On President Xi’s Power Grab
Focus this week surrounds a change in Chinese law that ends the limit on presidential terms. But will Xi Jinping really be president for life? Much of the media has little faith in the Chinese people.
Last week’s announcement that China would no longer limit its president to two terms of office came as little surprise. Last year’s 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress saw President Xi Jinping ascend to the company of former leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, statutorily, through the adoption of the apparently undefined ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ into the constitution. Furthermore, the five-yearly congress usually represents a point in the middle of a presidential term to nominate the next generation of leaders, just as Xi was chosen in 2007, through bringing new blood into the Central Committee. Yet Xi decided to fill his committee with senior loyalists, all older than he, ensuring there was no obvious successor this time around.
Xi, now almost certain to extend his time in power, proudly acclaims the face of the development that makes itself so obtuse in the construction sites and artist impressions that, in several ways, dust over the part of China that I live — Hangzhou. Here, his bestselling book (see picture) is to be found in all bookstores and magazine stands, often cordoned off in its own patriotic display. Students at my university have lauded him, for varied reasons. Some speak of his speaking abilities and rhetoric, rarely utilised by Chinese leaders that prefer a more technocratic, stately manner. Others admire him for his vision. One student told me she likes him simply because he is ‘nice to his wife’. In any case, most admire him because of his role in China’s economic rejuvenation.
People attribute this seizure of power to different things: belief that there is no other person that can coordinate his policies, perhaps Xi fears he has made too many enemies through his dubious ‘anti-corruption’ drive, drawn to the change through “self-preservation”. Maybe, he is just thirsty for power. Nonetheless, the consequences of having someone in power for a significantly long period of time are likely to be the same whatever Xi’s reasoning to stay on.
The coverage of the law change has been rightfully concerned. Many of the op-ed’s, reports, and write-ups however, and the sources they use, reach the conclusion that Xi is ‘President for Life’, totally unstoppable until death or resignation. Such articles, make the common mistake, for whatever reason, possibly orientalist assumptions, of casting aside the Chinese public as passive, submissive, and desperately weak. I want to challenge this, in that, although now, a great deal of the public is content, mainly due to the enormous growth of the Chinese economy that has lifted millions out of poverty (making a select few fabulously rich), and the casting of this development in patriotic and nationalistic terms, there’s evidence that I see to suggest that people aren’t totally buying into the government agenda, in particular this policy. If things turn sour, Xi might not get away with this.
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Firstly, the older generations. They have overseen widespread economic and social changes in their country, and many, having grown up through agrarian famine, forced industrialisation, and the Cultural Revolution, are conscious of great power vested in a single individual. Moreover, as a recent BBC radio documentary drew attention to, the ideas binding many of the elderly in China, such as community, prudence, and family life, are eroding amongst younger generations as China vivaciously races through its capitalist hyper-development. Having lived through the terror of Mao Zedong and already balancing positive development with scepticism of the changes it has brought, one could see the elderly in China thinking hard about the extension in tenure of a singular figure, and the new system of beliefs his economics upholds, with considerable caution.
Middle aged Chinese may also have some reticence. Last semester I undertook a part-time teaching position at a nearby high school. Delighted to have some Western teachers visit, the head of the foreign language department gladly showed myself and the other new student teacher around the newly built school compound. Literally carved out the side of a mountain, the campus is brand new, yet has the imposition of an established institution. Statues of past educational leaders relax in peaceful gardened areas, and murals dedicated to centuries of Chinese education welcome you at the gates. The different buildings have not been designed in tandem, and incorporate numerous architectural traditions. It’s suggestive of a school that has organically grown over time, but it was built in less than a year — a microcosm of Xi’s China.
And the Xi brand can be found here too. At the school’s library, it is his quotes; recent, but seemingly timeless that are inspirationally placed about shelves of books and in the main lobby. “Yes, Xi Jinping actually said that! To us! To this school!” smirked the teacher giving us the tour. In a later conversation, he introduced me to a chengyu, that being a four-character Chinese idiom (which frustratingly, I can’t recall), that pictures a dog, wagging its tail gleefully in front of its owner. This, I was told is a metaphor about those that unconditionally follow and devote themselves to their leaders. No matter how much his life, his city, and his school had grown, the teacher, of university age in the late 1980’s, was able to cut through the artifice with brilliant subtletly.
And what of the university students themselves, people my age that I come into contact with day after day? Above, I talked about how many of them largely approve of Xi’s rule. But the reactions I’ve personally encountered to the change in the law are questioning, if not outright dissenting. One such student, who has already voiced concerns to me about uneven development within China, simply wrote that she wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do. Another was more blunt, saying “Sometimes I’m really jealous of you Europeans to have such free political systems”. For a Western friend of mine here, he was told that a friend would speak to him about this when they could see him in person.
Why has this law change provoked a change of heart from the young Chinese that get most of their political knowledge from state-run media? I believe that it is rooted in the compulsory university courses in recent Chinese political theory and history that all students must take. They are taught Mao Zedong Thought, that is, the building upon Marxist-Leninist state-socialism ideology with a specifically agricultural focus. But they are also warned of the perils of long-term rule. The 70:30 rule, as recognised in the classes and by the government (recently also by Xi himself), is the idea that what Mao achieved was 70% good, 30% bad. This follows with learning about Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor, who introduced economic reforms known as the ‘four modernisations’, and who, in a 1982 update of the constitution put into place term limits on presidential power, to prevent any repeats of the Mao era by his successors. What followed was the meritocratic selection of leaders based on economic and technocratic achievements at lower levels — the ‘China model’ of democracy that many here remain convinced is the key to China’s phenomenal development. Now as future students begin to learn ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ alongside these, there exists a blatant contradiction in the curriculum.
It’s well documented that there is a trade off within Chinese society that accepts authoritarian rule and limits on political freedom for a growing economy and a standard of living that continuously rises. Xi, for as long as he prolongs these rises, will get away with the removal of term limits, and perhaps he will become a leader for life, if the economy continues the upwards trend forever. But Chinese GDP still has to spread over 1.4 billion people, of whom 80 million still live below the poverty line. An uneasy transition from a manufacturing economy, which brought with it incredible economic gains, to an economy fit for the Chinese worker of the 21st century — skilled, possibly affluent, with ambition far beyond the limits of the factory floor. This, as well as a demographic time-bomb that will see half of the population over 45 years old by 2050, and one quarter over 65 by 2025, piles pressure on the double-digit growth that has characterised the last thirty years, and the leaders that oversee it. If Xi’s compromise of the “China model” parallels a fall in living standards, slow in growth, or full-blown economic crisis, then people might see him, or at least this decision, at the heart of the matter.
When he left office, Deng Xiaoping wrote ambiguously (it’s unclear whether it was a reference to domestic unpopularity or linked to China’s rising power) that the Chinese leadership had to “observe matters carefully […] hide our capabilities and bide our time”. There is evidence here, anecdotal, but surely measurable, that every age group in China yields a latent, hidden scepticism about the government. For now, they willingly consent to the leadership, and it’s difficult for even the most stringent of democrats to argue why they wouldn’t. Perhaps though, before we write them off completely, and assume that they will live under President Xi’s rule for the next thirty years, we should consider their lives and their thinking through Deng’s turn of phrase.
