Xi's gamble
 |
| Xi Jinping, painted portrait, by Thierry Ehrmann, CC BY 2.0 |
China has never had a tradition of democracy. The breadth of its ancient three-thousand year history is one of centralized imperial dynasties succeeding each other, interspersed by periods of chaos. Every dynasty claims the Mandate of Heaven, by which it brings plenty and prosperity to its people, until things go down and another regime assumes that mandate. We have to see the CCP in light of this: another dynasty along the lines of the Qing and Tang.
President Xi Jinping has assumed a level of control over the state and the party not seen since the days of Mao Zedong. He has taken power from diffused party organs and consolidated it in his own person. "Xi Jinping Thought" has joined the ranks of "Mao Zedong Thought" as the organizing principle for the party and state. He has torn up the firewalls which the survivors of Mao's reign set in place to prevent another all-powerful leader from emerging. He is in all respects an emperor of the old school, just a so-called communist one.
Chinese history is not one of one dynasty smoothly succeeding another in an unbroken chain. The ruptures are often violent, as we saw just in the 20th century between the fall of the Qing and the proclamation of the People's Republic. Periods of anarchy can last decades before someone manages to consolidate power and begin the cycle anew.
Xi is no fool, and fully realizes this. But he's making a gamble. He's gambling, like every emperor before him, that by providing stability and wealth to his citizens, they won't grumble about the lack of freedom and the ability to hold opinions contrary to those of the party. Keep their rice bowls full, and they won't hit the streets in a repeat of 1989, which prompted the then-leadership to go full steam ahead with its plans to modernize the economy.
It's not a completely foolish bet to make. China's seemingly never-ending economic boom is much more evenly spread than previous ones under other dynasties. China has managed to avoid Russia's fate, with wealth concentrated among the oligarchs. The party seems to have learned economic lessons which have seen the state overtaking America's GDP in some calculations, and which has made China the new pretender to supplant US hegemony.
However, nothing operates in a vacuum. Xi's fate and his plans for China depend not only on his will to power.
The simmering rebellion in Hong Kong, quashed for now, will erupt again, as citizens whose entire identity under colonial rule was in opposition to the People's Republic won't want to give up their freedoms. Its conflict with Taiwan—it's so-called "lost province"—will bring it into conflict not only with the guarantor of Taiwan's security, the US, but also with American allies Japan and South Korea, which wouldn't be too keen on seeing China assuming hegemonic power in East Asia. And then there are the various territorial disputes with other countries in the region, any one of which could flare up into a military confrontation.
But Xi's biggest gamble is that history won't repeat itself. While past is not always prologue, China's unique circumstances seem to have it operate on a cycle of dominant power followed by collapse. Xi is betting that the old rules no longer apply, and that his state is about to settle in for another long period of ascendancy, not followed by any collapse. It is a millenarian vision.
He might be right. But, of course, he could be catastrophically mistaken. As the US reasserts its power and its alliances, managing the China problem will be the paramount foreign policy task of the next few decades. All depends on how good of a gambler Xi is, and how by aggregating power to himself he's dooming his successors, who won't have the same capabilities he does. Thus fall dynasties.