China’s President Xi Jinping would be anointed for an unprecedented third term at the end of the 20th National People’s Congress that began in Beijing on Sunday.
In all substance, that move would take China’s political structure and its governing principles right into the reign of Chairman Mao Tse Dong, a period characterized by absolute leadership and cult worship of Great Helmsman, man-made famine and needless chaos of the Cultural revolution.
Xi borrowed from Mao’s textbook. He purged the party and military through the much-vaunted anti-corruption drive - through no research explains whether it resulted in a decline in high-level corruption in China
At the end of Mao Tse Dong’s death in 1976 - after 27 years at the helm of the party and the state, China descended into anarchy and jockeying for power by the party stalwarts until Deng Xiaoping, was brought back from ‘rehabilitation’ and appointed as the general secretary, and was later elevated as the paramount leader.
Deng who said ‘Mao was 70% right, 30% wrong’ - nonetheless took lessons from Mao’s mayhem and set up guardrails that would avoid the repetition of the tumultuous times similar under Mao due to the concentration of the power of the party under a single absolute leadership. He introduced a mandatory two-term limit for China’s presidency, the provision was incorporated into China’s constitution in 1982.
Also under the new reforms, the Politburo Standing Committee, the innermost sanctum of the Communist Party, was entrusted with the collective leadership of governing China. The General Secretary of the CCP, who ex-officio becomes the head of the other two key positions, the President of China and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, was considered one among equal among the 6 to 9 members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
Alongside, China’s economic opening ushered by Deng’s economic reforms made China the juggernaut it is now. Political reforms provided a veneer of accountability and democracy in China’s monopolistic political system.
Deng - with the exception when the party elders clawed back to take control from moderates during the Tiananmen riots- and his successors, Jing Zemin and Hu Jintao played by the rule. Over the next three decades, economic opening deepened while the party went through a three-generation of leaders at the helm until Xi Jinping was elected the General Secretary of the CCP in 2012 and the President of China, the following year.
Xi borrowed from Mao’s textbook. He purged the party and military through the much-vaunted anti-corruption drive - through no research explains whether it resulted in a decline in high-level corruption in China, rival factions of the CCP were effectively silenced, some of the former top leaders, such as former security chief Zhou Yongkang, were imprisoned for life.
As it appears now, if there are any factions now, that is only those allied to Mr. Xi.
Xi also elevated himself from being one among equals to becoming the ‘core’ of the CCP and encrusted China’s constitution with the Xi Jinping thought.
He instructed the rest of the CCP politburo members to write proposals and confessions and send them to him for review before publication. The standing committee receded to a second pillar, looking more like other rubber-stamped institutions of the Chinese Communist Party.
He set the ground for the third term when the 19th National People’s Congress in 2017 voted en masse to remove the term limits of the presidency.
Thus a third term for Mr. Xi is a fait-accomplie at this week’s congress. The greater worry would be whether this would be a precursor for a presidency for life. Effectively, the political reforms of the CCP have not only come to an end, the party had reverted to decades into the past.
China set an unofficial retirement age of 65 for high officials of the party. Mr. Xi, 69 is immune to the rule.
However, the possible retirement of the rest of the politburo, who are all over 65, would leave Xi with a younger generation of new leaders. That would effectively make Xi, not just the paramount leader, but the Supreme Leader similar to one in the Iranian theocracy. On the other hand, if Xi decides to stick with the current members of the politburo standing committee, then that would lead to decades of stagnation of the party promotions.
China’s economic miracle was driven by a combination of economic factors as well as the determined low-key foreign policy and less adversarial foreign policy posture as personalized by Deng’s famous dictum, ‘hide your strength, bide for your time.’
However favourable economic conditions are evaporating and under Mr. Xi, China has become increasingly adversarial to the West, leading to foreign investors to flee, fearing the consequences of potential geopolitical upheaval.
Domestic economic conditions are no longer conducive. CCP was known as competent taskmasters, but Mr. Xi’s botched handling of the Zero covid policy has left a hole in that assessment. Youth unemployment is rising and the property bubble is about to pop.
In the absence of electoral legitimacy, CCP has relied on two primary forces to justify its model of government: performance legitimacy through the efficient delivery of economic growth; and Chinese nationalism.With the first layer of legitimacy under attack, it is likely to rely more on Chinese nationalism.
This week, China marks an end to four decades of political reforms of the CCP and the country. From Stalin to Mao to Hitler, authoritarian political systems that are at the behest of a single man have historically produced monsters
This is a recipe for dangerous foreign policy misadventure- more so in the light of the concentration of power under a single leadership of Mr. Xi. Russia is an example. Xi is not the only leader of a great power that got rid of the mandatory term limits.
After using Dmitry Medvedev, his former prime minister, as a stopgap president for one term in 2008-12, Vladimir Putin threw away pretence and signed a law in 2021 that would allow him to rule for two more consecutive terms, ending in 2036. Under the absolute leadership of Putin, Duma, the Russian Parliament became a rubber stamp and decision-making was undertaken in an echo chamber of yes-men, leading to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Similarly, with China’s belt and road confronted by potential sovereign defaults and the domestic economy stagnating, Mr. Xi may find recourse in Chinese nationalism and resort to an escalation over Taiwan, even short of a direct military confrontation. Even a mild misadventure over Taiwan would send geopolitical ripple effects, bringing nascent balancing arrangements, alliances and alignments into full effect, leading to Russian-style isolation of China. That would feed into further volatility.
This week, China marks an end to four decades of political reforms of the CCP and the country. From Stalin to Mao to Hitler, authoritarian political systems that are at the behest of a single man have historically produced monsters. Would China under Mr. Xi, with a modern economy, but sliding back into the quasi- Mao -Stalinist model of cult worship avoid this fate is a question that would decide the future not just of China, but of the whole world.
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