier face a military court martial, arguing that Azaria’s actions violated the IDF’s formal code of ethics. Azaria was ultimately convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison, though Eisenkot later approved a reduction of the sentence to 14 months; Azaria was released after serving just nine months behind bars and never expressed remorse for the killing. After retiring from the IDF in 2019, Eisenkot entered electoral politics in 2022, joining his former superior Benny Gantz’s right-of-center National Unity party. He won a seat in the Knesset later that year, shortly after Netanyahu returned to power as prime minister following the 2022 elections. The October 7, 2023, attacks prompted National Unity to join Netanyahu’s wartime emergency unity government, with both Gantz and Eisenkot taking seats on the small, powerful Israeli war cabinet. But tensions between the former generals and Netanyahu quickly boiled over into public view, as Eisenkot repeatedly slammed Netanyahu’s management of the war, accusing the prime minister of failing to prioritize the release of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attacks. He argued that extreme political pressure from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir had undermined international efforts to negotiate a hostage release deal. Speaking to Israeli outlet Channel 12 News in January 2026, Eisenkot said: “Forty-six hostages who should have returned did not return, some of whom we could have brought back. We made mistakes. Netanyahu sabotaged an agreement with Hamas early in the war after initially approving it. Everyone who held a command or leadership position during the October 7 attacks must pay a price and go home.” In September 2025, Eisenkot left Gantz’s flagging National Unity party, which had seen its support collapse amid growing public dissatisfaction, to launch his own independent political movement called Yashar – Hebrew for “straight” or “honest”. Announcing his new party, Eisenkot framed it as a break from the divisive, self-serving politics of the current government, saying it would work toward “repair, healing, and hope for Israeli society” while placing “the security and national interests of the State of Israel above every other consideration” – a direct rebuke of Netanyahu, whom Eisenkot has repeatedly accused of prioritizing his own political survival over the good of the country. The decision to strike out on his own has proven to be a successful political gamble. Recent opinion polls have consistently ranked Yashar among Israel’s top two parties, with some surveys putting it ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud, and indicating that the broad opposition bloc aligned with Eisenkot holds enough projected support to secure a 61-seat governing majority. But leading Israeli political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin notes that Eisenkot’s rapid rise is as much a reflection of broader anti-Netanyahu sentiment across the country as it is of his own personal popularity. “Some of the support for Eisenkot is not because of him,” Scheindlin told Middle East Eye. “There is a whole constituency who opposed Netanyahu since the first months of the government’s formation. This camp is not small. Its support first went to Gantz after October 7 and later to former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. It’s not really thanks to Eisenkot, but because there is a political camp searching for a leader.” Scheindlin adds that Eisenkot’s decades-long military career has significantly boosted his public standing, a common advantage for former IDF leaders in Israeli politics. “Military leaders enjoy public support since the founding of the state, due to the high level of trust the Israeli public places in the army. Like other former generals who entered politics, Eisenkot is widely viewed as efficient, pragmatic, and professional.” Beyond his military credentials, Scheindlin argues that Eisenkot’s personal story of loss has resonated deeply with a public traumatized by nearly three years of ongoing war. Between October 2023 and November 2024, Eisenkot’s son Gal and two of his nephews were killed fighting in the IDF’s ground offensive in Gaza. “He lost his son and two nephews while the government sealed its heart to the bereaved families and to the suffering of people, at a time when most Israelis wanted a deal,” Scheindlin said. “Eisenkot is seen by many Israelis as someone who himself suffered along with the people and sacrificed his son and nephews. This creates a sharp contrast between him and Netanyahu, generates anger towards the government, and channels public rage toward the current administration.” His ethnic background has also become a core part of his political identity: if elected, Eisenkot would become Israel’s first prime minister from Mizrahi Jewish descent, the community of Jews whose families trace their origins to the Middle East and North Africa. As the son of Moroccan immigrants, he has recently been targeted by what critics describe as overtly racist dog whistles from Netanyahu’s reelection campaign. Mizrahi Jews have long faced systemic discrimination from Israel’s historically dominant Ashkenazi (European-origin) political and social elite, though Likud has long positioned itself as the political home for Mizrahi voters. Responding to the attacks from Likud, Eisenkot said: “My parents immigrated from Morocco, and I am proud of them and of my origins, but I would be glad if, first and foremost, we were proud to be Israelis.” Eisenkot has also built tentative support among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up roughly 20% of the country’s electorate, according to Palestinian human rights lawyer Amal Oraby. “He has a good starting point in the Palestinian society in Israel,” Oraby told Middle East Eye. “Unlike Benny Gantz, Eisenkot did not conduct a full-scale war against the Palestinians when he was chief of staff. Despite the disappointment of the Palestinian public in Israel with generals, Eisenkot’s image isn’t bad, also because he doesn’t run a racist campaign.” While Oraby notes that Eisenkot has largely stayed silent as opposition parties compete to adopt increasingly hardline anti-Palestinian rhetoric, many Palestinian citizens of Israel still view him as a far more pragmatic alternative to Netanyahu. Oraby quoted his father saying: “Netanyahu made us miss Golda Meir and Menachem Begin. The level of violence and fascism of this government led the Palestinian public to want someone normal, someone they can see as a partner for dialogue.” Eisenkot has positioned himself as a unifying leader focused on healing Israel’s deep political divides after nearly three years of war and mass internal unrest. “The difficult and prolonged war has exposed the depth