Less than four months before the US presidential election in November, US President Donald Trump has made his tough China policy a centerpiece of his campaign to stay in power.
In Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is similarly preparing for China’s own leadership contest in 2022. While the country’s 1.4 billion citizens do not get to vote, public sentiment still matters when it comes to how much support Xi can muster from senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders for his indefinite rule.
A crucial pillar of that support has been Xi’s personification of standing “tall and firm” in the world, an image he has brandished by strongly asserting China’s claims in the South China Sea, spending big to upgrade military hardware and tightening Beijing’s grip over Hong Kong. While that has generated nationalism that has buoyed his support, helping make Xi China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong (毛澤東), it has also set the country on a collision course with the rest of the world.
China has “almost created a dynamic where it has to be externally assertive in order for the party to maintain control domestically, so there is almost a kind of impulse of clashing with the interests, values and sensitivities of other countries,” said Rory Medcalf, a professor at the Australian National University who authored the book Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America and the Contest for the World’s Pivotal Region.
“It’s almost as if the way Xi Jinping has rewired the Chinese system, it can’t help it — it can’t help itself. That is obviously very damaging for China’s interests in the long run. It’s actually very damaging for all of us,” Medcalf said.
The deterioration of US-China ties — the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, was the latest in a long string of tit-for-tat actions — is just the tip of the iceberg. In the past few months, more countries have spoken out against Chinese actions in places like Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, Chinese diplomats, eager to please party leaders, have sparred with countries ranging from the UK and Australia to India and Kazakhstan.
A new purge within the CCP’s ranks might explain why officials are so eager to demonstrate their loyalty. Quishi, the party’s official magazine, published excerpts from Xi’s speeches this month saying the party leadership should be embodied in “every aspect and every link” of society. An accompanying editorial called Xi the “ultimate arbiter.”
“His campaign to remain in power at the 20th Party Congress has definitely started,” said Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.
“There is very likely some real resistance under the surface in the system, and 2022 will be very interesting. I don’t think it’s a slam dunk,” Shirk said.
The biggest question looming over Chinese politics is when Xi, 67, will step aside after breaking with succession practices set up after Mao’s fraught tenure. Xi has pledged to transform China into a leading global power by 2050, with a thriving middle class, strong military and clean environment.
In recent weeks, Xi has sought to weed out dissent. The CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, that oversees the country’s police, prosecutors and courts, announced an “education and rectification” campaign to “thoroughly remove tumors” from the justice system. Its top official compared the campaign — set to last through 2022, when Xi’s term as party leader expires — with a political purge that consolidated Mao’s paramount position more than 75 years ago.
Xi also placed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reserve forces under direct control of the central government, changing a practice whereby they reported to both the PLA command and local governments. He also took steps to silence critics of his government’s response to the initial COVID-19 outbreak while attaching top priority to “safeguarding the regime’s security.”
While Chinese are unlikely to rebel against Xi, a “perfect storm” scenario in which a COVID-19 upsurge forces another lockdown, Chinese stocks crash and foreign governments pressure companies to withdraw investments from China could lead to splits in the leadership, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies China Institute director Steve Tsang (曾銳生) said, adding that it was dangerous for Xi because of the precedent he set by jailing former Chinese domestic security head Zhou Yongkang (周永康) after he retired from the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s most powerful body.
“He knows that he’s got a lot of enemies, and the enemies are not dissidents. The enemies are within the top echelon in the Communist Party,” Tsang said.
Currently there is no reason to think Xi is facing any imminent threats. While his government’s initial handling of COVID-19 generated widespread dissatisfaction, Xi’s subsequent ability to reduce cases and restart economic activity helped mitigate the damage — and compared positively with the responses of countries like the US, where the virus is still running rampant.
The Chinese economy has also continued to expand, even if growth rates were not as impressive as under his predecessor’s watch. Economic data released earlier this month suggest that the country is back on the path to recovery, even though the figures showed worrying trends such as a decline in retail sales and a drop in investment by private companies.
Xi this week urged companies to innovate and pledged to further open the economy, saying China would “stand on the correct side of history.”
“His position is much more secure than any time before, largely because of his success, from the Chinese perspective, in containing coronavirus. We should not underestimate his capacity and his popularity,” Brookings Institution Chinese politics expert Cheng Li (李成) said.
Although gauging public opinion in China is difficult due to strict censorship, a Harvard University study released this month showed that satisfaction rates among Chinese in 2016 had increased markedly across all levels of government compared with 2003, with officials seen as “as more capable and effective than ever before.” It found that Chinese respond positively and negatively to measurable changes in their well-being, which could be a “double-edged sword.”
“While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for granted,” the study said.
Without nationwide democratic elections, the CCP’s Central Committee with its about 200 members nominally elects the party leader and lawmakers pick the president — titles both held by Xi. In reality, leadership positions are hashed out behind the scenes among various factions, a process that starts several years before every CCP’s National Congress and remains largely a black box to outsiders.
Whereas a decade ago, it was possible to see the government as a separate entity, the party under Xi has become paramount, University of Oxford China Center director Rana Mitter said, adding that it has contributed to a surge in border disputes flaring up at the same time, as promoting nationalism has become more important than creating new diplomatic links.
“In a way, that would be less necessary in more prosperous times,” Mitter said.
Xi’s consolidation of power has made him at once more secure and more vulnerable, with any missteps like the initial response to COVID-19 providing an opening for any rivals to pounce, Tsang said.
On the world stage, Xi’s administration is “picking fights with everybody,” he added.
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