It is not a hard break that China’s President Xi is making. But the move away from economically open China is obvious. A “resolution on history” cemented his power for decades – and reintroduced the personality cult.
Mao, Deng and now Xi: With the adoption of a so-called resolution on history, China’s incumbent president is made the third pillar saint of the People’s Republic. In addition to state founder Mao Tsetung and reformer Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jingping will in future represent an era of its own. Not only will he seek a third term, but he could even rule for life. There is more than an homage to the strong man behind the move of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It is also a return to the personality cult and a cementing of Xi’s course – which will challenge the West even more in the future.
A “resolution on history” serves to enumerate “significant achievements and historical experiences” of the CPC. In fact, the resolution that has now been passed, which has so far only been published in excerpts, is being used to swear party and country to Xi’s course and to lay down his policies as the ideological foundation for the coming decades. It is said, for example, that Xi’s position “as the core of the party” should be “persistently” upheld.
“The resolution is an extremely important party document that is drawn up and concluded by consensus,” says Valarie Tan, research assistant at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS). Above all, she sees the resolution as a propaganda document that “will be an important tool for Xi to forestall his critics and possible opponents who could question his authority and politics”.
Xi’s powerful predecessors had used such resolutions in the same way. Mao made himself the strong man of China in 1945, even before the founding of the People’s Republic, and laid down his line as the only correct one. Deng then reckoned with Mao’s rule and the terror, especially during the “Cultural Revolution” in 1981 – and led the country on a course of economic reform and opening up.
More powerful than the founder of the state
But this era is also over now. Even if Xi avoids reckoning with the past, he sets himself apart clearly. The resolution does not come at the beginning of his term of office, but at its climax. He has been General Secretary of the KP since 2012, and the 68-year-old became President the following year. Thanks to the lifting of the term limit that Deng introduced as a lesson from Mao times, Xi should be elected the most powerful party representative for the third time at the end of next year. A rule for life is also possible.
Xi is walking in the footsteps of Mao. Within the party, he is already more powerful than the founder of the state. Since taking office, Xi has consistently eliminated competitors and adversaries. The means to this end was an anti-corruption campaign that hit party leaders as well as influential bankers and business leaders. Xi no longer has to fear intra-party opposition. On the contrary: experts see much more the rebirth of the “leader cult”, officially described as “democratic centralism”. The party committees, which were already mainly made up of followers, were disempowered, and Xi became the authoritarian ruler.
The resolution is therefore less concerned with the past than with the continuation of the Xi era. Without a sharp break, he has led the country away from Deng’s course of economic reform and opening up, and instead brought ideology back to the center – here, too, in Mao’s footsteps, albeit under modern auspices. In place of Deng’s pragmatism, Xi sets the implementation of ideology.
The Communist Party has been tightening the reins for years, cracking down on unpopular artists, opposition figures in Hong Kong, for example, or Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, but also bringing corporate bosses who have become too powerful into line. The best-known example is billionaire Jack Ma, who was disciplined shortly before his Ant Group went public and temporarily disappeared from the public eye. The Chinese political professor Wu Qiang, who was dismissed for criticism, fears “a destruction of civil society” that arose in the course of the economic upswing, as he told the German press agency.
The reason for Xi’s course should not only be the financial power of the major Chinese corporations, which could drag along the entire economic system in the event of imbalances – see the difficulties of the real estate company Evergrande. The increasing division of society due to the economic opening also becomes a problem and endangers the power of the party. This year Xi instead proclaimed “common prosperity” as a goal, and by 2050 he wants to reduce the great social inequality in the country. Large corporations have already responded to the new course with charitable donations.
China’s “unpredictable challenge”
The tough internal control and ideologization, which must also be understood as a deliberate demarcation from the capitalist West, corresponds to China’s increasingly aggressive external appearance. Xi relies on nationalistic tones, he envisions a resurrection of ancient Chinese greatness. Ex-political professor Wu warned of an “unpredictable challenge” for China’s neighbors and the international order. “Outwardly, nationalism will show more blindness and irrationality.”
For example, the pressure on the Republic of China in Taiwan has been increasing for years. The island never belonged to the People’s Republic, but Beijing nevertheless sees it as part of China and is striving to integrate it. Military threatening gestures such as the recent dispatch of hundreds of military machines to Taiwan are intended to intimidate the government there and force them to adopt a China-friendly course. But even a military conquest has long been openly brought into play. The territorial conflict in the South China Sea is also conducted much more aggressively under Xi than under his predecessors – with reference to historical maps.
It is true that Xi repeatedly presents himself as an advocate of globalization and multilateralism. At the same time, however, he promotes the isolation of Chinese markets and understands international cooperation only on the condition of Chinese supremacy. This course will determine Chinese politics for years, if not decades, to come.
The United States vigorously opposes this claim to leadership and power – President Joe Biden may be less aggressive in execution than his predecessor Donald Trump, but there is little difference between them. The EU, on the other hand, is still undecided in its course, between economic cooperation with China and delimitation on some issues. Xi’s claim to power and aggressive tone could lead Europeans to position themselves more clearly against China on the Taiwan issue, for example.
How difficult the confrontation with Beijing will be in the end also depends on how firmly Xi is still in the saddle. In a year, at the 20th party congress, he wants to be elected for a third term as general secretary. The “Resolution on History” is an important step in this direction. Re-election also depends on the country’s economic development. The debt crisis of Evergrande and other corporations, the slacking growth figures, further trade disputes with the USA, also the corona pandemic, which has not yet been defeated, and the increasingly rigid actions against opponents as well as against pop stars and pop culture could give Xi opposition. Then the just proclaimed pillar saint would quickly be at an end.