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Xi Consolidates Power

The PLA and the Party are dominated by princelings (offspring of former leaders, a clique to which Xi Jinping belongs) while Hu Jin-tao’s Communist Youth League clique was under-represented.

Most observers believed it was only a matter of time before China would also loosen political control and allow its people more freedom in the area of speech, access to information, and political organizing. As Xi centralized power, he simultaneously demanded stricter ideological discipline within the Party and within organizations under the Party's umbrella. The Party continued to stress ideological conformity and discipline from media outlets and journalists, in particular that the media must function as a ``mouthpiece'' for the Party to shape ``public opinion'' with uncritical, positive news.

With the release of China's National Human Rights Action Plan (2016-2020) in September 2016, the government continued to subordinate human rights policy to the ideological guidance of the Party, which diverges from international standards including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, described this reality in his report on his August 2016 mission to China: ``The greatest challenge . . . is to understand how the leading role of the Communist Party can coexist with the recognition of individual rights and the provision of meaningful accountability mechanisms . . ..''

In 2017 the Party decided to launch a systematic investigation into the loyalty of Party cadres, above and beyond the anti-corruption campaign that has been a hallmark of Xi’s presidency to date. Investigations can lead to open shaming meetings that look much like Mao’s ‘struggle meetings’ that were used to humiliate and punish the disloyal.

Jérôme Doyon noted "The price Xi Jinping has to pay for his own power is to empower Party cadres at all levels. This means rolling back the human resources criteria painstakingly introduced under Hu Jintao (2002-2012) to promote the idea of meritocracy. This included “open recruitment” methods, which allowed newcomers to ascend the Party apparatus. What is now appearing looks more like a closed system, where leaders at every level recruit their own subordinates among cadres already in place. No more fresh blood, and another consequence: an increase in the age of promoted cadres. The pay-off for Xi in all of this is a more loyal and better-disciplined Party base, at least in theory. Coming full circle, this is exactly where the Soviet Union under Brezhnev went."

At the Sixth Plenum of the 18th Party Central Committee in October 2016, two key documents were approved - “Guidelines on Inner-Party Life in the New Situation” and “Party Regulations on Inner-Party Supervision”. The new regulations were a reaction to the plan to overthrow Xi in 2014, organized by the so-called “new gang of four” – Politburo members Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Xu Caihou, and Guo Boxiong, who were all purged in the recent anti-corruption campaign.

In early 2015 the China-watching media was obsessed with the idea of a new “Gang of Four” in Chinese politics. It was popularly believed that Zhou Yongkang, Ling Jihua, Xu Caihou, and Bo Xilai formed a political faction and conspired to overthrow the Xi Jinping leadership through a coup.

During the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping undertook careful efforts to limit power struggles and restrict punishments given to those who lost out, in order to avoid the deadly power struggles and political purges of the late Mao period. For example, while removing Hu Yaobang from the position of General Secretary in 1986, the latter was allowed to retain his seat in the Politburo. Since 1989, no PSC member has lost his job or suffered corruption charge, and no PSC member has suffered jail terms since the Gang of Four in 1976 (sentenced in 1981).

Xi's "anti-corruption" campaign has arrested a large number of very powerful figures, including the former security chief of the Communist Party, Zhou Yongkang. The campaign against corruption has clearly targeted the networks of Zhou Yongkang and Ling Jihua. Xi was using corruption fighting to get rid of any potential challengers to his authority in the Party, to weaken other political factions in order to establish the dominance of his own faction. Zhou Yongkang and his domestic security forces were too powerful and obstructed the progress of political reform during Hu Jintao's tenure.

Former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, his political mentor and former minister for state security Zhou Yongkang, and former general Guo Boxiong, are all currently serving life prison terms for corruption and other forms of misconduct. Xu died in 2015.

The expulsion and criminal investigation of once-rising political star Sun Zhengcai from the ruling Chinese Communist Party was sparked by a plot to overthrow President Xi Jinping, the chairman of China's securities regulator Liu Shiyu said in October 2017. Sun, 54, former party secretary of the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, had plotted to seize power from the current leadership, the chairman of China's securities regulator Liu Shiyu told a meeting of top finance officials during the 19th party congress. Sun had fallen victim to a power struggle in the corridors of power in Beijing, as President Xi Jinping moves ever closer to the kind of supreme leadership not seen since the death of Deng Xiaoping.

Sun was recently praised by fugitive billionaire Guo Wengui, whose accusations of massive corruption linked to relatives of the Communist Party's anti corruption czar Wang Qishan have made him one of Beijing's most-wanted men.

Sun's fall was part of a campaign by Xi to suppress an entire generation of potential successors who were endorsed by his predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin under a form of power-sharing developed after the death of late supreme leader Mao Zedong and the fall of the Gang of Four later that year.

Liu Shiyu credited an anti-corruption campaign waged by Xi since the last party congress in 2012 with foiling the coup plot, which had long been rumored in political and media circles in China. "We eliminated this huge hidden danger to the party and the nation," Liu said. "The party leadership with Xi Jinping as its core have during this five years saved the party, saved the military and saved the nation, and looking at it globally, also saved socialism."

The allegations were the first time in 40 years that the ruling party has publicly declared officials of Politburo rank and higher of plotting to seize power. Even a 1981 Central Committee resolution regarding the Gang of Four stopped short of using the wording employed by Liu Shiyu, and it hasn't been heard in official statements since -- until now.

"The wording they are now using to describe the attempt [by Zhou, Bo and the others] to grab power from the party leadership was very close to the language of a plot to stage a political coup," Chinese historian and columnist Hong Zhenkuai said in an interview with RFA published 201 October 2017. "But this wasn't formally stated as an accusation in any of the evidence made publicly available during the trials of Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Ling Jihua or any of the others," he added.

Without access to the highest echelons of leadership in China, no one can know whether any such plots were a reality, or merely the result of a huge power struggle behind the scenes.

Xi's consolidation of power in his own hands, with the sidelining of the role of premier in recent years, has sparked predictions that he would move away from the model of collective power espoused by Jiang and Hu in the form of the Politburo standing committee. Analysts also speculated that he would override a two-term limit on holders of high office, paving the way for an indefinite one-man show.

Hu Ping, the New York-based editor of the Chinese-language monthly Beijing Spring, said the system of collective leadership by a seven-man Politburo standing committee established during Deng's tenure was now clearly over. "Since Xi Jinping came to power, he has been intent on expanding his personal power," Hu said. "It's clear that he is unwilling to accept any potential successors picked by his predecessors, so he has taken the knife to Sun Zhengcai. ... This in itself suggests that he has put paid to the system for choosing the next generation of leaders."

Xi seemed to want to get rid of the whole next generation that he inherited from Hu and Jiang. He was planning to handpick [politicians] who are loyal to himself.