Chinese Politics - Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping's approach of tightening the CCP's ideology while relaxing the market is like "stepping on the left foot with the right foot." The economy is being relaxed, politics is being tightened, and confrontation with the United States continues. Such contradictory policies will probably make it difficult for the outside world to be optimistic about the Chinese economy.
On 16 December 2024, the CCP's party journal "Qiushi" published an article by Xi Jinping, emphasizing that the CCP must promote self-revolution with the courage to "turn the blade inward." Almost at the same time, the People's Liberation Army Daily published four articles in a row, calling for the importance of "collective leadership" within the party. Some analysts believe that the "competition" between the party newspaper and the military newspaper shows that the weak economy and corruption in the military under Xi Jinping's rule have caused internal backlash, and his continued use of high-pressure means to suppress different opinions within the party is in conflict with the CCP's efforts to create a loose market environment to "fight for the economy."
In the article entitled "Deepen the Party's Self-Revolution", Xi Jinping pointed out that as the world's largest ruling Marxist party, the Communist Party of China can only successfully break out of the historical cycle of governance, chaos, prosperity and decline by continuously advancing the party's self-revolution.
What has attracted attention is that the article not only mentions "self-revolution" at least 30 times, but also emphasizes that in the face of various contradictions and problems within the party, we must have the courage to "turn the blade inward" and eliminate various influences. The article says that as long as we discover and solve our own problems in a timely manner, we can effectively fight back against the "hunting" corruption of all interests and privileged classes.
The article listed nine key points of self-revolution, the first of which is to "uphold the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee as the fundamental guarantee." The article showed that the Communist Party of China will further increase its efforts to emphasize discipline and track down officials who seek personal gain and those who lead them astray.
But the PLA Daily article reiterates inner-party democracy and collective leadership Interestingly, within this month, the People's Liberation Army publication published four articles in a row, which attracted attention.
On December 4, the Chinese Communist Party’s military website published an article titled “Take the Lead in Upholding the Principle of Party Spirit,” which emphasized at the outset that “democratic centralism” is the fundamental organizational principle and leadership system of the Communist Party of China, and quoted Xi Jinping’s speech during his inspection of a brigade of the Rocket Force, emphasizing that “democratic centralism must be strictly implemented.”
On 09 December 2024, the People's Liberation Army Daily published an article titled "Take the Lead in Upholding Collective Leadership," emphasizing that within the leadership teams of party organizations at all levels, "no matter who they are, they must uphold collective leadership," major issues must be discussed and decided collectively, individuals must obey the organization, the minority must obey the majority, and "individuals must never be above the leadership collective."
Subsequently, on December 11 and 16, the Liberation Army Daily published two articles, "Take the Lead in Promoting Intra-Party Democracy" and "Take the Lead in Maintaining Team Unity." The former emphasizes equal relations within the party organization, calling it "democratic centralism, democracy first, centralization later"; although the secretary is the "head of a group", he must never regard himself as the "head of the family", and emphasizes that "letting people speak" is the minimum requirement of a democratic style. The latter also stated that "to achieve good unity, we must adhere to democratic centralism, which is the foundation of unity."
Song Guocheng, a researcher at the Center for International Relations at National Chengchi University in Taipei, believes that the People's Liberation Army Daily is "using Deng's banner to oppose Xi's banner" and is singing a different tune from Xi Jinping's military governance philosophy by discussing the military's power system. This is clearly a questioning and challenge to Xi Jinping's personal authority.
Song Guocheng told VOA, "Seriously speaking, advocating collective leadership is actually denying Xi Jinping's system of responsibility as Chairman of the Central Military Commission. It depends on how Xi Jinping views the articles in the military newspaper. From a normal perspective, it is called speaking out aloud, but from a serious perspective, it may be called making irresponsible comments about the Central Committee."
Song Guocheng analyzed that the "sixteen-character" policy of democratic centralism mentioned in the military newspaper article was proposed by the late former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Jiang Zemin. The so-called "collective leadership, democratic centralism, individual deliberation, and meeting decision" emphasizes collective leadership rather than leadership by Xi Jinping alone.
On the other hand, Song Guocheng pointed out that the "blade pointing inward" in Xi Jinping's article shows that he still intends to continue internal cleansing and root out the corruption, while highlighting that the corruption problem within the People's Liberation Army is "like a long string of rice dumplings", with its roots intertwined.
Xu Zhen, vice chairman of the Institute of Future Cities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, believes that the articles in the CCP party newspaper and the military newspaper are not challenging each other, but rather echoing each other, and the theme they talk about is anti-corruption in the military. Xu Zhen pointed out that during Xi Jinping's first term, he cracked down on "big tigers in the military." Since the middle and late stages of his second term, anti-corruption efforts in the military seemed relatively calm. However, this year there have been reports that high-ranking generals and even members of the Central Military Commission have been targeted and removed from their posts.
Xu Zhen believes that the target of criticism in the article is not Xi Jinping, but the "gang-like" atmosphere that exists in the PLA system; turning the relationship between superiors and subordinates into personal loyalty to the chief of the army is another form of "corruption" based on economic interests, in addition to bribery.
Zhang Junhua, a political scientist based in Berlin, Germany, also pointed out that Xi Jinping's habit of using the language of the Cultural Revolution period and words such as "blade" just reflect that he is limited by his own knowledge structure and cannot express his thoughts in a more clever way. Zhang Junhua bluntly stated that the various opposition voices within the party that Xi Jinping faced ultimately stem from economic issues.
The worse China's economic performance is, the more people in the party will oppose Xi, and this will also spill over to the military, because the economy is directly related to the military's personnel and equipment construction. In other words, the direct interests of everyone in the top political and military leadership of the Communist Party of China are closely related to the Chinese economy.
Faced with backlash within the party, Xi Jinping's dictatorial character means that he will choose to respond with strong suppression, whether it is against people in the business or military circles, or even the generals he promoted himself.
Xi Jinping has various political means to purge opposition figures within the party, so he is not worried about power falling into other people's hands. What really makes Xi Jinping anxious is that the process of suppressing dissidents will inevitably impact the construction of the military, making it even more difficult for the People's Liberation Army, which has not been baptized by war for a long time, to help him realize his ambition of "solving the Taiwan issue." Zhang Junhua said, "That's why he (Xi Jinping) uses very crude language to describe the struggles in the military or the party as cruel, but in fact, he is more anxious about how to resolve the Taiwan issue during his term."
Since rising to power nearly in 2013, Xi Jinping exerted increasing control over society, cracking down on dissidents and detaining anyone perceived to be a threat to stability in the view of the Communist Party. Xi wanted music and art to reflect Chinese socialist values, and late last year, the party even ordered its own members to not play golf, meet alone and criticize the party.
The leadership is trying to dominate the battle for public opinion. But it faced a situation where each side was voicing its own views. The public on the other hand, did not believe the government’s propaganda, and just searches out information on its own.
The new publishing law went into effect on 10 March 2016. The law required digital publishers of everything from scientific to cultural content and online games to seek approval before they can operate online. One hurdle includes permission from a total of 32 propaganda departments in all of China’s provinces, municipalities and special administrative regions. And that is just one of a lengthy list of requirements, in addition to information about the publishing companies financial records, professional experience of its managers and a place of business.
The appointment of ideologue Wang Huning to the Politburo standing committee at the 19th party congress in October 2017 made him one of the ruling Communist Party’s seven most powerful men. This was a sign that Xi Jinping was bringing ideology back to every area of Chinese life. Ideologue Wang Huning, 62, was the brains behind the political themes espoused by three Chinese presidents. He was credited with arming former President Jiang Zemin with ideas for his “Three Represents” code. He had also advised President Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao.
Wang is also a Xi protege and director of the General Office of the Central Committee. Wang Huning seemed an unlikely candidate for elevation to the highest echelons of power. He is a scholar, an ideologist who works with theories that never held water in the first place. On the standing committee, he was put in charge of ideology, which is dirty work, and creates a lot of ill-feeling. He is known as an advocate of “neo-authoritarianism,” the doctrine holds that political stability is fundamental for economic development, and that democracy and individual rights should come later.
