Breaking the norm of a two-term limit, Chinese President Xi Jinping is all set to extend his presidency for a third term at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which is beginning from 16 October. When the 19th Party Congress in 2017 had ended without naming the next line of heirship, there was little doubt about Xi Jinping’s aspiration to retain his paramountcy in the CCP. Since assuming leadership of China in 2012, he had progressively consolidated his power by purging all his rivals under the innocuous anti-corruption campaigns. Besides, he declared himself as China’s core leader and successfully enshrined the “Xi Jinping Thought” within the Chinese Constitution. In November 2021, with the adoption of the History Resolution at the Sixth Plenum of the CCP Central Committee meeting, Xi Jinping enshrined himself as a pivotal historical figure singularly capable of steering China toward superpower status and thereby, surpassing both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in stature and power quotient. What explains Xi Jinping’s voracious appetite for power? Is it simply comparable to Mao’s megalomaniac proclivities or is there a deeper rationale behind Xi’s power consolidation?
It may be recalled that in the post-Mao era, when Deng Xiaoping opened up China to reform and modernization programme and allowed people to get rich, an incongruence set in into the theoretical basis of the Communist state. In Marxist parlance, the base (the production forces and material sources) and the superstructure (philosophy and culture) should be congruent. But under the impact of reform and quasi-capitalist growth, the base lost all resemblance with communism, while the superstructure was still defined by socialist ideology. This incongruence ultimately led to the “Three-Belief Crisis” (Sanxin Weiji)—crisis of faith in socialism, crisis of belief in Marxism, and crisis of trust in the party—among the people, which culminated in the Tiananmen Movement of 1989. This was followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 which further eroded appeal for Communist ideology. This gave a clarion call to the CCP under Jiang Zemin’s leadership to resurrect nationalism as an alternative ideology to Communism. This nationalism was underscored in the promotion of “Three Loves”: love for the land, love for the people and love for the culture. In 1991, Jiang Zemin’s government launched the patriotic education programme, the central purpose of which was to reeducate the people about China’s glorious past and how it lost its status on account of the Western and Japanese imperialism.
By the time Hu Jintao took the reins of leadership in 2002, the deepening impact of globalization brought in its wake the challenges of widening rural-urban gap, coastal-inland divide, environment degradation, and rising unemployment. This in effect, threatened to erode the party’s social base and political legitimacy. In fact, the dilemma for the leadership was mainly how to achieve stability without political liberalization and also without diluting economic reforms. The answer was found in repackaging nationalism with Confucian principles of harmony that would enrich socialist values and enhance the regime’s social appeal.
When Xi assumed leadership of China, he confronted a fractured society riven with socio-economic inequality and rampant corruption. And despite a repackaged nationalism, there was general disenchantment among the people with the party. He understood that economic prosperity was no longer a guarantee to party legitimacy. He also fathomed the inadequacies of imbibing Confucianism to Chinese policy making. In fact, he perceived a grave danger to China’s core national interests of sovereignty, development and security which he summarized as the “Three Major Dangers” (Sanda Qushi): 1) threats from invasion, subversion, and splittism, 2) the undermining of reform, development, and stability, and 3) the interruption of China’s socialist system. The first category of danger emanated from the territorial disputes including the South China Seas, the Taiwan issue and ethnic unrests in Xinjiang and Tibet. The second category referred to the social instability and resistance to Xi Jinping’s reforms from entrenched political and bureaucratic elites. And the third danger emanated both internally and externally and included issues like the student-led Hong Kong unrest which is dubbed as the Hong Kong version of the “colour revolution” supported by external forces. In this background, as soon as he assumed power, Xi Jinping undertook an ideological purification campaign, which was a reconfigured nationalism underscored by the sweeping anti-corruption crackdown and a discipline enforcement campaign, on the one hand. And on the other, raised the great revival of the Chinese nation to the level of the China Dream.
A further power consolidation took place following his second term, when Xi Jinping labelled his leadership as the new era in achieving “great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” What this signified was that from the date of the 19th Party Congress in 2017, that is commencement of Xi’s second term, to China’s 100-year anniversary in 2049, China entered a new era during which time modernization of socialism and the revival of the Chinese nation would be realized. It is pertinent to note that the two goals—modernization of socialism and great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation—mark a departure from Xi’s predecessors in terms of substance, but not in spirits.
When Xi Jinping emphasized on socialist and communist principles, he essentially meant to move away from Western empirical tradition and locate it in the Chinese Confucian tradition of ‘Great Unity under Heaven’ which basically promotes an ethical, peaceful, value-based societal relations and governance model, which in turn, elevates Communism to a spiritual belief system. This conceptualization of communism by invoking the Confucian tradition while at once accomplishes the sinification of communism, and thus, averts the possibility of the similar specter of the Soviet collapse, also makes the Chinese governance model unique and suitable for global emulation, and thus, presents it as an alternative to Western governance model typified by the liberal democratic system. A significant point to note as well is that the Chinese governance model under Xi Jinping is projected as a superior version from that of his predecessors because he astutely weaves Chinese history and civilization into it. In the words of Jiang Shigong, legal theorist and exponent of Xi Jinping Thought, it is a fine blend of “Chinese traditional culture, socialist commitment to equality and capitalist economic efficiency.” Clearly, “between the failed Soviet Union and the failing US”, Xi Jinping is credited with providing a third path which would propel China to a global superpower.
Therefore, China under Xi Jinping is the man of the hour who is poised to complete China’s great power dream. In fact, China has reached a juncture where it enjoys a number of strategic advantages, which Xi refers to as the “Three Unprecedenteds”: China’s rapid economic development, China fast approaching the goal of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and China’s unprecedented capabilities and confidence to become a global power. Xi Jinping also believes that this window of opportunity to rise at the top of the global leadership is not open for long and faces fierce challenges from the United States and others. Seen in this perspective, Xi Jinping’s great push for power consolidation is not simply a means for fulfilling his personal ambitions, but constitutes a final step in the Chinese grand strategy of decentering the US and recentering itself as the global hegemon.
Abanti Bhattacharya is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi.