Xi Jinping, China and the fifth cardinal point

By: Ricardo Israel - 03/11/2022

What took place in Beijing is the public communication, urbe et orbi, that the People"s Republic of China begins a new stage, where it intends not to be just another country, but the number 1 superpower in the world, and has decided to work for it, without complex and endless.

I think this goal has a date: October 1, 2049, the centenary of the People"s Republic of China, the modern version of the thousand-year-old Chinese empire, after the communists defeated the nationalists in the civil war that culminated in 1949.

But let"s go part. On October 16, at the opening of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (PCCH), the 2,296 official delegates selected to represent its 91 million members were present, of whom 204 were elected to the Central Committee, 25 to the Political Commission, 7 for the Military Commission and 7 for the very powerful Permanent Committee, with names of leaders that are repeated in more than one organization.

China is not a democracy, but there is politics within it, that is, a struggle for power, selection between alternatives; conflict, imposition of authority. In this century, the Congresses had followed a similar script every five years, with an opening speech that anticipated the direction that China would take in the coming years, subsequent internal discussions without publicity, and a closing that gave the names of those who would share the Permanent Commission and strategic decisions with the president. Also the result of the internal competition of the factions, and according to the announced names, who advanced and who retreated.

But this 2022 everything would change, since the way in which Xi Jinping announced his new status of power will remain in the retina of many, through an act that is both violent, where he showed the whole world and also China the new way of exercising it by purging Hu Jintao and expelling him from the meeting hall.

It was not only a change in the way power was exercised but also probably marked a new stage, a before and after. Hu had not only preceded him since he was the general secretary of the Party and president of China for a decade, but had also represented for Deng a transition towards leaders, then younger, in leading the country.

He was therefore not one of the crowd, but someone who was selected to mark the new stage for everyone, the one where Xi Jinping declared that two rules established by Deng were becoming obsolete, both linked to the institutionalization of power, necessary according to Deng so that something as destructive as the Cultural Revolution of the last century would not be repeated.

The first rule was that positions of great power such as the presidency itself were only for two continuous terms. The other was an age rule to avoid repeating the experience of gerontocracy that preceded Gorbachev and the end of the USSR. From that historical experience, the PCCH also learned that, in order to survive in power, they needed to legitimize themselves with economic progress and consumption, as well as that power should not be shared with any other political or religious group, and that, on the contrary, the monopoly of the single party had to be strengthened, since, without this cement, the regime could collapse.

Xi Jinping began an unprecedented third period at the top of power and was the only one who exceeded the age limit, and with his 68 years he can perhaps think of another fifteen years, since Mao ruled until his death at the age of 83, and without formal position, Deng himself was at the top until his voluntary retirement at 85.

Xi Jinping became the most powerful Chinese citizen since Mao, somewhat early, when like Mao his thinking had been incorporated into none other than the Constitution, a rise to the top, where the “fight against corruption” was used to neutralize, and then defeat, its rivals.

Xi"s political triumph was total, since the four new members were appointed by him in the Permanent Commission, which ensures that he has no opposition. In addition, no one from the group known as “technocratic meritocracy”, those who held positions more for their achievements than for ideological loyalty, was able to retain a presence. Also, no one who doubted that the confrontation was good for China could be saved, so there will undoubtedly be a greater verticalism in the party cadres, in addition to much official truth. The humiliation of his predecessor was a way of communicating the meaning of this new stage, in which only Xi shines in the hierarchy.

Mao would have represented the first phase, and despite his many abuses, he is revered as the founder of modern China, a kind of father of the country. The second was that of Deng and the portentous transformation experienced by China after the death of Mao and the implementation of the agreement with Nixon-Kissinger, which greatly contributed to his current economic power, in addition to the fact that he has already completed his 4 modernizations, those of agriculture, industry, science-technology and defense-military.

Now China is communicating to the world that in this new stage it seeks to be the main superpower of the 21st century, displacing the United States from that seat, just as the USA did with Great Britain in the 20th century.

With an addition, since from a world supposedly on the way to multipolarity, it suddenly returns to bipolarity, and from this Congress, there is an extreme personalization of power, reflected in the seat of Xi, who considers the paradigm of institutionalized power of Deng, so the change is not to or from a democracy, but from a technocratic oligarchy to a nationalist autocracy, where there is greater control at all levels, from the general population and its degree of compliance to the own Chinese billionaires, reflected in the regime"s increased control over its large technology companies.

It is also perhaps the definitive political retirement, and not only due to age, of those who were the object of ridicule and persecution within the PCCH itself by the forces launched against them in the Cultural Revolution, and without which, including suffering, one cannot understand the China"s recent history nor the personal history of Xi or other leaders of a certain age.

Finally, the key to understanding what has happened is to understand that the future is also in a rather remote past, and that an important source is not only the revaluation of the Confucian tradition, but also the pride represented by great emperors, all Once this is the fact that China was richer and more powerful than the West for much of history, even though it was dominated in recent centuries.

That history is vindicated for this new stage, exemplified by the fact that part of Xi"s "thought" that made him worthy of the honor of being incorporated into the constitution, was his assessment of the party as the new mandarins, that is, the bureaucratic class. who had made the empire work, based on his loyalty and knowledge.

By the way, a very arranged and made-up version, almost from a movie, but a version of the past to accommodate the future that is expected. It is not original, but it is the narrative that emanates from power.

In a way, something that resembles Putin"s Russia, where the future is best understood as a repetition of the remote past, and not that of recent communism. In the case of Russia in tsarism and the tsars, and in the China that announces Xi to the world, that of the empire, where his person aspires to be seen and recognized as a new emperor.

In short, how then to see the China to which Xi Jinping aspires?

In my opinion, without a doubt, under the prism of nationalism, so Marxism or capitalism are not the most relevant in this new narrative. At the same time, it must be seen within a bipolar world, although in no case is it a new cold war, since China"s economic power puts it in a different category.

The so-called “Thucydides Trap”, an expression used by Graham Allison (2015), helps to understand what is coming. It describes what happens when rising power and ruling power collide, just as happened with Athens and Sparta in ancient times. To understand the US and China now, Allison"s journey through 16 cases in 5 centuries shows the prevalence of conflict, and in the few cases where it was done in peace, many painful adjustments were necessary.

Will there be in the USA the will for one or the other scenario? We do not know. For now, China seems to have will and clarity, and Xi Jinping seems to want to rescue an idea of Mao, who said of country and party, that, to the four cardinal points of north, south, east and west, China asked the Communist Party to become a fifth cardinal point to unite them, their center.

Poet exaggeration, as Mao claimed he was or simple ideology?

"The opinions published here are the sole responsibility of their author."

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».