Xi Jinping is also a prisoner of the Communist Party

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To Western eyes, China’s leader Xi Jinping may seem like a prime example of a despotic ruler, with power concentrated in the hands of a single individual. And rightly so.

Since assuming leadership of the Chinese Communist Party a decade ago, he has discarded a power-sharing arrangement that existed between the different factions of the party, transforming one of the world’s largest political organizations into a unified whole in which his words, his thoughts and your face are everywhere. Speaking in 2016, Xi used a phrase once said by Mao Zedong, describing the party as the “east, west, south, north and center” of China. He might just as well be talking about himself.

At the Communist Party Congress, which begins on Sunday, Xi is poised to accept an unusual third five-year term as supreme leader.

His ability to accumulate so much unchallenged power is unexpected to some and even unwanted. It has been assumed by many, with good reason, that China is too complex, too vast and too capitalist to avoid some form of political pluralism. Social networks, the rising middle class and general modernization would lead to this, it was thought. Instead, Xi has been leading China in the opposite direction and appears to be able to extend his tentacles beyond his country’s borders.

But how was it possible for this to happen with such relative ease, without bloodshed? It certainly cannot be thanks to the will of a single person alone.

For all the fixation on Xi, ultimately his life, his goals and his politics are not really about him, but about the Communist Party. There is indeed an autocrat ruling modern China, but it is the party that Xi serves, not Xi Jinping himself. And, in a strange way, Xi is as much a prisoner of the party as all other Chinese are.

His place in Chinese history depends on his being able to ensure that the party’s dominance lasts long after his own departure from the scene, so that he can realize the party’s fundamental goal: restoring China to its ancient role as a great nation worthy of its name. Chinese: “Zhongguo”, or “the central country”.

This mission has been building since before the looting and devastation that China suffered at the hands of Western nations in the 19th and 20th centuries, followed by the fall of the Chinese imperial government in 1912 and the savage Japanese invasion during the war. The Communist Party picked up the pieces of a fractured nation. Xi Jinping’s power comes from the party’s nationalist goal of erasing those past shames and restoring China’s strength and control over “lost” territories like Taiwan. A foreign policy based on the quest for revenge and the desire to regain lost territories may be what motivates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions, but it is the blood that runs in the Chinese Communist Party’s veins.

Xi Jinping is the son of a former elite leader, Xi Zhongxun, and from him he learned at least one lesson: remain loyal to the party at all times, no matter how it treats you.

Victimized by one of the purges of the Mao era, Xi’s father spent years under house arrest and was only politically rehabilitated after Mao’s death. During the Cultural Revolution, militant Maoist students vandalized the family home, and one of Xi Jinping’s sisters died in the chaos. His father was displayed in the public square as an enemy of the people, and his mother was forced to denounce him. Xi Zhongxun was eventually sent into exile in the countryside for seven years as part of Mao’s campaign to make people “learn from the peasants”.

The experience hardened Xi Jinping, but he remained loyal to the party. A friend of his from those troubled times recalled a young man with an aura of destiny, a Communist “little prince” who saw party leadership as his birthright and who “had his eyes fixed on the grand prize,” according to a 2009 classified report compiled by the US Embassy in Beijing. Convinced that only the party could restore China’s strength, Xi could not be corrupted by the promise of material gains, said his old friend. The question was whether he would succumb to the delusion of power.

When he took the lead in 2012, China’s capitalist transition was already complete, but new problems had arisen. The decade spent under his predecessor, Hu Jintao, was marked by missed opportunities; the great mission of national restoration seemed to have been forgotten. Corrupt local officials ruled their regions like petty tyrants, and protests raged against government repression, blatant corruption, poor working conditions and colossal pollution.

The anti-corruption campaigns that dominated Xi’s early years in power were often seen as a way to disguise the elimination of opponents. But Xi was primarily motivated by the larger mission of making the party more efficient and restoring its image.

It is astonishing how little resistance he met and still does. As fearsome as Mao was, even he was met with opposition to his destructive utopian policies. Deng Xiaoping encountered resistance to his market reforms, and Jiang Zemin faced forces that wanted even greater reforms. But under Xi Jinping, virtually no dissent has been seen in the party, apart from occasional rumors of internal grumbling and a few defections by lower-ranking officials.

Part of the reason for this is the strength of the nationalist mission, which appeals to Chinese citizens far more than the cold logic of Marxism-Leninism. The outpourings of patriotic pride during the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February were heartfelt, as were the feelings of anger and hurt when the United States and others blamed China for the pandemic. Even Chinese who may reject the Communist Party still love their country.

Xi has been fortunate to be able to build on the advances of his predecessors. But he was also skillful. The internet could have threatened centralized authoritarian rule, but Xi’s government has used algorithms, facial recognition and mass electronic surveillance to assert party power more ubiquitously. China, which for much of the 20th century was a technologically backward country, now has the most advanced techno-autocracy in the world.

The remarkable vigor of Xi’s style is not entirely due to him or his particular goals, ambitions or ego (although he quite possibly has them). China is strong again, and Xi’s only responsibility is not to get in the way. This is why his leadership is so risk-averse and why dissenters are so energetically smothered. The systematic crackdown in Xinjiang is the most extreme manifestation of Xi’s obsession with preserving stability, even at the risk of international criticism and domestic suffering. The same applies to the uncompromising Covid zero policy.

These and other examples of discipline and control are comparable to the directives of a commander preparing for the ultimate final battle before victory: the restoration of China as a great power. Perhaps one day it will even be possible to make China overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy. Xi and his party colleagues know that a single misstep can ruin everything.

Of course, someday Xi Jinping will leave the scene. But his leadership ethos will remain: the vast project of enhancing the public persona of the Chinese leader of the moment, protecting him from all threats, and keeping attention fully focused on making China stronger, more respected, even feared. Too much has been invested in it.

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