of the rift and the need for a different kind of leadership – professional, unifying and committed to democratic conduct,” the Yashar party states on its official website. The party has pledged to prioritize mandatory conscription for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, strengthen independent democratic institutions, and reduce crippling political polarization. Earlier this month, Eisenkot also vowed to repeal the controversial exemption legislation passed by Netanyahu’s government, accusing the prime minister of weakening the IDF by protecting ultra-Orthodox communities from military service. Yet analysts point out that Eisenkot has remained deliberately vague on many of the core issues that would define his premiership, most notably the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Eisenkot says nothing,” Scheindlin said. “He focuses on things that can be implemented immediately and on his personal life story. His ambiguity extends even to the judicial overhaul that triggered mass protests in 2023. His advisers have adopted the approach that there’s no need to talk about the Palestinian issue. It’s possible that centrist voters think Eisenkot has a willingness to reach some kind of agreement with the Palestinians, but he’s like a blank canvas onto which you project all your wishes.” Oraby argues that Eisenkot largely favors a return to Israel’s long-standing pre-Netanyahu policy of managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than pursuing permanent annexation or a two-state solution. Even so, many Palestinians see him as a more moderate option: “Palestinians can take comfort in the fact that he is not a settler,” Oraby said, referencing the current government’s push for rapid settlement expansion across the occupied West Bank. At the same time, Oraby notes that Eisenkot has made almost no effort to directly engage Palestinian citizens of Israel, or address the ongoing crisis of violent organized crime in Palestinian communities inside Israel, which has killed roughly 150 Palestinian citizens since the start of 2026, most of whose cases remain unsolved. “He doesn’t speak to the Palestinian electorate as a public he wants to persuade, and he has offered no proposals to tackle violent crime in Palestinian communities inside Israel,” Oraby said. “There is an understanding among the Palestinian public in Israel that a government led by Eisenkot won’t perform miracles and certainly won’t resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian public just wants a return to normalcy.” Scheindlin agrees that the core difference between Eisenkot and Netanyahu is less about long-term ideological vision and more about political style. “While Eisenkot is vague, he doesn’t want to establish the Kingdom of Judah that controls the entire territory and expels Palestinians,” she said. “That’s the meaning of pragmatic. He won’t move toward a fundamentalist vision.” Eisenkot’s own public comments confirm that framing: he has voiced support for maintaining Israeli control over large parts of the occupied West Bank while opposing full unilateral annexation, a priority for Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners. “A reality in which we annex the Palestinians to Israel would be a severe threat to the Zionist project,” he told Channel 13, adding that Jewish settlement construction should continue within existing Israeli legal frameworks. “I have never spoken about a Palestinian state,” he said earlier this month, pushing back against claims from the right that he is a secret left-wing candidate, but added that he will do everything in his power to block Smotrich’s full annexation plan for the West Bank, calling the proposal “foolish, completely insane”. He has also stated that Israel needs to separate “between terror and the population” when it comes to Palestinian communities. On the future of Gaza, Eisenkot has argued that Hamas must be completely eliminated as a military and governing force, and replaced by a reformed, de-radicalized Palestinian Authority. “The Palestinian Authority in Gaza is a less bad solution than Hamas,” he told i24News last month. “Hamas must be eliminated as a military and governmental force, and a different leadership must arise, one affiliated with an upgraded Palestinian Authority, which will undergo a thorough process of de-radicalisation.” Whether Eisenkot can convert his strong polling numbers into an outright electoral victory and a working governing majority remains uncertain. “His chances aren’t bad,” Scheindlin said. She notes that opposition parties have held a majority in most public opinion polls ever since Netanyahu returned to power in 2022. “For three and a half years now the opposition parties have had a majority in most public opinion polls, it is now much harder for Likud to form a government after the elections.” Much of the final outcome will likely depend on whether Eisenkot is willing to formally include Palestinian-majority parties in his governing coalition. Most polls show that Eisenkot’s Yashar party and its Jewish opposition allies fall just short of the 61-seat majority needed to form government without the support of Palestinian factions. Together, the United Arab List (known by its Hebrew acronym Raam) and the Hadash-Taal alliance are projected to win roughly 10 seats, which would make them the decisive kingmakers in post-election coalition negotiations. Many Israeli opposition parties have already ruled out working with Palestinian parties, an unnecessary move that limits their coalition options, Scheindlin argues. But Eisenkot has left the door open to cooperation, at least with the conservative Raam party. “He leaves the door open to cooperation with Raam,” Scheindlin said, noting that Eisenkot’s three core principles – maintaining Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, upholding the values of the Declaration of Independence, and supporting military or civilian national service – provide enough common ground to work with the party. Eisenkot’s emphasis on civilian national service as an alternative to military conscription, a policy long supported by Raam, is widely seen as a clear signal that he would be open to including the party in a future coalition. Even so, Scheindlin warns that Netanyahu remains an extremely formidable political opponent, even with his coalition’s weak polling numbers. By consolidating his base on the far right and reshaping his coalition ahead of election day, “there’s a not-small chance that Netanyahu will be able to form a government”, she said. Even if neither side secures a clear parliamentary majority, Scheindlin notes that Netanyahu could still force Israel into yet another round of snap elections – a scenario that has repeatedly prolonged his time in power over the past decade.

