[Communist China knows only too well the dangers of a personality cult and a leader who outstays his welcome. Mao Zedong may have led the party to power but he also led the country into mass starvation under the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1962 and then into the collective madness of the Cultural Revolution. No one is suggesting that the adulation of Xi is comparable to the cult of Mao, or that he might unleash some comparable calamity on China; yet history still serves as warning.]
By
Simon Denyer
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Visitors view an
exhibition showcasing China's achievements over the past five years
at the Beijing Exhibition
Hall. A photo of President Xi Jinping overlooks the scene.
(Wu Hong/European
Pressphoto Agency/EFE)
|
Xi Jinping’s face dominates every wall and
every section of a major new exhibition in the Chinese capital. Titled “Five
Years of Sheer Endeavor,” it portrays China’s president as the guiding hand
behind every national advance.
From economic progress to military
modernization, from triumphs in space to innovations in cyberspace, from
construction of high-speed trains to production of simple tractors, the credit
goes to Xi.
In photos and videos, he is pictured chatting
to toothless, grinning villagers, or surrounded by beaming schoolchildren,
guiding white-coated scientists and hard-hatted engineers, and being greeted
all over the world with pomp and pageantry. Even Barack Obama features, hand on
chin, listening intently to the Chinese leader.
Scores of books, and documentaries laced with
rousing, patriotic music, drum home the message: a leader with “resolve and
wisdom,” a man of the people, approachable and loved by all. Wherever Xi goes,
he unleashes a whirlwind of “big-power charisma,” China Central Television
gushed, about a man it rather ominously described as the nation’s “supreme
leader.”
On Wednesday, China’s Communist Party stages
a five-yearly National Congress where Xi will be formally granted a second —
and supposedly final — five-year term as general secretary.
But such is the crescendo of praise directed
by the Communist Party’s propaganda wing, many experts are wondering: In five
years’ time, will Xi stay or will Xi go?
“Conventionally you wouldn’t expect adulation
on such a scale before a leader assumes the second term, because the second
term is usually guaranteed,” said party historian Zhang Lifan. “The propaganda
eulogizing Xi is a reflection of his own insecurities around the upcoming party
congress.”
China’s president and party leader, Zhang
says, wants to ensure that the congress falls obediently into line behind him,
and that his acolytes win key leadership roles. That would pave the way for Xi
to throw out the rule book, Zhang predicts, and retain power well into the next
decade.
“What he wants to do is create a very
personalized style of leadership, where it seems there is no alternative to Xi
Jinping in terms of taking the country forward,” said Rana Mitter, professor of
modern Chinese history and politics at the University of Oxford. “The point of
comparison is Vladimir Putin, who also runs a very personalized style of rule.”
Russia’s leader, of course, circumvented that
country’s two-term presidential limit, ruling for four years through a proxy in
the form of Dmitry Medvedev, before retaking the top job for an expanded
six-year-long third term in 2012.
The question now is whether Xi will follow in
Putin’s footsteps.
Communist China knows only too well the
dangers of a personality cult and a leader who outstays his welcome. Mao Zedong
may have led the party to power but he also led the country into mass
starvation under the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1962 and then into the
collective madness of the Cultural Revolution. No one is suggesting that the
adulation of Xi is comparable to the cult of Mao, or that he might unleash some
comparable calamity on China; yet history still serves as warning.
Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping imposed a
system of collective leadership in the 1980s, noted Susan Shirk, head of the
China center at the University of California at San Diego, along with rules
mandating fixed terms in office, a fixed retirement age and term limits.
For three decades, Deng’s model of collective
leadership, balancing different views and different factions within the party,
was remarkably successful, but by 2012 it was seen by many as having run
aground. The economy was still booming but corruption was rampant, while
fiefdoms corralled money and power strictly for their own interests.
Colorless men in dark suits lacked connection
with ordinary people. Ideologically the party seemed adrift, its ruthless
determination to prolong its rule indefinitely its main unifying force.
Enter Xi Jinping, and a program to
recentralize power, reinvigorate the party’s ideology with a new popular
nationalism and “rejuvenate” the nation — a “China dream” of prosperity at home
and respect on the world stage.
