Xi Jinping Cements Control After 20th Party Congress

There was little doubt about who would emerge ascendant from the 20th Party Congress. Nonetheless, the numerous profiles written on the man over the past week reinforce just how much power Xi Jinping has managed to accumulate as he segues into his third term as General Secretary of the CCP. Shunting his predecessor offstage, shutting women out of the Politburo, and gearing up for greater confrontation around the world, Xi reminded his domestic and international audiences that he is firmly in command of the CCP, with all of the risks and rewards that entails.

Throughout Xi’s rise and rule, he has maneuvered his way into becoming arguably the most powerful person in the world. Reporting on Xi’s evolution “from ‘counter-revolutionary’ to absolute power,” Verna Yu and Emma Graham-Harrison from The Guardian described Xi’s infatuation with control:

Xi’s fear of the disintegration of the party and collapse of its rule translates into a quest for total control over everything, from the personal lives of individuals to China’s giant multinational firms, say analysts.

“What strikes me most about Xi Jinping is his Stalinist way of governance, using his apparatus to purge the party, [emphasising] the party’s unified leadership and going back to the real party dictatorship,” said Jean-Philippe Béja, a research emeritus professor at Sciences Po in Paris. “No one is beyond the reach of the party.”

[…] Like Stalin, Xi believes in party control by party institutions, making him “a more orthodox Marxist-Leninist leader than Mao”, said [Michel Bonnin, an expert on the Cultural Revolution at the Paris-based École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales]. “The obvious problem is that the country might choke under such tight and rigid control.”

[…I]f anything, political triumph is likely to cement Xi’s hardline instincts to protect a system that many “red princelings” like him see as both inheritance and mission. [Source]

Analysts saw Xi’s personnel appointments to the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee as an extension of his control. Former China director of the U.S. National Security Council Evan Medeiros gave this forceful assessment: “The biggest surprise is how fully, completely, and resoundingly Xi Jinping and his confidants dominated this Party Congress. We are in a new era of maximum Xi Jinping. There is literally no balance in this leadership. Xi Jinping has stacked the top—the seven men that run the country—with people that are his closest friends.” Speaking to The New York Times about the ruling elite surrounding Xi, University of Chicago professor Dali Yang stated, “He was dominant already and is even more dominant now. […] He owns it.” Hong Kong Baptist University professor emeritus Jean-Pierre Cabestan, noting both the lack of gender balance and factional balance, described it thus: “Xi is surrounded by yes-men.” 

In Foreign Policy, Henry Gao argued that Xi’s efforts to embed his status in official Party doctrine have transformed the CCP from a political party into a personal party, with Xi at the “core”:

Another obsession of Xi’s is his emphasis on “one leader,” which was first reflected in the 2016 slogan of Four Consciousnesses, i.e., political consciousness, overall consciousness, core (meaning Xi) consciousness, and alignment (with Xi) consciousness; the 2018 slogan of Two Safeguards, i.e., to “resolutely safeguard General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core position of the Party Central Committee and the core position of the whole party” and to “resolutely safeguard the authority and centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee”; and the latest Two Establishments in 2021, i.e., the “establishment of Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Party Central Committee and the core of the whole party” and the “establishment of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guiding thought of the party.”

Casual observers of Chinese politics might regard such wordplay as petty and pointless, but it is not. Instead, it serves a real purpose: to establish Xi’s position as the one supreme leader. Despite everything, the theoretical side of communism is still important in the party’s internal self-justifications and propaganda. Thus, what might appear to outsiders as mindless recitation of meaningless words by party officials actually serves an important purpose: the inculcation of Xi’s status as the indisputable leader.

Again, Xi was able to score another major victory on this front, by inserting into the revised CCP constitution an obligation for all party members to strengthen the Four Consciousnesses and achieve the Two Establishments. Of all the amendments in the constitution, this one is the most important, as it basically turns the CCP from a political party into a personal party, building on the emphasis on Xi’s ideology in everything from classrooms to apps. [Source]

Xi has also turned public-facing Party institutions into vessels for cementing his status as the indisputable leader. It is the “great luck of the party, great luck of the country, great luck of the army and the great luck of the people” that Xi remains “at the helm”, declared the People’s Daily, which recently disseminated new buzzwords glorifying Xi. Agnes Chang, Pablo Robles, Vivian Wang, and Isabelle Qian from The New York Times also reported on Xi’s appropriation of museums to remake China in his image:

Even accounts of the party’s history now revolve around Mr. Xi, as if its evolution was all building inexorably toward his leadership. Take the Museum of the Communist Party of China, which opened last year in Beijing.

The museum is ostensibly dedicated to the party’s 100-year history. But almost an entire floor of the three-story exhibition space is about Mr. Xi.

The museum’s closing display is a paean to Mr. Xi’s vision for China. The center photo evokes a comparison to Mao, with Mr. Xi wearing a Mao suit.

[…] The museum seems designed to reinforce the cult of personality around Mr. Xi and suggest that his agenda has the backing of history. His quotations are plastered on the walls throughout the exhibitions — even those about events decades before his birth, such as anti-imperialist student protests in 1919 — as if only he can explain and validate these key moments in party history. [Source]

Xi’s sweeping success at the 20th Party Congress came at the expense of norms that once appeared to govern the Party, including a two-term limit for its leader and an age limit for his peers, among other norms. Jonathan Brookfield, writing in The Diplomat, argued that “the continued existence of a recognizable institutional framework may owe less to the power of norms and institutions than Xi’s political calculations.” Another casualty of Xi’s reign are the thousands of opponents, and even former allies, eliminated by his sophisticated campaign of anti-corruption purges. Reviewing the ways in which Xi has transformed China and amassed power, Carlotta Dotto, Simone McCarthy, Nectar Gan, and Noemi Cassanelli at CNN highlighted the scale of Xi’s political purges:

Xi has overseen a wide-scale anti-corruption campaign within the Communist Party to cement his grip on power. Critics have called it a political purge, but the push has appeared to win public support for cracking down on a culture of excess and corruption among both “tigers” — high-ranking officials — and “flies” — lower-level cadres.