A controversial new infrastructure project in the contested territory of Western Sahara has thrust long-simmering regional tensions back into the global spotlight, after Morocco officially named a 1,055-kilometer highway spanning the region after former U.S. President Donald Trump. The major $1 billion road corridor stretches from the Moroccan coastal city of Tiznit in the north all the way south to Dakhla, a strategic port city in occupied Western Sahara, cutting nearly the full vertical length of the disputed territory and passing through its largest urban center Laayoune. Construction of the highway first launched back in 2015, years before the naming announcement that drew international attention.

Within hours of the announcement, Trump issued a public statement of thanks via his social platform Truth Social, calling the honor a high mark of his diplomatic legacy. In his post, the former president praised Moroccan King Mohammed VI, and shared a video highlighting the billion-dollar infrastructure investment. “Thank you to Highly Respected Mohammed VI, the King of Morocco — Such a Great Honor! I look forward to traveling the entire length of this Great Highway someday, hopefully soon,” Trump wrote.

The naming of the highway comes against a decades-long bitter territorial dispute over Western Sahara, a region widely recognized as Africa’s last remaining colonial holding. Morocco first seized control of most of Western Sahara in 1975 following the withdrawal of Spanish colonial rule, a claim that has been disputed by the indigenous Sahrawi people. Backed by neighboring Algeria, the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi independence movement, has waged a campaign for full statehood for decades, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Sahrawis have lived in sprawling refugee camps across the Algerian border since the occupation began. Independence activists remaining in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara have repeatedly documented systemic repression by Moroccan state authorities.

The 2020 diplomatic deal brokered during the Trump administration reshaped the dispute’s geopolitical landscape: the U.S. became one of the only nations in the world to formally recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, in exchange for Morocco agreeing to normalize diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, which in turn also recognized Moroccan rule over the territory. Despite broad international refusal to acknowledge Morocco’s territorial claim, the past several years have seen a steady uptick in foreign investment and commercial activity in the region, a trend that has drawn growing criticism from Sahrawi activists and international human rights groups.

Most recently, earlier this same month, a coalition of rights organizations and Sahrawi campaigners launched a call to boycott acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film *The Odyssey*, after production teams filmed key scenes in Western Sahara without gaining the consent of the indigenous Sahrawi population. Activists argue that unapproved filming and foreign investment projects like the new highway implicitly legitimize Morocco’s illegal occupation, erasing the rights of the native population to self-determination.

For years, Iraqi leaders in Baghdad have walked a precarious diplomatic tightrope, enacting incremental concessions to Washington’s demands to curtail Tehran’s informal influence across the country while preserving deep, long-standing bilateral ties with its neighboring Iran. This delicate balancing act has severely limited Baghdad’s capacity to advance urgent domestic economic and security reforms, and has blocked the nation from forging a truly independent, self-determined foreign policy aligned with its own national interests.

Today, however, a confluence of shifting regional dynamics – a renewed push to strengthen central Iraqi state institutions, the impending full withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from federal Iraq, and the growing prospect of a diplomatic settlement between Washington and Tehran – has opened a rare window of opportunity for Baghdad to fundamentally redefine its relationships with both global and regional powers.