Xi set up “leading groups” of ministers and
advisers to control every aspect of policymaking: Running many of the groups
himself, he was soon nicknamed the “Chairman of Everything.”
Abroad, state media showed him as august and
imposing, but at home he was often depicted as approachable and folksy, eating
steamed buns at a modest Beijing restaurant, or being snapped with his pant
legs rolled up, holding his own umbrella, at a dockyard visit in the rain.
Politically he was coldblooded, launching a
campaign against corruption unprecedented in its scope. “It looks like Xi
overstepped his own mandate and surprised many with his own political skill and
ruthlessness,” said Bill Bishop, publisher of the Sinocism newsletter.
In the past five years, 1.34 million
officials have reportedly been punished for corruption or violating party
discipline, including several “tigers” or senior officials, dozens of senior
military officers and two very senior generals. Several victims are portrayed
in the exhibition, some crying tears of remorse.
Aspiring politicians now rush to join the
bandwagon, says Shirk, eagerly praising Xi “in the hope it will advance their
careers and protect them from being targeted” by the anti-corruption campaign.
Xi has also presided over the most dramatic
crackdown on civil society and freedom of speech since the aftermath of the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests — hundreds of activists, lawyers, journalists
and academics have been jailed, silenced or fired, the space for free speech
online significantly narrowed, and talk of greater democracy for the people of
Hong Kong crushed.
Nor is satire allowed when it comes to Xi
worship. One man was sentenced to two years in jail in April for referring to
China’s leader as “steamed-bun Xi” — and to Mao as a bandit — in a chat group,
while another was jailed and charged with subversion for referring to him as
“Xitler” on Twitter.
But Xi has also presided over a dramatic
expansion of China’s influence abroad, his “Belt and Road” project and a new
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank promising to lavish financial resources
around the region and a program of island-building in the South China Sea
showing his military muscle.
Yet if liberals and social reformers despair,
many people in China applaud “Xi Dada,” their nickname for “Uncle Xi,” just as
many Russians have embraced Putin’s populist nationalism.
“Xi Dada is different from previous leaders.
He is a big personality who is tough,” said a 24-year-old postgraduate chemical
engineering student, Jiao Hanhui, as he and his classmates looked at the
scientific section of the exhibition. “The image of China is tougher than
before on the world stage, and China has a bigger voice as well.”
In bookstores around town, a collection of
Xi’s speeches, catchily titled “The Governance of China,” is prominently
displayed. State media says it is selling like “hot cakes,” has received rave
reviews and been greeted around the world as a classic.
Any power grab inevitably creates enemies and
Xi may be more feared than loved by some party members. Following Chinese
politics has been compared with peering into a black box, but the upcoming
congress might give some clues about how effective Xi has been in clearing out
his rivals and about how far his ambitions go.
One such clue: One of the party’s rising
stars, Sun Zhencai, party secretary in Chongqing, was removed from office in
July and accused of corruption, a sign perhaps that Xi would not allow anyone
to steal his limelight. China watchers will be looking to see if any other
potential successor emerges at the meeting.
Promotions are usually determined by a
combination of seniority and performance, balancing different factions, but Xi
may seek to catapult his loyalists into senior roles, right up to the
seven-person Politburo Standing Committee.
Another closely watched indicator will be
what happens to Wang Qishan, the experienced head of the anti-corruption
campaign who is seen as Xi’s right-hand man. At 69, past practice suggests Wang
should retire, but many people think Xi will rewrite the rules to retain — or
even promote — him.
Whether Xi would simply stay on as president
and party general secretary for a third term starting in 2022, take a
Putinesque step of ruling through a puppet, or hover in the background with
some other title, as Deng Xiaoping did, is uncertain. Despite Xi’s power, the
party could push back against any such attempt. But the risks are evident.
“Xi must avoid the flaws of Putinism which
have set Russia on a trajectory for long-term stagnation,” warns Alexander
Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Overstaying may create
a wholly fragile system that cannot survive without its core,” he wrote, while
“an obsession with stability — another negative feature of Putinism — may
prevent many needed reforms.”
Amber Ziye Wang contributed to this report.
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