4.6 million officials [have been] investigated since the 18th Party Congress in late 2012, when Xi came to power.

553 of them were senior officials.

Xi has also built a cult of personality around himself as the “core” of the party and strengthened its role in all aspects of life. [Source]

However, the convention-defying centralization of power under one figure, drawing comparisons to the cult of personality under Mao Zedong, risks backfiring on Xi. “With old Party institutions melting away under his watch, Xi may be inaugurating a new period of political uncertainty that is superficially stable, but structurally fragile,” posited Professor Susan Shirk, chair of U.C. San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. “A central committee, politburo and standing committee all dominated by Xi would mean a significant loss of checks and balances,” said Willy Lam, senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. Minxin Pei, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, described the CCP as “little more than a house of cards” in the absence of strong rules governing its leadership appointments, adding, “Xi’s confirmation this month is merely the breeze triggering its inevitable collapse.” Even the CCP’s internal, confidential reporting system has become increasingly censored under Xi, yielding less ground-level feedback and risking more ill-informed decision-making.

Elaborating on this potential for instability, Jude Blanchette wrote for Foreign Affairs about how Xi’s third term could spell trouble as the CCP devolves into a “Party of One”:

Rather than a moment of course correction, the 20th Party Congress sees the CCP—a regime that has long enjoyed a reputation of competence, pragmatism, and predictability—cross a threshold into outright dictatorship and, with it, a likely future of political ossification, policy uncertainty, and the ruinous effects of one-man rule.

[…] China now enters a period of pronounced uncertainty, driven by the likely open-ended rule of an autocrat. Although some observers now append the title “ruler for life” to Xi, this is only one possible outcome for the country—and not necessarily the worst. Even assuming that Xi plans to step down at some point in the future, what would happen if he died unexpectedly or suffered a serious health complication that left him incapacitated? How well would the system operate when it came time to select and install a replacement? What impact would this have on the domestic and global economy? In a similar vein, although the prospect of a leadership challenge or coup remains remote owing to the sheer scale of logistical hurdles and political dangers, Xi’s positioning as a potential ruler for life simply aggravates the incentives for opponents to scuttle his agenda or plot his exit. Authoritarian systems and authoritarian leaders always appear solid on the outside—until suddenly, they don’t.

[…] The old ways of conceptualizing Chinese politics no longer prevail. Opposing factions won’t constrain Xi. The much-vaunted but rarely seen reformers aren’t coming to rescue economic policy. Coming to grips with Xi’s continued rule is the first step to navigating it. [Source]

In a personal reflection on the implications of Xi’s protracted rule, Yangyang Cheng described for The Guardian how despite purging China of hope, Xi nevertheless cannot prevent small acts of resistance:

I cannot recall when I entered a state of perpetual mourning. I grieve for the country I left with no certain prospect of return, the direction it’s heading in, the plight of the world, the foreclosed possibilities. Sorrow tears into my organs and gnaws at my bones. But what I fear more than pain is numbness: to give in to the powers that be, and give up on imagining otherwise.

I remind myself that for a Chinese woman, learning how to read and moving to a foreign country were once revolutionary acts conceived in fugitive spaces. No control is absolute. Power at its most menacing and totalising is also insecure and unsustainable. I hold no illusions about the long night ahead, but each refusal of injustice preserves an opening. Every act of rebellion, however spectacular or humble, is a reclamation of the self and a love letter to a stranger. Across the darkness, another searching gaze catches the flicker, and a sacred bond is cast: I see you. I feel you. We are still here. [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/xi-jinping-cements-control-after-20th-party-congress/

Photo: 南瓜灯，万圣节, by li yong

南瓜灯，万圣节, by li yong (CC BY-SA 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/photo-%e5%8d%97%e7%93%9c%e7%81%af%ef%bc%8c%e4%b8%87%e5%9c%a3%e8%8a%82-by-li-yong/

Censors Continue Clampdown on Criticism of Zero-COVID Policy

In his landmark political report before the 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping hailed China’s “tenacious pursuit” of its dynamic zero-COVID policy, an indication the policy is here to stay, despite consistent domestic criticism. At The Washington Post, Lily Kuo reported on the Chinese government’s continued embrace of the policy: 

For three consecutive days this week, the party mouthpiece People’s Daily published editorials on why it must be followed.

“Fighting against the epidemic is both a material struggle and a spiritual confrontation. It is a contest of strength and a contest of will. We will not waver,” a commentary exhorted on Tuesday.

[…] The policy is “a key marker of Xi’s ability to lead the country through crisis. Its success is inextricably bound with that of Xi’s rule,” said Diana Fu, an associate professor in political science at the University of Toronto.

[…] According to [virologist Jin Dongyan of Hong Kong University], a feasible exit strategy would redirect resources from lockdowns and mass testing and instead prepare the health-care infrastructure, especially in rural areas, for outbreaks. It would focus on stocking up on antivirals, approving the use of mRNA vaccines and targeting the country’s unvaccinated elderly population.

But there are few signs China is preparing to move in that direction. Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist and senior government adviser, said in a recent interview with state broadcaster CCTV that there is no timetable for diverting from current policy. “We have seen the dawn of victory, but we have not yet reached the other side of victory,” he said. [Source]

China’s ability to prevent widespread unchecked COVID outbreaks has likely saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. Nonetheless, the costly measures used to contain the virus have become a target of domestic criticism, which is in turn often subject to censure or censorship. 