Iraq’s new Prime Minister Ali Falih Kadhim al-Zaidi, a former veteran banker who assumed office in April, has made building up the authority of the Iraqi state through sweeping institutional reform the top policy priority of his administration. His reform agenda encompasses three core pillars: expanding Iraq’s full integration into the global international banking system, modernizing and strengthening the country’s critical energy sector, and enforcing a long-delayed state monopoly on all legal arms possession across the nation.

Many of these reforms, while framed as domestic priorities, inherently will limit the scope of Iran’s informal influence within Iraq. For example, banking sector reforms first initiated under the previous Iraqi administration were designed to cut systemic corruption and streamline access to global financial networks. According to Hayder al-Shakeri, a research fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, while opening the banking sector is not framed as an anti-Iran measure, it will inevitably restrict the informal financial channels that Iran and Iran-aligned political and armed networks rely on to exercise influence inside Iraq.

Baghdad has also leveraged its deepening diplomatic engagement with Washington to expand its energy partnerships and cut its long-standing reliance on Iranian gas imports. During al-Zaidi’s recent high-profile visit to Washington, the prime minister signed dozens of new commercial partnerships and investment agreements with US energy firms, including major deals for associated natural gas capture projects that will allow Iraq to recover gas that is currently flared as waste during oil production. Once completed, these projects are projected to significantly reduce Iraq’s dependence on Iranian gas imports, which for years have met roughly 40 percent of the country’s total gas and electricity needs.

Reforming Iraq’s fragmented security sector presents a far more daunting political challenge, however. Al-Zaidi has set a firm September 30 deadline for the full disarmament of all unauthorized militias operating in Iraq, and has called for the voluntary reintegration of former militia fighters into official Iraqi state security institutions. Yet even if all militias comply fully with the disarmament order, analysts warn these groups will almost certainly retain significant informal political power in Baghdad. As al-Shakeri explained to Middle East Eye, the political networks tied to these armed groups are deeply entrenched in Iraq’s parliament, cabinet, and core state institutions, meaning their influence will not disappear overnight.

Even so, analysts note that even partial progress toward centralizing political and security authority within the Iraqi state – a goal that successive Iraqi administrations have pursued since 2003 – would allow Baghdad to advance long-stalled domestic reforms and pursue a foreign policy with far greater autonomy from outside influence. Beyond this domestic agenda, Baghdad is also seeking to reorient its relationship with the United States on more equal footing. The US-led international coalition against the Islamic State is on track to complete its full withdrawal from federal Iraq by September 30, a timeline that aligns deliberately with the militia disarmament deadline. This coordinated timeline reflects Baghdad’s deliberate push to rewrite the framework of US-Iraq relations, with a new vision focused on expanding bilateral economic ties rather than the long-standing security partnership that has defined the relationship for decades. During his Washington visit, al-Zaidi signed 48 distinct economic agreements and commercial partnerships with US companies, and has publicly stated he expects a growing American economic footprint in Iraq in the coming years.

Still, significant progress on expanding economic ties between Baghdad and Washington remains unlikely as long as the threat of militia attacks on US commercial interests persists. A number of powerful Iraqi militias, including Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, have joined the ongoing Iran-US-Israel conflict in support of Tehran, viewing any potential weakening or collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran as an existential threat to their own power and influence in Iraq. According to a senior anonymous US State Department official, Tehran and its affiliated Iraqi armed groups launched roughly 600 separate attacks on US interests across Iraq during the recent conflict, targeting diplomatic facilities, military bases, and critical energy infrastructure. While a formal end to the Iran-US conflict would not automatically force militias to disarm, a lasting ceasefire would greatly ease the disarmament process. Al-Shakeri notes that Iranian government approval of the process would remove a major barrier to successful disarmament, even if it does not resolve all challenges.

US security concerns in the region now extend beyond Iraqi militia activity, however. In recent months, Iran has demonstrated its willingness and capability to launch cross-border attacks across Iraq, Jordan, and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. As a result, the expanded economic partnerships that both Baghdad and Washington have expressed interest in will almost certainly require a lasting diplomatic settlement between the US and Iran that ends the current open conflict first.

A potential end to the conflict under the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two parties in June – which would lift primary and secondary US sanctions on Iran – would create a unique opening for Baghdad to manage its deep cultural, economic, and political ties with Tehran through formal, transparent state channels. Annual bilateral trade between Iran and Iraq already stands at roughly $12 billion, making it one of the most robust trading relationships in the region, and the two countries already collaborate extensively on religious tourism, healthcare, and financial cooperation. For years, US sanctions have blocked broader economic collaboration between the two neighbors. Iraqi economist Zahraa Albachachy told Middle East Eye that sanctions relief would have far-reaching benefits beyond just energy and bilateral trade: restoring Iran’s access to international contractors, insurance providers, and global financing would allow many long-stalled cross-border infrastructure projects to move forward. Albachachy pointed to the Shalamcheh-Basra railway project as a key example: despite five separate memorandums of understanding signed since 2011, the project has never moved past the planning stage, a delay Albachachy attributes to structural barriers created by US sanctions rather than a lack of political will from both governments.

Notably, al-Zaidi’s diplomatic agenda goes far beyond simply reframing Baghdad’s balancing act between Washington and Tehran. Citing anonymous Iranian and Iraqi political sources, regional media reported last week that during al-Zaidi’s recent visit to Tehran, he pitched the idea of developing trilateral commercial opportunities between Iran, Iraq, and the United States to Iranian officials. If this vision moves forward, it could allow Iraq to emerge as “Iran’s door to the West,” as an advisor to the Iraqi prime minister described it publicly last week.

Ultimately, however, all of these ambitious initiatives – from militia disarmament to deeper economic ties with both Washington and Tehran, to the strengthening of Iraq’s domestic energy sector – depend on the successful negotiation of a durable, long-term diplomatic agreement between the United States and Iran that brings the ongoing conflict to a lasting end.

As anticipation builds for the release of a U.S. government investigation into alleged industrial overcapacity that could pave the way for steep new import tariffs, Beijing has issued a formal rebuttal of international claims that it is flooding global markets with excess output from key manufacturing sectors. For years, major trading partners have raised growing alarms about oversized production capacity across a swath of Chinese industries, from electric vehicles and steel to cement and solar panel manufacturing. While Chinese policymakers have long prioritized rebalancing the domestic economy to shift away from over-reliance on exports and heavy industry, slowing domestic consumer and infrastructure demand in recent years has pushed many Chinese firms to ramp up sales to overseas markets. This export surge drove China’s annual trade surplus to an unprecedented $1.2 trillion in 2023, stoking further criticism from trading partners.

In a position paper titled *China’s Position on the So-called Excess Capacity Issue* released Tuesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce rejected accusations that Beijing intentionally pursues oversized industrial capacity and large trade surpluses. The paper specifically pushed back against growing international discourse around a purported “China Shock 2.0,” a narrative that frames China’s current industrial expansion as a new disruptive threat to manufacturing sectors in Western economies, echoing the upheaval many advanced markets experienced when China rose to become the world’s top manufacturing exporter in the 2000s. The ministry argued that this claim is entirely unsupported by empirical evidence and factually baseless, noting that Western accusations incorrectly frame China’s industrial progress as a threat to established Western industrial monopolies.

China’s official position aligns with comments made last month by Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest ranking official, during the World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos gathering in Dalian. Li pushed back on the “China Shock 2.0” framing, arguing that global markets should instead interpret China’s current industrial and trade trends as a “China Opportunity 2.0” that drives global economic growth.

The U.S. investigation, which examines manufacturing production and capacity across 16 major economies including China, is widely projected to conclude that excess capacity justifies new punitive tariffs on targeted imports. This potential tariff move follows just weeks after the U.S. imposed additional 10% to 12.5% tariffs on imports from more than 60 economies including China, citing a failure to enforce bans on goods produced with forced labor — a measure that drew widespread protest from affected nations including China.

Speaking at a Beijing press conference Tuesday, Lin Weilong, director of the Commerce Ministry’s policy research office, emphasized that the U.S. has no legitimate authority to unilaterally declare that trading partners have excess capacity and impose punitive trade restrictions. Lin argued that it is unfair for the U.S. to narrowly label any production that exceeds a country’s domestic demand as problematic “overcapacity” and slap punitive trade measures on that basis.

Tensions over overcapacity have already spread to other major trading blocs: earlier this month, the European Union, which has prioritized rebalancing its lopsided trade relationship with China, implemented new trade measures including enhanced protective tariffs for its domestic steel industry and new restrictions on low-value e-commerce parcels imported from China.

Many industry analysts expect Beijing’s formal pushback to do little to change the trajectory of trade policy in Western capitals. Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a China-focused expert at global business consultancy Ankura, noted that weak economic growth and political pressures in Western markets make inaction on rising Chinese imports politically impossible, particularly for high-value added manufacturing sectors that have long been dominated by Western firms. “Current economic conditions in Western markets have made it politically untenable to do nothing in the face of rising Chinese imports, especially in high value added sectors that Western firms used to dominate,” Montufar-Helu said.