Who will challenge Xi in China?
In China, Xi Jinping is preparing to embark on a campaign for 2022 without challengers, but not without challenges. The in-depth study of the newspaper Le Monde
Xi Jinping, 68, has been in power for ten years and was supposed to have left office. But after changing the constitution – writes Le Monde – he can be president for life.
The expression may make Westerners smile, but Xi Jinping is in the countryside. A campaign with Chinese characteristics, of course. Of disguised clashes. Without challengers but not without challenges. Without surveys but not without questions. Without small sentences but not without ulterior motives. Without candidates but not without ambitions. But with some nice pictures.
Like those created on Monday 13 September by Xi Jinping's inspection in Shaanxi, the northern province of China where Mao took refuge for a dozen years at the end of the Long March and where Xi's parents met in 1943. Xi who visits a chemical factory, Xi talking to peasants, Xi looking at a relic of Maoism, Xi leaving a village in a simple minibus with smoked windows … The message is clear: the great leader remained close to the people and faithful to his origins.
In power for ten years, Xi Jinping, 68, was expected to leave his seat at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to be held in the fall of 2022. This was the rule imposed by Deng Xiaoping in 1982. But with Xi Jinping getting a constitutional amendment in 2018 that abolishes the two-term limit, it is more than likely that he will seek re-election. Which? And for how long? These are the two main questions.
Xi Jinping is General Secretary of the Communist Party, President of the Republic and President of the Central Military Commission. Will he hold all three positions? Will he be willing to give up on any of them? Or will he re-establish – and occupy – the party presidency, like Mao? The Sphinx leaves a mystery. Maybe we will know more in November. The last plenum of the party's Central Committee will be held in two months, the last major statutory meeting before the congress. He will discuss the history of the party, the thinking of Xi Jinping, but also, in principle, the composition of the next political office, given that in 2022, almost half of its 25 members will have reached 68, the age limit ( except Xi Jinping). Across China, thousands of 50s and 40s await this renewal, which has a cascading effect on many party cadres. But, of course, Xi Jinping will not make his choices known until the last moment.
"Double circulation" and "common prosperity"
Far from keeping a low profile on the home straight, Xi Jinping has decided to accelerate the pace of reform. These derive from two concepts that emerged in 2020 and are more interlinked than they appear: "dual circulation", which aims to make China less economically dependent on abroad, particularly the United States, and "common prosperity", which aims to reduce social inequality by requiring the richest – be they companies or individuals – to redistribute part of their wealth.
Xi Jinping has said this many times in recent years: China is facing a hostile international environment. The revelations in American journalist Bob Woodward's new book on Wednesday (Sept. 15) that a senior US military officer, General Milley, was so afraid of Trump launching an attack on China in the final months of his presidency that he warned twice its Chinese counterpart of the impending danger. “Don't expect a quiet life without struggles. “Let's not delude ourselves. We must have the courage to fight, ”Xi Jinping told Communist cadres on September 1st, during his annual visit to the CCP school.
In this context, "dual circulation" aims to increase the quality of products made in China so that the country no longer has to buy overseas strategic products it needs today, such as electronic chips, its largest voice of import, even before oil. The "common prosperity" is the second stage of a reasoning that had as its first phase the end of extreme poverty, officially reached in 2020.
"Revolution" or continuity?
Forty years after Deng Xiaoping allowed the Chinese to get richer, Xi Jinping considers it urgent to reduce social inequalities and redistribute some of the wealth. The legitimacy of the CCP is at stake. But introducing an inheritance tax or property tax in a few months is mostly illusory because many Communist leaders would be the first to be hit. Xi Jinping therefore insists on philanthropy. Except that in Communist China this is more akin to the surrender of the Calais bourgeoisie to the King of England than to the good works of Bill Gates to save the planet and pay less taxes.
“Even before coming to power, the Communists demanded that landowners“ voluntarily ”give up their lands. According to historians, between 500,000 and 3 million people died. By "common prosperity" people mean redistribution. They will probably be disappointed because this entails first of all the nationalization of the property ”, analyzes sinologist Alex Payette. “It's an earthquake, but we don't know if it's force 6 or 8,” says François Godement, director of the Asia program at the Institut Montaigne.
It must be said that the debate seems to be raging even among Xi Jinping's supporters. A blogger, Li Guangman, former editor of a specialized newspaper, congratulated himself in an article relaunched in late August by the big official media on the "revolution" underway. Another voice of his teacher, Hu Xijin, chief editor of the Global Times, corrects him by explaining that this is not a revolution at all but simply the continuation of the reforms undertaken since 2013.
Get away from the West
The debate is therefore not only between the heirs of Deng Xiaoping – of which Premier Li Keqiang belongs – who insist on the development of the private sector, and the supporters, such as Xi Jinping, of a strong return of the state in the economy. For these representatives of the nationalist left, China does not need to get closer to the West but, on the contrary, to move away from it. “If we use the Western capitalist value system to measure our practices (…), the consequences will be unimaginable,” the People's Daily recently wrote in an article exegulating Xi Jinping's thinking. And it is also by virtue of this that Chinese tech companies – as well as certain stars of the small screen – are currently in the sights of the government, as they suspect they are transmitting Western values and being too sensitive to the charm of Wall Street.
Of course, in such a context, any weakness of the American rival is welcome. If the US withdrawal from Afghanistan does not only benefit Beijing, the failure of the American nation-building strategy is propaganda's bread and butter. The US Air Force had not yet left Kabul when the Chinese were already planning to add Afghanistan to the long list of countries participating in their "New Silk Roads" program. This arrogant nationalism has naturally earned China a certain enmity. From Vietnam to the Czech Republic, from Guinea to Australia, countless countries are gradually distancing themselves from Beijing. But Xi Jinping, who hasn't left China for over 600 days – a record within the G20 – doesn't care. If a slogan were to sum up his strange campaign, it would certainly be: "China First"!
(Extract from the press review of Eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/xi-cina-sfide-sfidanti/ on Sun, 19 Sep 2021 06:00:59 +0000.