Nils: a nice overview. Thank you. Back in 2014 I encapsulated it in the following way: “in today’s China, party-state rule is attempting to preserve the core of the cloak-and-dagger Leninist state while its leaders tirelessly repeat Maoist dicta which are amplified by socialist-style neo-liberal policies wedded to cosmetic institutional Confucian conservatism.” The successes are undeniable, even if the system is cynical and self serving. Moreover, through his obduracy and amassing of power, Xi Jinping sets China up to repeat the historical failure of the CCP: succession politics. Since 1921, the party has only seen one peaceful transfer of power, that of 2003.
Nils: re the 2012 struggle between Xi and Bo Xilai. Apart from it being akin to a “line struggle” in the old sense, it also reflected the latest twist in the CCP’s “restoration politics”. As I see it, it was the fourth in a series of post-1949 “corrections”: first that of the Cultural Revolution in the mid 60s, then the reformist turn from late 1978, followed by the counter-reform years of 1989-1992 and then the Xi era, starting in 2012. After Xi, another “correction” is would seem to be on the cards, and it will quite possibly be very dramatic. In the mix is the near-century-long civil war that broke out in 1927. From the late 1980s, the contending one-party states of the KMT and the CCP evolved into an existential stand off between the original promise of the Republican revolution of 1911 (to revive the nation and build constitutional democracy) and the Stalinist-inflected Communist Party whose revanchist authoritarianism cloaks itself using the language of historical inevitability. In recent years, Xi and his propagandists, guided by the dark genius of Wang Huning, have taken to spouting quasi-religious nonsense about transhistorical “soul lines” 魂脈 and “cultural ley lines” 文脉. Shades of Alexander Dugin.
Yeah, something dramatic at the point of succession seems likely. What makes it so hard to guess what it will look like is that the exact nature of that drama will be heavily determined by the "structure of forces" at the particular moment when Xi exits. One thing that Americans especially struggle to appreciate is that whatever happens will almost certainly be driven entirely Chinese Innenpolitik, not by whatever the U.S. may be saying or doing at that moment. (That's the nature of historical change within superpowers: "It's the endogeneity, stupid.")
Ah, the Americans. Informed opinion there was by and large wrong-headed about the 70s, 1989 and the Xi auto-golpe. Maybe the Trump era will offer new insights into the complex workings of indigenous politics. Though probably not.
Indeed, Nils. Excellent points. Of course, the anti-corruption campaign has been highly controversial and often seen by “political connoisseurs” within the system as being more of a useful political tool for Xi, much like the purge / 运动 paradigm under Mao. I also see it in terms of Isaiah Berlin’s “artificial dialectic” (see: https://chinaheritage.net/journal/xi-jinpings-china-stalins-artificial-dialectic/). Xi’s cronyism has doubtless made the system brittle and less resilient and I follow with interest incisive independent-minded Chinese writers who mull over the uncertain future — I’m thinking of Xu Chenggang 许成钢、Wu Si 吴思、Wu Guoguang 吴国光、Wang Lixiong 王力雄、Xu Zhangrun 许章润, and the maverick Li Chengpeng 李承鹏, to name only a few (see: https://chinaheritage.net/journal/deathwatch-for-a-chairman/). It’s interesting that America and Russia also face the “autocrat’s dilemma”.
Yes, I remember observing the meltdown in 2012 (at that time I’d only been to China once and knew the place not at all) and thinking that this would end very badly. That Xi then abolished the two term limit only put off (and raised the stakes of) the reckoning.
Your general point is essential: organizing peaceful succession has always been a huge problem for autocracies, historically only solved in a consistent way via some reference to the divine. Which poses a fundamental problem for resolutely anti-theist autocratic regimes.
One hypothesis I’ve had (based on nothing empirical in the contemporary Chinese case, only the above general historical observation) is that the CCP’s decision to abolish the system of orderly institutional succession that was attempted after Deng was less a sign of Xi’s personal strength or ambition than it was a general lack of confidence in the ability of a term-limited leader to enact changes they believed were necessary to sustain the system. Specifically, the anti-corruption drive (which was seen as an existential requirement) could only work (and not be slow-walked to ineffectiveness) if the top leadership was seen as perdurable. Whether or not that was true (and it may well have been, but who knows) it maybe solved a shorter-term problem at the expensive of setting up this longer term problem. But corruption was seen (again, possibly correctly) as a greater threat to the day-to-day legitimacy of the regime than the eventual punctuated problem of succession. Until we see what happens when Xi exits, we won’t have any idea whether this was a good choice. (And even then we won’t, because unless the succession is very orderly, it will never be clear whether the cost of disorderly succession was worth whatever the anti-corruption effort solved.)
Very nice essay. The Western ideas of individual liberty, an open society and constitutional democracy have always been, for Chinese intellectuals, inconvenient distractions in the pursuit of wealth and power. At least for the last century.