In June, the Shanghai-based state media outlet The Paper ran an essay by Zhao Hong, a law professor at the prestigious China University of Political Science and Law, in which she noted the dubious legal foundations of routinized COVID testing. Zhao wrote about a small city in Jilin province that adopted draconian punishments for those who missed, skipped, or otherwise deigned to participate in routinized testing: penalties included fines of 500 yuan (approximately $70), 10-day stints in jail, and businesses being temporarily shuttered. Zhao argued convincingly that such overreaches are illegal attempts to transfer the costs of pandemic vigilance to private citizens. The original article was quickly taken down, but it has been republished in other corners of the Chinese internet. State media outlets have repeatedly argued that “normalized anti-epidemic efforts” are sufficient to deal with outbreaks, blaming excessive measures on “lazy political thinking.”

Routinized testing has become a major focus of domestic dissatisfaction with pandemic policy. Protest art cropped up on testing kiosks in Beijing and was censored on Chinese social media. The first demand of the Beijing Sitong Bridge protestor was “We want food; not COVID tests.” A Hebei duo launched a performance art protest after they were evicted from their home for refusing to participate in routinized testing. Their protest proved successful: they were able to move into a new home and reach an agreement with their local government that exempted them from testing.  With direct criticism of pandemic policy frequently censored, Soviet-style jokes about the policy have become popular, with some wags hinting that critics of the policy could be punished with a forced stay in a quarantine facility. 

For now, China’s zero-COVID policy seems likely to continue. A host of new outbreaks have cropped up across the country, including one at Foxconn’s sprawling iPhone facility in Zhengzhou, Henan province. Video and images of Foxconn workers fleeing home on foot have been widely shared—and widely censored—on Chinese social media. At The Wall Street Journal, Wenxin Fan reported on the steps local governments are taking to make the policy permanent, even as they assure residents that “the lack of freedom will only be temporary”: 

Shanghai is planning to build a 3,000-bed quarantine facility on the outskirts of the city, according to a report by Chinese media outlet Caixin. There are similar projects planned in other Chinese cities.

[…] In [Qinghai’s provincial capital] Xining, the troubles over food supplies started after the city shut down its primary wholesale food market on Oct. 20, after three positive cases were traced back to it. The whole city was put under lockdown the next day. The city conducted nine million Covid tests and found several dozen asymptomatic cases. More grocery stores were closed, adding pressure to prices already rising from the transportation costs pushed up by Covid restrictions in supplying regions.

Xining’s officials said the measures were vital to stop a variant that is extremely contagious. “Stop moving, now…that’s the top priority,” said Han Xingbin, a deputy mayor. “The inconvenience and the lack of freedom will only be temporary.” [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/censors-continue-clampdown-on-criticism-of-zero-covid-policy/

Translation: A “Cross-Provincial” Tea Drinking Experience

The below essay is a translation of WeChat blogger “Brother Lou’s” account of being invited to “drink tea” after sending a Weibo post questioning the integrity of a local Zhejiang police department. The essay was censored by WeChat soon after it was posted to the site. In the post, Brother Lou revealed how the Zhejiang police department dispatched four officers across provincial boundaries to pressure him into deleting the offending Weibo post, while all the time denying that was the purpose of their visit. Brother Lou’s account is remarkably mundane, demonstrating how police used boredom, kindness, and pleas for Brother Lou’s understanding to coerce him into compliance. CDT has extensively covered Chinese police officers’ use of “drinking tea” to pressure people into silence. Brother Lou’s account joins those chronicles: 

Hi everyone, I’m Brother Lou. 

Today, I simply want to write on my experience being “invited to tea” a couple days ago. It was a “cross-provincial” tea drinking experience. 

At 9pm on October 20th, 2022, I received a surprise call from a local police officer. He said he was waiting for me in my apartment complex building manager’s office. He wanted me to come down for a bit, as he had a matter to discuss with me. 

I immediately felt uneasy. So I asked him: are Zhejiang police looking for me?

The local officer immediately denied that, saying: “It’s not the Zhejiang police. We’re just looking to understand what’s going on.”

I didn’t want them to come up to the apartment looking for me as my kids were home and hadn’t gone to bed yet. I agreed to head down right away. 

Just as I expected, the ones looking “to understand what’s going on” were police from Zhejiang. They were already waiting for me in the building manager’s office. 

They’d come all the way from Zhejiang looking for me because of a Weibo post I’d sent that morning at 1:45am that called into question [the actions of] the police in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. [Screenshot below]

A screenshot of the Weibo post accusing Shaoxing police of harassing two sisters for filing a report on government officials’ misconduct. The screenshot shows two official summons and asks, “Shaoxing police: Why did you knock on their door in the middle of the night? Was it to force them to delete their report or was it to forcibly summon people who report officials?

The Shaoxing police dispatched four officers. 

I asked the head officer: Why did you come all this way? To demand I delete that Weibo post?

He said they came without an agenda, that they came to chat with me—just shooting the breeze. 

Afterwards, he began asking, in a methodical manner, about my family, marriage, children, parents, and ancestral home. 

It’s fair to say that nobody has a deeper understanding of me and my family than that policeman, apart from myself.  

I knew they hadn’t gone to such lengths to seek me out for a simple chat or a conversation on my life and goals, let alone to simply instruct me to treasure my currently blessed life. 

So I again asked them directly: “Did you come here to demand I delete that Weibo post?”

He again refused to directly answer whether or not they wanted me to delete the Weibo post. He said, “As your post is just an interested party’s one-sided account, it might include false information. The summons you posted might have been a photoshopped fake.”

I said: “As to whether you called on [the sisters] in the middle of the night, I was on the phone with them while it happened and talked to the enforcing officers who confirmed to me that they were enforcing the summons. The document itself was sent to me by [the sisters] who took that photograph at the scene. As to [the sisters’] claim that “police demanded we delete our post reporting [the government officials],” [the sisters] have a recording. 

