Following the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has strengthened his control over the party and country. He wants to build an eternal red empire under the banner of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
However, as an all-powerful dictator who gives the appearance of facing no internal dissent, in foreign affairs he has shown his willingness to resort to military force. The numerous problems that have already appeared might make the empire’s collapse certain. Xi has not only failed to become the CCP dynasty’s “lord of resurgence,” he might even turn out to be the last of the red emperors.
The first challenge facing China is Xi’s abandonment of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) policy of “reform and opening up,” which brought the country four decades of rapid growth. Xi instead has returned to a more doctrinaire socialist path.
Despite its name, Deng’s policy was focused mostly on shortcuts and cheating. It ostensibly signaled a turn toward the capital market, but it only used preferential treatment to attract foreign capital, talent and technology, with the aim of boosting employment to grow China’s manufacturing industry and turn the country into the workshop of the world.
In particular, Deng’s policies used subsidies and high trade barriers to build a protectionist fortress around China’s domestic industries. Externally, it used forced technology transfers, imitation and intellectual property theft to create asymmetric trade competition.
Even more objectionable, while seeking to join and participate in international organizations, China abused existing international norms by adhering to those most favorable to itself and ignoring those that were not.
In other words, the real reason for China’s rapid economic development is the tricks it played on the world’s advanced economies.
Now that China has grown, it should carry out institutional reforms and fully implement its hitherto half-baked “reform and opening up.” Only then can it transform into a free market and become a genuine member of the international economic and trade system.
Instead, Xi has put ideology and nationalism above economic development as he attempts to shape what he calls “socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era,” while transforming an economy dependent on foreign trade into a self-reliant system of “internal circulation.”
His idea might sound good, but without a foundation of high-tech industries, it is no more than an empty slogan. China is keen to develop, but it lacks the talent, equipment and technology to do so, so it is trying to foster its semiconductor industry by showering it with money. It is a replay of Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) backyard steel furnace campaign during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and it is almost as unlikely to succeed.
Revelations about China’s expansionist ambitions, along with its unwillingness to engage in fair trade, have jeopardized the security and interests of Western countries, causing a strong backlash and resistance. The US is trying to completely stifle the development of China’s semiconductor industry.
High-tech research and development depends on superior institutions and human resources, and China’s lack of them cannot be turned around by brute force or fanning the flames of nationalism. Xi’s dream of transforming China into a manufacturing superpower would be no more than that — a daydream.
The second challenge facing China is Xi’s “zero” policies of “political zero,” “social zero” and “COVID-19 zero,” which have become a nightmare for Chinese.
After the death of Mao, communist China’s first paramount leader, his indirect successor Deng instituted a system of limited tenures for leaders, along with collective leadership, with the aim of preventing cults of personality and maintaining checks and balances among factions within the CCP, so that no single person would emerge to hold a monopoly of power.
Xi’s dream of becoming emperor is well-known, but the problem is that he has arranged for his army of Xi loyalists to hold all the power, with nothing left for other factions. As well as preventing collective leadership from functioning, this has eliminated checks and balances within the party.
As a result, Xi would find it difficult to get all the backing he needs when promoting his political line and would have to bear sole responsibility for his failures, or even face being kicked when he is down by his political enemies.
The regime’s survival is at stake, and the biggest crack in its armor is economic bubbles, because economic growth is what gives the CCP legitimacy to rule.
The biggest problem at the moment is the housing bubble, and when it bursts it would evaporate the life savings of many people. If that happens, Xi’s regime might not be able to withstand the backlash.
Furthermore, Xi has spared no effort in cracking down on Internet and e-commerce firms, especially ride-hailing and delivery platforms that gather and use big data. He is using the slogan of “common prosperity” as a pretext to confiscate wealth. This kind of suppression would surely have a major effect on China’s most creative and productive private businesses.
Xi’s regime even aims to get a share of the action by taking such businesses into state ownership. This policy of letting state ownership advance while private ownership retreats could be called “social zero.”
Moreover, over the three years since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Xi has acquired a powerful tool to control the public, namely the “dynamic zero” approach to fighting the disease. At the current stage of the pandemic, the world has found that “living with the virus” is the least costly way to bring the pandemic to an end.
However, the CCP’s approach to controlling COVID-19 has remained unchanged. It has all along maintained a policy of total lockdowns that have severely disrupted the normal functioning of the economy and society, and transformed the whole of China into one big prison.
Despite the success stories that can be seen around the world, in China the “dynamic zero” policy ordained by Xi is regarded as an unquestionable and unshakeable holy edict.
Throughout history, most pandemics have ended after about three years, but not now in China.
After the 20th National Congress, the specter of “dynamic zero” is still haunting the Chinese landscape, but the virus has not bowed to the wishes of the CCP. Instead, major outbreaks keep popping up across the country, and they are difficult or impossible to contain.
This makes it clear that China’s “dynamic zero” policy is not really meant to defend against the virus. Rather, it is a political line of defense for the security of the regime, but, ironically, it has become a breach in the wall that could lead to the collapse of Xi’s empire.
Xi’s red empire has shown its determination to replace the “Washington consensus” with a “Beijing consensus,” using the principles of sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs as a pretext to resist adopting human rights in accordance with universal values. Xi has urged China’s media to use “great external propaganda” to “tell China’s stories well” with the aim of building a rising red empire.
However, this imperial system does not rule in a benevolent way. It denies universal values. It uses ideology to direct the economy, society and epidemic prevention, placing nonexperts in a position of leadership over the experts. Without any institutional supervision or checks and balances, it would not be possible to prevent a total collapse if cracks appear. Therein lies the future and ultimate fate of Xi’s empire.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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