Xi Jinping and Chinas New Era of Glory

Thread: Xi Jinping and Chinas New Era of Glory

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Tags: Chinas, css, CSS Exam 2018, current affairs, international relations, Xi Jinping

Sitwat said:
Yesterday10:11 AM

Xi Jinping and Chinas New Era of Glory

BEIJING Two weeks after taking Chinas top ofce in November 2012, Xi Jinping took part in what
seemed like a throwaway photo op. He took his top lieutenants to the newly renovated National
Museum of China, a vast hall stuffed with relics of Chinas glorious past: terra-cotta soldiers from
Xian, glazed statues from the Tang dynasty and rare bronzes from the distant Shang dynasty.
But Mr. Xi chose as his backdrop a darker exhibition: The Road of Rejuvenation. It tells the story of
how China was laid low by foreign countries in the 19th and 20th centuries but is now on the path
back to glory. There, in front of images of Chinas subjugation, Mr. Xi announced that his dream was
to complete this sacred task. This soon became the China Dream and has shaped his rule ever
since.

With Mr. Xi about to be reappointed to another ve-year term in a Communist Party conference that
begins on Wednesday, its worth remembering this visit. Many of Mr. Xis accomplishments and his
likely plans for the future are underpinned by an idealistic view that Chinas 200-year eclipse is ending
now, and it is his mission to lead a rigidly controlled China back to the center of the world stage.

For foreigners, this means getting used to a China that is stronger and more assertive but possibly
more brittle than in the past. If Mr. Xi is successful, his China could become a model for digitally
driven authoritarianism around the world, while failure could force a reconsideration of the wisdom of
trying to force-march a country to modernity.

Chinas new role is hard to miss in foreign affairs. For decades, Washington has been urging China to
get more involved in the world. Usually this meant asking China to help solve international crises to
become a stakeholder, in foreign policy jargon. But to many peoples surprise, after years of playing a
mostly passive role in world affairs, China has taken a forceful approach.

Beijing has moved aggressively to enforce historically dubious claims to international waters and
islands far from its shores, building reefs into islands and making the bizarre assertion that the
economic zones around them are Chinese waters arguments contrary to any independent
interpretation of international law.

China has also begun pulling small countries on its periphery into its orbit through a lavish
infrastructure plan called the One Belt, One Road initiative, in the process propping up regimes that
are sliding away from democracy in Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.

These ambitious policies to dominate the region are paralleled by tough measures at home. For ve
years, Mr. Xi has led a erce campaign against corruption, which arguably was the biggest threat to
the partys long-term ability to rule. But hes also leveraged this crackdown to sideline political rivals,
admitting as much last year when he said that high-ranking ofcials arrested for corruption had been
engaging in political conspiracies.

A sophisticated program of domestic surveillance is part of this strategy. The government has
encouraged provinces to experiment with a system of social credit that rates people on how they
behave from nancial delinquency to being too critical online and then limiting the freedom of
offenders, for example by restricting their ability to get promoted or travel on trains or planes,
something the German political scientist Sebastian Heilmann calls digital Leninism.

Nationally, this new policy of rened coercion has eradicated public dissent. Previous leaders disliked
alternative viewpoints, but small bookstores, regional newspapers, think tanks and, for a while, social
media allowed some space for differing views. Now these channels are all but closed.

For the past ve years, for example, Ive been conducting a series of question-and-answer sessions
with dozens of Chinese intellectuals not dissidents but people trying to change the system in some
way. Its hardly an exaggeration to say that almost all of these people have been silenced in the public
sphere. Few have been arrested, but the government has turned them into non-persons by blocking
their access to any sort of media outlet.
Not all of this started with Mr. Xi. Chinas military expansion its two new aircraft carriers, for
example is backed by decades of patient modernization. The shutting down of social media
accounts also began before Mr. Xi took ofce, as did the creation of stability-maintenance bureaus
that have aided the crackdown. And then theres the broader issue of Chinas being a wealthier and
more powerful country; under any leader, Beijing was going to shake off its reticence.

But Mr. Xi has upped the ante. Hes been far more successful than his predecessors in realizing the
Communist Partys vision of ideological uniformity, rendering his administration as more than a
straight-line continuation of past leaders. Having a modernized military is one thing, but using it is
another; likewise, the severity of the crackdown on dissent think of the decision to let the Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo die in prison in July reects a far harsher approach. Before, China
had undercurrents of reform; now these are drying up.

One key reason for Mr. Xis brusque self-condence is his family history. Mr. Xis father was one of the
founders of the Peoples Republic, and Mr. Xi grew up in the privileged world of Chinas red nobility.
That gives him unimaginably more social capital than his two predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang
Zemin, both of whom came from relatively pedestrian backgrounds. Mr. Xi is able to inuence the
scores of other members of the hongerdai, or red second generation, who pull many of the strings
behind the scenes.

These informal networks come on top of Mr. Xis formal positions, the most important of which is
general secretary of the Communist Party, a title he will get for another ve years at the party
congress.

This combination of formal and informal power has led Mr. Xi to make decisions unimaginable under
his predecessors. Like Mr. Xi, for example, other leaders recognized that Chinas naked capitalism left
many people living unhappily in a spiritual vacuum. And they, too, recognized that traditional beliefs
and culture had a role to play in providing people with a system of values.

But Mr. Xi has embraced traditionalism like no leader since Chinas last emperor abdicated in 1912.
Even Chiang Kai-shek, the conservative who led the country before the Communist takeover in 1949,
backed laws to limit Chinas traditional religions. Mr. Xis administration, by contrast, has endorsed
almost all manner of tradition so long as it serves the party.

Mr. Xis positioning himself as a savior of Chinese culture has been accompanied by increasingly odd
statements. According to Mr. Xis propagandists, he has rewritten the rules of diplomacy; is personally
popular among all leaders around the world; and of course is humble and modest.

This might be normal for a Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un but is atypical of recent Chinese leaders.
Since the debacle of Maos rule ended in 1976, the people running China have positioned themselves
as modest, behind-the-scenes brokers. And perhaps it was no coincidence that this period of dull
managers coincided with Chinas rst successes in a century. With competent, low-key technocrats in
charge of a stable country in a relatively peaceful world, China took off.

Mr. Xis new tack is riskier. Unlike any leader since Mao, he has made almost every area of governing
his personal area of responsibility, including economics, which usually was left to the premier or
trained specialists. Mr. Xi is not a Mao the comparison has been made but is forced. There is no
real personality cult, for example, and he has not embarked on insane economic plans like the Great
Leap Forward. But like Mao he is popular, charismatic and supremely self-condent, dangerous traits
in a system with no checks and balances.
At home, at least, this centralization of power has showed few successes. Economic reforms have
languished. State-owned enterprises still suck capital away from more efcient sectors of the
economy, while nancial markets remain opaque and unstable. And the country still relies on
gargantuan projects to bolster an economy thats clearly slowing.

Politically, the stagnation feels more pronounced. Even an issue like feminism, which the Communist
Party used to claim as part of its legacy, is too edgy for Mr. Xis China. Instead, it has become a kind
of dissent, exemplied by the arrest in 2015 of the Feminist Five ve young women who wanted
to point out the rampant sexism in Chinese society.

Perhaps even more striking has been the arrest of human rights lawyers. Once a vibrant movement
that simply aimed to hold the government accountable to its own laws, human rights advocates have
been effectively silenced.

Seen more broadly, Chinese institutions are in danger of decay. In the past, the understanding was
that power would transfer smoothly from one leader to the next, if not through elections then through
some sort of tacit agreement. For a couple of decades, party congresses like the coming one were
showcases for this, with one dull leader following the other, sometimes with daggers in their backs,
but still in some sort of predictable pattern.

This congress, for example, was supposed to anoint Mr. Xis successor, who would take control in ve
years. Now this is unlikely, casting doubt on who will succeed Mr. Xi.

All of this makes one wonder how Mr. Xis rule will end: with his taking an unprecedented third ve-
year term or perhaps staying on in some ceremonial capacity and pulling the strings from behind a
curtain? Mr. Xis predecessor, Mr. Hu, is said to be practicing Chinese medicine, and to have
withdrawn from politics.

The idea of the 64-year-old Mr. Xi retiring quietly in ve years seems remote. Instead, he and the
country as a whole seem likely to keep pushing for their place in the sun.
By: IAN JOHNSON

Source: https://www.nytimes.com

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