My answer clearly put him on his heel, so he took a different tack: “Why did you help her post that Weibo? What’s your goal?”

I said: “First of all, freedom of speech is a fundamental right guaranteed to citizens in the Constitution. Secondly, superintendence is also a fundamental right guaranteed to citizens in the Constitution. I have no angle. Last December, after the pregnant Hunan teacher Li Tiantian was “mentally-illed” I wrote essays for seven days straight to help her out, until she was released back home. I’ve written essays on everything including this year’s ‘chained woman of Jiangsu‘ incident, last year’s ‘Zhengzhou floods,’ this year’s ‘Zhengzhou depositors‘ incident and even this year’s ‘Tangshan assault‘ incident. All of the people involved were unknown to me before I wrote those essays (apart from a couple of WeChat messages Li Tiantian and I had exchanged). If you must have a reason for why I write what I do, then I guess it’s that I hope my country can become ever better.”

Two of the officers then asked to see those other essays I’d written but I told them the accounts I used to publish them were all shut down. They’re inaccessible now. 

I wasn’t pulling the wool over their eyes when I said that. It’s true. All of the public accounts I used to publish those essays were permanently shut down. 

We went back and forth like this for about an hour when I told them I’d like to go home—I figured we’d covered everything already and was thinking of how late it was and my family members waiting for me at home. They instead informed me that they’d like to make an official record of the conversation at the station. 

I told them we’d gone over everything there was to discuss, that there was no need to make an official record. 

They said they’d come all this way and that when they got back they’d have to submit a report. They hoped I would understand. 

I suggested we make an official record right there in the building manager’s office, but they said the office lacked the proper equipment, necessitating the trip to the police station. 

Over WeChat I asked my friend, a lawyer, for his advice, after which I accompanied them in their car to the district police station. 

At the station, we waited for about half-an-hour until a room to take the official report in became available. Two officers in charge of the report came in and asked the same questions I’d been asked in the building manager’s office. 

It took nearly two hours to file the report because they asked for specific details—down to the time—that I’d written the essays and posted the Weibos, which required me to double check things to confirm them. 

While I stepped out to go to the bathroom, an officer passed me in the hallways and whispered: “Can you delete the Weibo post?” He said the post’s reach and likes were steadily increasing and it was having a major negative impact. 

I said: “We can take that up once this report is finished.”

Over WeChat, I asked my lawyer friend about whether or not I should delete my Weibo post. He advised me that I had the option to not delete it but that if I didn’t the police might waste more of my time and then suggested it would be best if I delete it in order to get home a bit sooner. 

It was already one in the morning by then. My wife and kids, who had school the next day, had yet to sleep and were waiting for me to return home so I took my lawyer friend’s advice and, after finishing the report, I deleted the Weibo posts. 

The entire “cross-provincial tea and conversation” took up five full hours. The four officers from Zhejiang were civil and polite the entire time and were proactive in purchasing me beverages, fruit, and an evening snack. I was also astonished by two of the officer’s well-informed views on history and literature. 

By the time I got out of the police station, it was past two in the morning. 

My wife had brought the children to the entrance of the police station, where they were waiting for me. I felt a swelling warmth but more than that, I felt guilty. [Chinese]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/translation-a-cross-provincial-tea-drinking-experience/

Photo: Crossword, by Gauthier DELECROIX

Crossword, by Gauthier DELECROIX (CC BY 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/photo-crossword-by-gauthier-delecroix/

20th Party Congress Primes China for Continued Confrontation Around the World

The leadership changes following the 20th Party Congress not only entrench Xi Jinping’s power at home, but also solidify his vision for China’s engagements abroad. Official rhetoric in and around the Congress points to a continuation of the CCP’s assertive and increasingly aggressive international posture, exemplified by officials’ notorious “wolf-warrior diplomacy.” With Xi calling the shots on the Chinese side and no one daring to dispute, the West braces for more confrontation with Beijing.

Xi’s desire to further project China’s power abroad was a clear theme of the Congress. One of the “Five Firm Grasps”—a new buzzword meant to summarize the “spirit” of the Congress—emphasizes Xi Jinping Thought as a “world view.” The phrase suggests that Xi’s thought has global relevance, and as China Media Project stated, it “sends the additional message that the general secretary’s ideas are a formula, a toolbox, that should be used to grapple with the challenges in the decade to come — whether in China or in the world.” Tuvia Gering’s latest Discourse Power newsletter highlighted Xi’s vision for China’s global influence as expressed in his work report to the 20th Party Congress:

“We must accelerate the development of Chinese discourse and narrative systems, effectively communicate the voice of China, and portray a credible, lovable, and respectable image of the country. 

“Improve our ability to communicate internationally, boost the effectiveness of our global communication, and strive  for international discourse power commensurate with our comprehensive national power and global standing; enhance mutual understanding and cultural exchange, and better represent Chinese culture around the world.” [Source]

A unique and commanding Chinese voice is part of Xi’s diplomatic vision. As highlighted by Thomas des Garets Geddes in his new newsletter Sinification, Zhu Feng, the director of Nanjing University’s School of International Relations, argued that Xi’s report “conveys clearly and powerfully to the international community the ‘Chinese voice’ of great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.” On the opening day of the Congress, Chinese diplomats in the U.K. used their voices, and fists, to physically disrupt a protest outside their consulate in Manchester. Ethan McAndrews argued in The Diplomat that the Manchester incident embodies Xi’s approach to Chinese diplomacy, which was reinforced in the 20th Party Congress: 

Official rhetoric at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affirmed China’s changing diplomatic norms. At a press conference titled “Under the Guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, Forge Ahead and Strive to Break New Ground for Major-Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics,” officials Ma Zhaoxu and Shen Beili hailed the “fighting spirit” of Chinese diplomacy under Xi. “Having the courage and ability to carry on the fight is a fine tradition and distinct characteristic of Chinese diplomacy,” Ma, the current vice minister of foreign affairs, added in his remarks.

In this sense, the recent scuffle in Manchester was well-applied Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy.

[…] Patriotism, not peace, is the orienting element of China’s diplomacy under Xi Jinping. [Source]

China’s new foreign policy personnel also suggest a confrontational approach to diplomacy. According to a Xinhua report on Sunday, Xi “personally took charge of the planning and personally took charge of the gatekeeping,” and a key qualification for leadership, in addition to political allegiance, was whether a candidate has the “courage and ability to fight the U.S.-led Western sanctions and safeguard national security.” Chun Han Wong and Keith Zhai at The Wall Street Journal reported on how Xi is set to stack his foreign policy team with loyalists who would likely consolidate his aggressive style of diplomacy:

Naming [Xi’s handpicked ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang] foreign minister would indicate that “the choice of China’s diplomats are completely dominated by Xi,” who discards convention in choosing personnel, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank. Backed by his “special relationship” with China’s leader, Mr. Qin would likely “carry forward Xi’s fighting spirit in his diplomacy with the U.S.,” Ms. Sun said.

[…] Mr. Xi’s foreign-policy appointments also serve his plan to centralize diplomatic decision-making at the party’s top echelons, according to people familiar with the issue. The Foreign Ministry would focus less on influencing Mr. Xi’s decisions and more on implementing them, and must do so with greater vigor than before, they said.

[…] “While Mao relied on violence, and Deng relied on money, Xi is increasingly relying on ideology to legitimize his rule. This certainly constrains the flexibility of Chinese diplomats and diplomacy,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who studies China’s foreign policy. “There is very little room for alternative, fresh thinking on foreign policy issues. Even if there is, it would not be articulated by people who matter to the person that matters most.” [Source]

Commenting on the Wall Street Journal article, Bill Bishop wrote: “What is called ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ is really Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy being put into practice, and expect to see much more of it.” Tsukasa Hadano from Nikkei Asia reported on two other personnel changes in the CCP’s leadership that portend more “wolf-warrior diplomacy”:

The ruling Communist Party’s just-ended national congress led to Yang [Jiechi, director of the general office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission,] leaving the Politburo. Wang [Yi] was added to the Politburo and is widely expected to take Yang’s job heading the CFAC.

[…] Wang, a member of the party’s roughly 200-strong Central Committee, has now joined the 24-member Politburo. As foreign minister, he has advanced “wolf warrior diplomacy” to pressure countries that do not toe Beijing’s line.

[…] Wang Huning, a top adviser to Xi on domestic and foreign affairs, is one of the two officials to return for a second term this time on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.

Wang Huning is known as a leading theorist of wolf warrior diplomacy, while Wang Yi will apply it in the real world. In short, it appears that the two Wangs are being kept on board to maintain China’s hard-nosed foreign policy. [Source]

However, Xi’s promotion of loyal hardliners risks locking China into a permanent position of inflexibility in its foreign relations. As Yuan Yang recently wrote in The Financial Times, “Basing party discipline on obedience to Xi makes the task of Chinese diplomacy even harder. If all policy ultimately originates with the leader, and if he is infallible, then there can be no admission of mistakes, no apologies, no compromises — in short, no diplomacy.” Commenting on Xi’s inward turn, Rana Mitter noted that “there is a tone-deafness to much of China’s recent international forays. Diplomacy, academic links and trade can’t really function if one of the partners is only rarely willing to step into the wider world.”

Such a stance threatens increasing disruption in the international system. In the lead-up to the 20th Party Congress, The Economist published a special issue on Xi’s global vision for China, called “The World Divided.” It analyzed China’s attempts to “change, or break, a world order set by others,” prioritize sovereignty in international relations, build its own multilateral institutions, and exert power beyond its borders. Joe McDonald wrote for the AP that now that the 20th Party Congress is complete, the world faces more tension over trade, security, and human rights with Xi so firmly in command: 

Xi says “the world system is broken and China has answers,” said William Callahan of the London School of Economics. “More and more, Xi Jinping is talking about the Chinese style as a universal model of the world order, which goes back to a Cold War kind of conflict.”

[…Xi called for] protection of Beijing’s “core interests” abroad. He announced no changes in policies that have strained relations with Washington and Asian neighbors.

[…] Beijing wants a “China-centered security system,” said Callahan. “Beijing wants to be a world leader, and part of that, according to Beijing, is to be a leader in the hard politics of global security.” [Source]

Some argue that China’s leadership reshuffle after the 20th Party Congress puts greater weight on relations with the U.S. Le Monde’s Frédéric Lemaître summarized the Congress by writing that “Xi Jinping grants himself complete control to confront [the] West […] The Chinese leader intends to rearm the country on all fronts against the ‘hegemonic’ United States.” FT’s Gideon Rachman argued that Xi’s show of dominance at the Congress both threatens and unifies the “global west,” a loose coalition of rich liberal democracies that are strongly tied to the U.S. and motivated to push back against China’s expanding global presence.

Others analyzed how China’s new leadership changes would affect relations with the Global South. The China-Global South Project’s Eric Olander suggested that Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s prior experience in Asia makes him a likely advocate for deeper engagement with developing countries, and should he replace his boss Yang Jiechi, whose background lies in the U.S., China might then increase its focus on the Global South. However, should Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang become foreign minister, he might pivot to focus on China’s stance toward the U.S. at the expense of other regions. Facing an international debt crisis, accusations of anti-African racism, and other serious diplomatic challenges, China may not be able to divert attention away from the Global South. Jevans Nyabiage from the South China Morning Post described how diplomatic continuity and caution will be key to China-Africa ties in Xi’s third term:

“This heavy consolidation of personal authority means that Xi’s signature policies – including China’s revamped Africa policy released in 2021 – will continue,” said [Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University in Washington].

