Global Perspective: China falling into political impasse with leadership lacking clear aim

By Ryosei Kokubun, former president of the National Defense Academy of Japan

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which concluded on Oct. 22, left me feeling utterly empty. This came from watching the expressionless faces of party leaders, looking like nothing so much as robots with no sense of humanity. The gathering this time was all about Xi Jinping, the supreme leader of the party, and strongly resembled the technology-driven dictatorship depicted in George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” The autocratic “Big Brother” in the novel seems to overlap with the figure of today’s General Secretary Xi Jinping.

But there was some drama in the final moments of the congress. It was an awkward, but human, move by former General Secretary Hu Jintao. It appears that Mr. Hu was forced to leave his seat, but we do not know exactly what happened. However, the move clearly indicated Hu’s “resistance.” After mumbling a few words to Mr. Xi, the elder man touched his protege, Premier Li Keqiang, on the shoulder. It was probably a gesture of appreciation for Li, who has endured in the nominal post for the past 10 years.

Why did Hu “resist”? The Hu Jintao administration that preceded Xi’s was weak in terms of power, but it appeared interested in reforming the Communist Party. In the face of widespread political corruption, the Hu administration emphasized the “construction of administrative capacity” and “internal party democracy,” and in 2006 issued the provisional regulations on party leaders’ terms in office. These stipulate that high-level cadres may serve no more than two terms of five years each in all party and state posts.

In 2018, Mr. Xi amended the Chinese constitution to eliminate the term limitation for the president, who is scheduled to be reappointed next spring. However, we have not heard that these provisional party regulations have been changed. The “resistance” of Mr. Hu, who has a serious character, may have been a way to complain about the potential discrepancy between the constitution and the party regulations. This is one possibility.

In China, there is always a power struggle over succession due to its political system’s greatest weakness — the absence of rules for determining who will lead next. Deng Xiaoping, China’s supreme leader until 1989, did not like this and chose Jiang Zemin and Hu as his successors. The Jiang and Hu factions compromised in choosing their heir and so Xi emerged as the current leader.

Another factor in the murkiness of China’s political succession is the generally accepted practice of retirement at age 68. According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Jiang first set the age limit at 70 in a bid to bring down his political rival Qiao Shi, and then lowered the bar further upon his own retirement to block the ascent of the energetic Li Ruihuan, another party strongman. The truth is unclear, but in any case, it was an arbitrary decision peculiar to China due to its unclear rules.

In any case, this year’s party congress was, in a nutshell, “of Xi Jinping, by Xi Jinping, for Xi Jinping.” He appears to be a solitary leader who is driven by self-praise and personal worship.

Look at the seven Politburo Standing Committee members elected on the last day. Five of them, Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang, and Li Qi, are all former subordinates of Xi or people favored by him, making it a truly yes-man panel. The fourth-ranking member, Wang Huning, is a theorist who served under Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping and continues to defend the principles of the Chinese Communist Party. He was once renowned as China’s best young political scientist and has visited Japan on numerous occasions for academic exchanges about 30 years ago.

On the first day of the congress, Xi’s political report was entirely devoted to how he has made great achievements over the past decade. In other words, it focused on providing justification for Xi’s continued reign of power.

But during the past decade, economic growth has slowed, and the nation remains under the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. The “One Belt, One Road” initiative of overseas infrastructure investment has faltered, and diplomacy, including with the U.S. and Japan, has been riddled with friction. Nevertheless, there have certainly been some achievements.

The anti-corruption campaign is one of them. When Xi became the party general secretary in 2012, the Communist Party of China was almost the world’s largest corrupt political party. He spent a decade driving the Jiang Zemin faction to the brink of destruction as the source of political corruption, making it an example to other factions. In short, the anti-corruption struggle was a power struggle.

The political report contained a new term, “Chinese modernization.” This refers to “socialist modernization pursued under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.” It is rooted in “features that are unique to the Chinese context,” and specifically refers to “a huge population,” “common prosperity for all,” “material and cultural-ethical advancement,” “harmony between humanity and nature,” and “peaceful development.” In the end, it merely means that the communist party will control everything in view of the “Chinese context” of large population size, and there is nothing new there.

Mr. Xi also kept emphasizing the importance of “Marxism” for China, a country that faces the loss of values as one of its serious problems. But didn’t China in the past cling to Marxism, and then, after reaching an impasse, Deng Xiaoping decided to introduce marketization under the banner of bold reforms and opening up?

It is true that a market economy in which the communist party intervenes has led to widespread political corruption. If so, the good policy would be to avoid the party’s intervention in the market and achieve growth through sound and open marketization. They cannot do so because there is a strong possibility of losing the leadership and vested interests of the Communist Party. That is why Xi brought out Marxism, which few believe in, but no one can deny in China. But can the Chinese economy remain safe by clamping down on private enterprises that have driven growth and favoring state-owned enterprises with weak growth potential?

During the party congress, what caught the world’s attention most was Xi’s reference to the possible “use of force” over Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province that needs to be reunited with the mainland. In his opening speech to the congress, the Chinese leader said of Taiwan, “We will continue to strive for peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

Previously, the terms for the mode of reunification included a “non-peaceful method,” but this time the terminology took on a heavy touch. Also included was another criticism of “external forces,” which means the United States and Japan. Traditionally, the Taiwan issue meant Cross Straight (China-Taiwan) relations, but now it has expanded to become a major theme in U.S.-China relations. The United States is seriously concerned about the possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and Japan is no mere bystander.

Looking at China, one is reminded that the essence of politics is power. The desire to be a “strong nation” oozes out everywhere. However, “power” becomes true power only when it is accompanied by “authority.”

Modern China’s founding father Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to regain power following his retreat from the country’s top position due to the failure of his Great Leap Forward policy. In the revolution, Mao used students to destroy the apparatus of power, plunging society into chaos and undermining his own authority. Deng Xiaoping increased his authority without attaining supreme power, but damaged it with the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989. Xi’s power and authority were weak at the beginning, so he seized more over the years, but his authority remains inadequate. That is why he turns to personal worship.

The biggest problem with the Xi Jinping regime is that it makes grabbing for power an end in and of itself, and uses power for its own ends, but there is no indication of what it aims to achieve. China’s political system increasingly seems to be entering an impasse.

Profile: Ryosei Kokubun

Ryosei Kokubun received his PhD in law from Keio University. He served as the dean of the Faculty of Law and Politics and the director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Keio, and was the president of the National Defense Academy of Japan from 2012 to 2021. Awards he won include the Asia Pacific Award’s special prize in 1997, the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2004, and the Junzo Kashiyama prize in 2017. He is the president of the Japan Society for Defense Studies and a former president of the Japan Association of International Relations (2006-2008).