Xi Jinping, 69, begins his definitive journey into the history books on Sunday, as the Chinese Communist Party opens its 20th Congress to enthron him for an unprecedented third term as leader of the world’s second-largest economy.
The size of their challenge lies both at home and in the country that occupies the first place, the United States, determined to make the Cold War 2.0 that has been waging since 2017 against Xi’s assertiveness a permanent trench.
The clash lives up to the predictions of academics such as the American Graham Allison, who studied conflicts between emerging and established powers using as a basis the most classic of rivalries: that of Athens and Sparta in Ancient Greece (5th century BC) – won, by the way, by the Americans then, the Spartans.
But the picture is far from clear. Xi came to power as a Chinese CP soldier. His father had been a revolutionary hero, then an outcast under Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution, and finally rehabilitated. Young, today’s leader saw the city to which he was exiled become a pilgrimage point for young bureaucracy aspirants.
This is a central point of Xi’s rise: the resumption of a personalism not seen since Mao (1893-1976) led China. Before him, there was the great architect of the economic revolution that integrated the country into the Western productive chain and turned it into a power, Deng Xiaoping (1904-97).
Like Mao, the founder of Communist China in 1949, Deng was placed in the Chinese constitutional pantheon. Xi also achieved this, with just six years in power in 2018, when his thinking was inscribed in the Charter and various state policies.
Walking around Beijing, in fact, is bumping into electric scooters and high-tech digital identification systems, but also by countless posters with the face of the leader.
Xi’s rise to power went through very clear stages: internal purges of the CP, which were otherwise well accepted by the establishment and the population, an external trust that led him to put US$ 1 trillion in 149 countries that are part of his new Silk Road of infrastructure and a clear increase in military and diplomatic muscle.
This all came at a price, which Deng has always avoided by preaching patience in the ascension he saw as inevitable for the colossus of 1.3 billion people. The challenged US has gradually modeled its partnership with the Chinese on a challenge — economic, political and, many fear, military.
Xi is left to seek to place itself as the hero of a world where economic sanctions are not welcome, and where the coloring of the partner regime matters little. It’s a lesson he learned from Vladimir Putin, his main ally, who has ruled Russia for 12 years longer than the Chinese has led his country.
Not casually, Xi is the Russian’s main guarantor in his venture in Ukraine, seen in the West as suicidal for both. China doesn’t openly support the war, of course, but it doesn’t condemn it either, and that seems to be enough to make military analysts wide-eyed to think what would happen if the Chinese made good on their promise to integrate Taiwan into the mainland anyway.
With the US in direct sights, Xi seeks to balance the war issue with moderation while embracing a new world order. His problem starts at home: there is an economic crisis to deal with, and one that China has never seen before.
Accustomed to GDP growth that reached 14.2% in 2007, the regime now faces a lucky 3.3% advance in 2021, according to the International Monetary Fund. There was the global drop of the pandemic in 2020, when China grew 2.2%, and the rebound of 8.1% from last year.
But the objective problems remain: the disruption of global production chains, of which Beijing was a central point, and the difficulties arising from Xi’s rigid policy on Covid-19. The country that was the birthplace of the pandemic controlled it by force, with unique systems of social coercion, and the succession of brutal lockdowns takes its toll.
Other ingredients of this broth are the crisis in the real estate market, artificially inflated, and structural issues of industrial competitiveness and innovation. Protests in the provinces and even in the capital have become commonplace. This all makes decoupling from the West a complex prospect.
Historically more important, there is the symbolism of Xi as emperor of a communist government. As scholars such as Yao Yang of the Chinese Center for Economic Research at Peking University argue, this is a somewhat reductionist reading.
Xi, as is well known, praises the role of Confucian philosophy, which guided China for more than 2,000 years until it was ostracized by the communists. In this view, the CP is not a party in the western sense: it is the heart of the kingdom, with the discernment to promote the best in society and provide for others.
Yao, a public advocate of ending Marxist ties, recognizes that such a system lacks scrutiny by the ruling classes. But he believes that there is social mobility as or wider than in the West, considering submission to the emperor on duty. It’s an academic debate playing out across the board of realpolitik, with no access to Google on the surveilled Chinese internet.
The Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo will give Xi another five years in office, in power since November 15, 2012. The rules established by Deng provided for only two terms for each ruler, which were fulfilled almost anonymously by his successors until the current one. leader. Xi’s 2018 change is a measure of his power.
The leader saw Chinese per capita income double in his years in power, but also youth unemployment hit record levels. He decreed an end to the one-child policy in 2013, but there was never the expected baby boom and today the country fears the pangs of its aging society. His response has been conventional, with a rhetorical prescription of socialist assistance.
Unlike other leaders in his country, he has taken on what he calls “China’s rejuvenation” — by extension, of the CP itself — as a personal task. Voluntarily, he announced almost everything important that has happened in the nation since 2012, stepping aside when the result was not favorable. The opacity, seen in the relentless repression of the idea of a libertarian Hong Kong, is one of his hallmarks.
Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), premier of the entire first phase of the People’s Republic of China, was once asked about the effects of the French Revolution of 1789. “Too soon to know,” was his reply, imbued with 5,000 years of perspective. Chinese history. Xi has accelerated this dynamic with the times, but it is uncertain whether he would have an answer to the same question.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