[…] He said Xi’s policies also represented a continuation of the long-standing principle that “big powers are the key, China’s periphery is the priority, developing countries are the foundation, and multilateral platforms are the stage”.

“This ordering of foreign policy priorities is set to continue, meaning Africa will continue to be a key piece of China’s foreign affairs, even as China will likely reduce funding and pare back on some of its grander initiatives on the continent,” Nantulya said.

[…] “During Xi’s third term, China’s Africa policy is likely to be increasingly marked by growing geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with the West,” said [Tim Zajontz, a research fellow at the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University].

[…] “At the institutional level, Xi’s third term might serve as an inspiration for autocrats in African capitals to remove term limits and to reinterpret democracy along the lines of China’s Communist Party,” Zajontz added. [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/20th-party-congress-primes-china-for-continued-confrontation-around-the-world/

Censors Delete History Journal Article On Hu Jintao After Exit From Party Congress

On Saturday, October 22, Xi Jinping’s predecessor Hu Jintao was unceremoniously escorted out of the closing of the 20th Party Congress in front of the domestic and international press. Hu’s highly unusual exit, a major departure from the strict political choreography characteristic of Party Congresses past, left observers across the world questioning what, exactly, had happened. In an English-language tweet, official state news agency Xinhua claimed: “When he [Hu Jintao] was not feeling well during the session, his staff, for his health, accompanied him to a room next to the meeting venue for a rest. Now, he is much better.” There was no accompanying Chinese-language report and no other Chinese outlets ran pieces on Hu’s removal. China Central Television, the state-run broadcaster, included a clip of Hu attending the Party Congress in an evening broadcast but did not mention his exit. CDT has re-published a video, in Chinese, from Singapore’s CNA (Channel NewsAsia) showing the circumstances of his exit:

There was almost no direct discussion of Hu’s removal from the Party Congress on Chinese social media due to stringent censorship. Even oblique commentaries were censored. In the aftermath of the incident, a few WeChat public accounts shared a 2016 profile of Hu’s life in retirement, originally published in the magazine Party History World (Dangshi Tiandi 《党史天地》), which was run by the Party History Research Office of the Hubei Chinese Communist Party Provincial Committee at that time. Censors deleted the essay in at least four cases. The essay, a standard hagiographic account of Hu’s retirement, depicts him practicing calligraphy and singing folk songs—content with life outside the arena. Yet snippets of the otherwise staid essay touch on sensitive subjects. Three sections of the essay, translated in part below, may be particularly sensitive. The first refers to an incident in which Hu stooped to pick up a Chinese flag that was used as a floor marker for a G20 photoshoot in 2012: 

That simple detail of picking up the flag elicited an outpouring of emotion. As one impassioned netizen from Quanzhou, Fujian, wrote: “This small gesture of Chairman Hu’s springs from his intrinsic love of the motherland. I salute you, dearest Chairman Hu.” A netizen from Liaocheng, Shandong, described his emotional state upon seeing the photograph: “In that instant, I felt a lump in my throat. I mean, at the time, he was nearly a septuagenarian! China’s pilot at the helm!”

[…] On the morning of April 14, the day before the 25th anniversary of former CCP leader Hu Yaobang’s passing, Hu Jintao traveled to Hu Yaobang’s former residence in Zhonghe Township, Liuyang, Hunan. He spent an hour there, during which time he paid his respects by bowing down before a statue of Hu Yaobang.

[…] People who have met with Hu Jintao in his retirement reveal that he often self-deprecatingly refers to himself as “just a lowly citizen,” and thoroughly enjoys the relaxed life of an elderly retiree. [Chinese]

First, in describing the public reaction to Hu’s apparent devotion to the flag, the essay quotes an anonymous man from Shandong who describes Hu as “China’s pilot at the helm” (Zhongguo zhangdouren 中国掌舵人). The phrase is a contentious one that invokes China’s Maoist past, and has more recently been applied to Xi Jinping by state media. 

Second, the essay describes Hu Jintao paying obeisance to a statue of the late Hu Yaobang (no relation), a former top leader of the Chinese Communist Party until his removal from office in 1987. Hu Yaobang’s death in April 1989 catalyzed the student movement that would later be violently suppressed on June 4th. Students used Hu’s death as an opportunity to advance their demands for transparency, the release of political prisoners, and freedom of the press. Hu Yaobang is not remembered particularly fondly in today’s official Party historiography. Although Xi did give a laudatory address about Hu’s life and work on the 100th anniversary of his birth, he was not named during a moment of silence in remembrance of past Party leaders during the commencement of the 20th Party Congress, even though previously purged Party leaders, like Liu Shaoqi, and Hu Yaobang’s contemporaries, like Chen Yun, were commemorated. 

Third, the essay notes Hu Jintao’s post-retirement penchant for referring to himself as a “lowly person” (caomin, 草民). That folksy self-deprecation could be construed differently in light of the events at the 20th Party Congress, as it was originally used by those who did not hold office to describe themselves to the emperor. (Hu holds no official office and Xi Jinping has often been compared to the emperors of China’s dynastic past.) The phrase has also been associated with the sarcastic descriptor “fart people,” a reference to ordinary Chinese citizens’ lack of voting rights or political power. 