Nils: a nice overview. Thank you. Back in 2014 I encapsulated it in the following way: “in today’s China, party-state rule is attempting to preserve the core of the cloak-and-dagger Leninist state while its leaders tirelessly repeat Maoist dicta which are amplified by socialist-style neo-liberal policies wedded to cosmetic institutional Confucian conservatism.” The successes are undeniable, even if the system is cynical and self serving. Moreover, through his obduracy and amassing of power, Xi Jinping sets China up to repeat the historical failure of the CCP: succession politics. Since 1921, the party has only seen one peaceful transfer of power, that of 2003.
Nils: re the 2012 struggle between Xi and Bo Xilai. Apart from it being akin to a “line struggle” in the old sense, it also reflected the latest twist in the CCP’s “restoration politics”. As I see it, it was the fourth in a series of post-1949 “corrections”: first that of the Cultural Revolution in the mid 60s, then the reformist turn from late 1978, followed by the counter-reform years of 1989-1992 and then the Xi era, starting in 2012. After Xi, another “correction” is would seem to be on the cards, and it will quite possibly be very dramatic. In the mix is the near-century-long civil war that broke out in 1927. From the late 1980s, the contending one-party states of the KMT and the CCP evolved into an existential stand off between the original promise of the Republican revolution of 1911 (to revive the nation and build constitutional democracy) and the Stalinist-inflected Communist Party whose revanchist authoritarianism cloaks itself using the language of historical inevitability. In recent years, Xi and his propagandists, guided by the dark genius of Wang Huning, have taken to spouting quasi-religious nonsense about transhistorical “soul lines” 魂脈 and “cultural ley lines” 文脉. Shades of Alexander Dugin.
Yeah, something dramatic at the point of succession seems likely. What makes it so hard to guess what it will look like is that the exact nature of that drama will be heavily determined by the "structure of forces" at the particular moment when Xi exits. One thing that Americans especially struggle to appreciate is that whatever happens will almost certainly be driven entirely Chinese Innenpolitik, not by whatever the U.S. may be saying or doing at that moment. (That's the nature of historical change within superpowers: "It's the endogeneity, stupid.")
Ah, the Americans. Informed opinion there was by and large wrong-headed about the 70s, 1989 and the Xi auto-golpe. Maybe the Trump era will offer new insights into the complex workings of indigenous politics. Though probably not.
Indeed, Nils. Excellent points. Of course, the anti-corruption campaign has been highly controversial and often seen by “political connoisseurs” within the system as being more of a useful political tool for Xi, much like the purge / 运动 paradigm under Mao. I also see it in terms of Isaiah Berlin’s “artificial dialectic” (see: https://chinaheritage.net/journal/xi-jinpings-china-stalins-artificial-dialectic/). Xi’s cronyism has doubtless made the system brittle and less resilient and I follow with interest incisive independent-minded Chinese writers who mull over the uncertain future — I’m thinking of Xu Chenggang 许成钢、Wu Si 吴思、Wu Guoguang 吴国光、Wang Lixiong 王力雄、Xu Zhangrun 许章润, and the maverick Li Chengpeng 李承鹏, to name only a few (see: https://chinaheritage.net/journal/deathwatch-for-a-chairman/). It’s interesting that America and Russia also face the “autocrat’s dilemma”.
Yes, I remember observing the meltdown in 2012 (at that time I’d only been to China once and knew the place not at all) and thinking that this would end very badly. That Xi then abolished the two term limit only put off (and raised the stakes of) the reckoning.
Your general point is essential: organizing peaceful succession has always been a huge problem for autocracies, historically only solved in a consistent way via some reference to the divine. Which poses a fundamental problem for resolutely anti-theist autocratic regimes.
One hypothesis I’ve had (based on nothing empirical in the contemporary Chinese case, only the above general historical observation) is that the CCP’s decision to abolish the system of orderly institutional succession that was attempted after Deng was less a sign of Xi’s personal strength or ambition than it was a general lack of confidence in the ability of a term-limited leader to enact changes they believed were necessary to sustain the system. Specifically, the anti-corruption drive (which was seen as an existential requirement) could only work (and not be slow-walked to ineffectiveness) if the top leadership was seen as perdurable. Whether or not that was true (and it may well have been, but who knows) it maybe solved a shorter-term problem at the expensive of setting up this longer term problem. But corruption was seen (again, possibly correctly) as a greater threat to the day-to-day legitimacy of the regime than the eventual punctuated problem of succession. Until we see what happens when Xi exits, we won’t have any idea whether this was a good choice. (And even then we won’t, because unless the succession is very orderly, it will never be clear whether the cost of disorderly succession was worth whatever the anti-corruption effort solved.)
State capitalist mercantilist dictatorship though increasingly transitioning into a new power people’s democracy.
Very nice essay. The Western ideas of individual liberty, an open society and constitutional democracy have always been, for Chinese intellectuals, inconvenient distractions in the pursuit of wealth and power. At least for the last century.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_Search_of_Wealth_and_Power/hnQoD4bIXCwC?hl=en