President Xi Jinping's vow to maintain an open Chinese internet was dismissed by political commentators as posturing, as state media swung into action to defend the Great Firewall of government censorship. In a statement to the fourth World Internet Conference in the eastern province of Zhejiang on 04 December 2017, Xi continued to promote his concept of cyber-sovereignty, suggesting there would be no let-up in online controls. According to Xi's concept, cyber-sovereignty promotes separate jurisdictions for cyberspace according to state boundaries, with each "internet" regulated by the government in question, "without external interference."
In January 2018 online Chinese news platform Toutiao began recruiting some 2,000 editors to oversee content delivered to its smartphone app, after being sanctioned last week for alleged breaches of regulations and for spreading "pornographic and vulgar content." The app began recruiting content editors, whose job will be to filter out "illegal" stories from among the pool that the app sends to its users in a tailored news feed. Members of the ruling Chinese Communist Party were particularly encouraged to apply for the job, which offers full health coverage and pension benefits and paid leave.
The suspension of Toutiao's service was aimed to "better promote mainstream values and the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China," according to the Global Times newspaper, a tabloid run by the mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, reported.
The clampdown was symptomatic of a wider fear that nearly 700 million people who access the internet by mobile device will get politically sensitive news of the wider world channeled to their inboxes by "gossipy" apps. The thing the authorities feared most of all was that overseas popular movements will spread to mainland China.
In February 2017 China’s culture ministry launched a crackdown on the spoofing of its revolutionary culture and its heroes, ordering the deletion of thousands of online videos for parodying popular “red classics and heroes.” The ministry said it has taken immediate action to investigate and remove spoof videos from online sites following media attention given to the spoofing of the communist-era choral classic Yellow River Cantata. At the end of January, culture ministry officials hauled in 17 major service providers including Youku Tudou, Tencent, Iqiyi, Baidu, and Sina to "rectify their work". As of 30 January 2018, service providers had removed 3,898 offending videos of “pranksters” spoofing revolutionary songs.
The government's move was part of a much broader range of measures being rolled out under President Xi Jinping, harking back to the ideological controls of the Mao-era Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Things were regressing now to the point where nobody is allowed to doubt any of the Communist Party’s previous ideology.
China in 2025 was the third year after the epidemic. If the epidemic has brought about a big change to the world, it has brought about a particularly big change to China. This change is a change in people's mentality. Most Chinese people have understood the extreme style of rule imposed on people by a totalitarian regime during the three years of suffering during the epidemic. In the past, people only saw this extreme rule in imagination or in the descriptions of novels and film and television works, but now, 1.4 billion Chinese people have been personally experimented with it in three years. This has left them with lingering fears, and from then on, they have completely lost confidence in the CCP and in the future of China - as long as it is still under the rule of the Communist Party.
Most people's expectations for China in 2025 are not so optimistic. There are two points that may be more common and prominent. These are: the continued economic downturn and the increase in indiscriminate violence against civilians and killings of officials, which may lead to low-intensity social shocks in 2025.
Linked to the continued economic downturn is the possibility of low-intensity shocks in Chinese society. China's social transformation has been advancing, although the process is slow and there are occasional setbacks, but the authorities cannot stop this transformation. Now, the long-term economic depression and the hardship of people's lives have greatly hit people's confidence. Although the authorities have strengthened social control and stability maintenance, and repeatedly called on the people to have confidence, social anxiety has continued to increase, and people's expectations for future changes have become stronger.
However, when the authorities do not allow people to march and demonstrate, people cannot express political dissatisfaction through street protests, and cannot vent their anger about restricted freedom, social injustice and the widening gap between the rich and the poor on social media, many people, especially those who are desperate to improve their own situation, have begun to choose a "lone wolf" style of violent attacks, targeting innocent individuals who have nothing to do with their own experiences, or are even vulnerable or weaker than themselves, in order to retaliate against society and the regime.
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