A number of other terms related to Hu’s removal and Xi’s burgeoning power were censored online. Weibo limited search results for the terms “hustled away” (jiazou 架走) and “left the meeting” (lixi 离席) to verified government accounts. Search results for the terms on Zhihu and Douyin were also limited, indicating they were considered sensitive words on those platforms as well. Weibo also restricted search results for terms related to China’s imperial past. Searches for “emperor” (huangshang 皇上), “ascend the throne” (dengji 登基), and “abdicate” (tuiwei 退位) also only returned results from verified government accounts. After the Politburo Standing Committee was revealed on October 23, Weibo began censoring the term “we’re screwed” (wandan 完蛋), after netizens posted it alongside commentary on “runology.” The hashtag #We’reScrewed was blocked “in accordance with relevant laws, regulations, and policies” and search results for the stand-alone term were, as in the cases detailed above, limited to verified government accounts. The censorship of words related to Xi also snagged a few entirely innocuous posts unrelated to politics. One Weibo user shared a screenshot showing that Weibo was reviewing their post after they had captioned their video: “Feel the awesome power of Typhoon Nanmadol in three dimensions!” The constituent characters could be misread to demand Xi “step down,” which is what triggered the Weibo review. 

The mass censorship of public commentary on Hu’s removal from the Party Congress’ closing ceremony does not necessarily indicate that it was nefarious or part of a purge. Commentary on top leaders is routinely subject to strict censorship, with past leaders sometimes even struggling to publish their own work: ex-premier Wen Jiabao’s essay in memoriam of his mother was censored in 2021 after it was published to WeChat. The reason for Hu Jintao’s removal remains a mystery. 

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/censors-delete-history-journal-article-on-hu-jintao-after-exit-from-party-congress/

Photo: 廬山含鄱口 (Mt. Lushan, Jiangxi Province), by EAG

廬山含鄱口 (Mt. Lushan, Jiangxi Province), by EAG (CC BY-NC 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/photo-%e5%bb%ac%e5%b1%b1%e5%90%ab%e9%84%b1%e5%8f%a3-mt-lushan-jiangxi-province-by-eag/

Sinocism – 20th Party Congress; Economic data; Stocks; US indictments and Huawei (Oct. 24, 2022)

source https://sinocism.com/p/20th-party-congress-economic-data#new_tab

Xi’s All-Male Politburo Insulates the Patriarchy

Xi Jinping’s loyalist leadership reshuffle at the end of the 20th Party Congress has not only awarded him a norm-defying third term as General Secretary of the CCP, but also reserved the highest echelons of power exclusively for men. For the first time in 25 years, no women were appointed to the CCP’s Politburo. This outcome contributes to a longstanding trend of gender inequality in Chinese politics that sustains and reflects broader gender inequalities in Chinese society. Despite grassroots attempts to address these issues, the CCP, firmly in the control of Xi Jinping, remains determined to assert its power through the patriarchy.

“It is disappointing because whatever small space that was carved out for women to exercise their political power is now gone at the top level,” said Minglu Chen, lecturer at the University of Sydney. “[H]aving no woman at all now is a step backward.” On WeChat, censors took down posts highlighting this lack of gender representation. Shen Lu from The Wall Street Journal reported on the tally of women in the CCP’s top decision-making bodies after the 20th Party Congress:

On the newly-unveiled Politburo lineup, all 24 members are men. In the past two decades, there has always been at least one female full member on the Politburo. In a rare occurrence in 2012, two women were appointed to the 18th Politburo.

The new top party leadership panel marks the first time in 25 years women don’t make into the Politburo as either a full member or an alternate.

In the wider locus of political power, 11 women were elected on Saturday to the 20th Central Committee–made up of around 200 full members and roughly 170 alternates–which fills positions on the Politburo.

The 11 women account for 5.4% of the full Central Committee members, a slight increase from 4.9% on the last two Central Committees, during Mr. Xi Jinping’s first two terms. On the 17th Central Committee, women made up 6.4% of the full membership. [Source]

At National Congress level women represent 27%, up 2.8% from five years ago.

CPC is 29%, up from 24% in 2012.

But at higher levels…

Provincial governors: 6.5% (2 out of 31)

Central Committee: 8% (30 out of 371)

Politburo: 4% (1 out of 25)

— Jerome Taylor (@JeromeTaylor) October 19, 2022

Zero Female Cadres In The Politburo. This is the so called “坚持男女平等基本国策.” 🤦🏻‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/8XBb4zLjPX

— Yifan Zhang 張伊帆 (@yifanz0303) October 23, 2022

China Women's News, interestingly, not going with the "no women" angle… pic.twitter.com/NkEKqIxIgl

— Mark Dreyer (@DreyerChina) October 24, 2022

Other statistics paint a gloomy picture of women’s representation in Chinese politics. In the international sphere, a brief by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in May of this year found that “of the 31 Chinese nationals serving in top leadership positions in key international organizations, only 4 are women.” In the domestic sphere, a ChinaFile report from December 2020 stated that women make up 9.33 percent of CCP leadership at the county-level, 5.29 percent at the city-level, and 3.23 percent at the provincial level. In the World Economic Forum’s gender gap rankings, China now ranks 102nd out of 146 countries, sliding from 69th position in 2012 when Xi came to power. 

Xi's decade as the party's general secretary has seen the number of women in politics and elite government roles decline and gender gaps in the workforce widen, academics and activists say

— Farah Master 方蕊 (@farahmaster) October 18, 2022

Before the new appointments were announced on Sunday, many observers predicted that at least one woman would replace Sun Chunlan, the only woman on the Politburo and the highest-ranking female CCP official. Sun was tasked with the unpopular job of carrying out China’s COVID response. Alexandra Stevenson from The New York Times described how women leaders have often been forced into thankless roles that leave little room for promotion but much room for public criticism: 

Officials typically climb Communist Party ranks by showing that they can bolster the economy in the cities and provinces they oversee. But women are rarely given those jobs, said Minglu Chen, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney who studies gender and politics in China.

Instead women in the party are often placed in roles overseeing what are considered softer areas like health care, education and culture. “That also limits their possibilities to be promoted,” Ms. Chen said.

[…] Ms. Sun has become the target of growing anger, much of it expressed online and quickly taken down by censors. These days, her arrival in a city has come to be seen as a bad omen.

