In a vintage setting, rescuing a Bolshevik ritualism from the 20th century, the Communist Party opens this Sunday (16) its 20th National Congress, a historic milestone in facing the so-called “Chinese paradox”.
The event should herald the expansion of powers in the hands of Xi Jinping, committed to keeping the party elite in power – an increasingly challenging task, due to the advance of profound changes in the country, such as the expansion of the middle class, urbanization and advances technological.
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has described his historic mission. On the one hand, to keep China on the trail of one of the most relevant transformations driven by the market economy in the contemporary panorama, in order to restore the country to the status of a global power, a status experienced centuries ago. On the other hand, it accompanies the endeavor to avoid the loss of the Communist Party’s iron-clad political control over an increasingly urban, cosmopolitan and technological society.
And the specter of power crumbling haunts Xi Jinping with a historical reference: the fate of the Soviet Union.
As early as December 2012, a few months after his accession, Xi warned of “historical lessons” from his northern neighbor. “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason is that its ideals and convictions were questioned,” maintained the leader during a trip to Guangdong province, according to reports published at the time by foreign media.
Xi, in his doctrinal commitment, defended the “Leninist discipline” in the province, which currently concentrates around 300,000 millionaires and with tremendous industrial and technological activity. Now, on the eve of the CP Congress, Bolshevik rhetoric has once again circulated with intensity in the changing China.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the revolution led by Mao Tse-tung in 1949, on the 1st, the leader urged, in a text published in a party magazine, the more than 92 million members of the CP to prioritize the “historical mission” and to prepare for the “great struggles” of the future. “Our party must be united to lead the people to face the great challenges effectively, defend against the great risks, overcome the great barriers and resolve the great contradictions,” he wrote.
In domestic political dynamics, Xi follows paths based on the Soviet experience. Political analyzes in Beijing point to Mikhail Gorbachev, father of glasnost, as responsible for the debacle, by making the party environment more flexible and allowing the rise of a rival from the Politburo itself, Boris Yeltsin.
The power struggle between Gorbachev and Yeltsin contributed decisively to the disintegration of the USSR and the Soviet CP, in 1991. The current Chinese leader brandishes the example of the glasnost times to relentlessly prevent the emergence of foci of contestation against the regime, at the party or society level.
He uses the argument of “party unity” to obtain an eventual third term at the head of the CP and break with the tradition implemented by Deng Xiaoping, architect of the reforms begun in 1978, of limiting a secretary-general to ten years in power.
Xi Jinping, in five more years as a mandarin, takes on the challenge of managing the deepening of the “Chinese paradox”, that is, governing with an iron fist a society with more middle class, more urban and with more technology. The result of this process will be fundamental to the design of the 21st century.
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