On the internet, she has been derided as the “Lockdown Aunty” and the “Witch Sun.” [Source]

My final story for @nytimes before leaving in July 2017 just before 19th party congress. Plus ça change, plus c'est la m^me chose. Picked as a message for the NYT and the Politburo. Contains a🙄proverb about the unnaturalness of hens and power @LetaHong https://t.co/GqHCGnSnEt

— Didi Kirsten Tatlow (@dktatlow) October 18, 2022

“China’s patriarchal political structure limits women’s upward mobility […which] can create biases in the nomination and selection process for leading positions in the party/state,” said Pan Wang, senior lecturer in Chinese and Asian studies at the University of New South Wales. In a timely academic article published on Monday, Xinhui Jiang, Sarah Eaton, and Genia Kostka show how, on average, femalewomen mayors and party secretaries are forced to retire sooner than men, vertically and horizontally less mobile in their careers, and assigned more “feminine” positions with less opportunity for promotion. In the latest volume of The China Quarterly, Minglu Chen argued that a lack of institutionalized policies and processes and women’s ongoing disadvantages in education, political networks, and training contribute also to gender disparities among provincial leaders. Despite the introduction of a quota system by the CCP in 2001, mandating that at least one woman be appointed to most levels of government and party groups, the rule has not been strictly enforced. “Once the quota has been filled [in each department], we rarely see additional efforts made to promote more female cadres,” said Fengming Lu, a specialist at the Australian National University. 

Sébastian Seibt at AFP reported on other structural barriers to women’s participation in the CCP leadership:

For starters, the reasons for male domination in top political positions have not been questioned. The party’s executive positions are often reserved for “leaders who had held managerial roles at state-owned enterprises, ministries and regional governments, positions for which women were often bypassed”, noted Minglu Chen, from the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, in the South China Morning Post.

Secondly, promotion within the CCP is “entirely based on factional ties rather than individual merits”, Bo Zhiyue, an expert in Chinese elite politics based in New Zealand, told the South China Morning Post. “This has created a very helpless situation because it’s a selection, not an election,” he added.

To rise to the top of the political ladder, aspirants need the right support, and women often have less direct access to those few party figures who can promote their protégés.

Xi is also no champion of women in politics. He embodies “the CCP’s very patriarchal approach to society”, argues Tan. The end of the one-child policy in 2021 was an opportunity for the Chinese president to insist on the importance of “traditional family values”. He has even initiated a campaign to exalt “the unique physical and mental traits [of women] for giving birth and caring for newborns”. In other words, the Chinese leader would rather see women at home than in the office. [Source]

Mimi Lau at the South China Morning Post described the difference between women’s representation in politics at the grassroots and elite levels: 

According to government statistics, party and central government organs employed more than 1.9 million female cadres in 2017, which was 1.6 per cent more than in 2015 and 26.5 per cent of the total.

In 2017, 52.4 per cent of the new civil service jobs in organs and institutions directly under the central government went to women, while 44 per cent of local government recruits were women. In 2018, female cadres held about 22 per cent of the positions in public sector institutions across the nation.

The data suggests a higher representation of women in grass-roots politics compared with the early years of reform and opening up in the 1980s. But the striking absence of women from elite politics points to a yawning gap between the decades-old party rhetoric about women holding up half the sky and the reality. [Source]

“[There is a] deep-seated male chauvinism, which is systemic in Chinese politics,” said Valarie Tan, an analyst on Chinese elite politics at Mercator Institute for China Studies. In a signal of the endurance of the CCP’s patriarchy, Zhang Gaoli’s attendance at the 20th Party Congress marked his first public appearance since tennis star Peng Shuai accused him of rape in November of last year. His presence in the first row in front of the podium, almost certainly approved by top CCP figures, “shows his position within the party remains stable,” said Pan Wang, a lecturer in Chinese and Asian Studies at the University of New South Wales. Under the current leadership, authorities have continued to ignore violence against women and suppress #MeToo victims with censorship and victim-bashing. Jing Wei at Radio Free Asia described how women’s rights have worsened during Xi Jinping’s tenure:

A slew of high-ranking sexual assault and harassment allegations under the Chinese #MeToo campaign, the detention and prolonged incarceration of five feminist activists on International Women’s Day and high-profile incidents of violence against women, including the Tangshan restaurant attacks and the Jiangsu “chained woman” scandal, have brought the issue to the forefront of public opinion.

An ongoing crackdown on non-government groups and feminist activists including journalist and #MeToo researcher Sophia Huang has sent out a clear message that the CCP under Xi will brook no challenge to the absolute authority of a patriarchal state, however.

“China has always been a patriarchal society, and there has been no change,” U.S.-based feminist writer Xiang Li told RFA. “The current leadership of China is very clearly suppressing the feminist movement.” [Source]

Plus, the newly announced Central Committee has 205 members, of whom only 11 are women. Dismally low figure, in line with everything I have written about China’s Communist Party relying on misogyny as a key feature of its rule.

— Dr. Leta Hong Fincher 洪理达 (@LetaHong) October 22, 2022

As I write in my book Betraying Big Brother, there has never been a single woman on the Politburo’s Standing Committee. Why? I believe China’s all-male rulers have decided that the systematic subjugation of women is essential to maintaining Communist Party survival. (P. 170) pic.twitter.com/2gpUVp9KsN

— Dr. Leta Hong Fincher 洪理达 (@LetaHong) October 23, 2022

Following the global #MeToo movement, #feminist activists in China have also demonstrated tenacity, #creativity, and strength despite systemic constraints and crackdowns, making the Chinese #MeToo movement one of the most resilient against all odds.

— Ting (@tingguowrites) October 18, 2022

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/xis-all-male-politburo-insulates-the-patriarchy/