China, Middle Land: Xi has built a cult of his image in China and will have to regain balance in domestic politics

Modest, humble, diligent, silent. Reports in China that profiled Xi Jinping before he came to power in 2012 used these adjectives. That efficient technocrat determined to root out corruption in the Communist Party was expected to follow the path of economic reforms and slow political opening started by Deng Xiaoping 35 years earlier. In 2022, the figure is different.

In 10 years, Xi has consolidated his internal power by eliminating opposition among coreligionists and promoting an ostensible campaign against Western values ​​- which, in his view, jeopardize Beijing’s security and stability. He even suppressed domestic dissent, restricting freedom of speech and assembly and reversing the fine line separating party and state.

The cult of his image is permeated, in millions of his photos across the country and in “Xi Jinping’s thought for socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era”, a pompously named philosophy formally included in the Constitution – a feat achieved before only by Mao Tse. -tung. As he walks through the Hall of the People on Sunday towards a controversial third term, Xi will be crowned with no heir apparent to guide China for at least another five years in a far more challenging landscape.

“He abandoned Deng’s advice that Beijing should keep a low profile as it rose to power status. Instead, it played a more assertive role in world affairs, which worsened relations with its neighbors and the US,” he tells the statement. Sheet former US Ambassador to the country J. Stapleton Roy.

Insisting on the Covid zero policy, China is expected to show growth of 3.5% in 2022, well below the 5.5% projected by the PC itself at the beginning of the year and the 8.1% in 2021, when the country managed to profit. by keeping the engine running as the world slowed down due to the pandemic.

Bloomberg projects that the slowdown in the real estate sector, in conjunction with the maintenance of Covid-related restrictions, could lead GDP in the next decade to grow below 4% per year, postponing to the mid-2030 the point at which the Chinese economy would surpass. the american. Until then, a possible forced reunification with Taiwan would lead to a difficult-to-predict limbo, with global repercussions.

Xi doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. He said he was comfortable sacrificing short-term economic growth to save lives from Covid and said he did not want to continue deferring the task of annexing Taipei to the next generation of leaders.

Director of the China Studies Program at the Stimson Center, Sinologist Yun Sun sees Chinese politics as “a great process of balancing, negotiating and bargaining.” Even as he consolidates his power and elects loyal officers in the highest structure, the current leader will not be able to ignore economic reforms.

“The delicate balance lies in dedication to continual reform and, at the same time, in pursuit of Xi’s ideology, which often subjects economic practicality to political considerations,” he says. “That doesn’t mean, however, that all his decisions will prioritize economic reform above all else.”

The researcher also says that the profile of those promoted in this National Congress should be analyzed carefully. For her, too many opposing voices and factions in the CP structure lead to paralysis — “as seen in the era of Hu Jintao and Xi’s first term.” “But when one voice dominates the entire speech, the party risks becoming just an echo chamber. It’s not the best decision-making model, but the challenge is not unique to China.”

By being appointed as Hu’s successor, the current leader was fulfilling the script expected of someone with a similar political pedigree. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of the founders of Communist China and credited with being essential to Mao’s survival during the Great March (1934-1935), when CP rebel squads walked 9,600 km fleeing Nationalist troops, consolidating the foundations of socialism. .

On the winning side, Xi senior was sworn in as head of the Propaganda Department, elected a member of the party’s Central Committee and vice premier responsible for the legislative functions of the State Council. During the period, Xi Jinping enjoyed a wealthy life in the heart of the political elite. The father, however, would fall from grace in 1962, accused of conspiracy.

Demoted to the position of deputy manager at a truck factory, persecuted and arrested, Xi Zhongxun lost his titles and prestige, being relocated with his family to Luoyang, in the central region of the country. He would not be released until 13 years later and rehabilitated in 1978, when he finally assumed leadership positions in Guangzhou.

J. Stapleton Roy followed these changes closely. Born in Nanjing in 1935, he studied at the American School in Shanghai until 1949, when the Communists won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic. Outside China, he continued to follow local politics and eventually became the fifth US ambassador to the country.

“Xi became a leader at a time when the enormous wealth generated by rapid economic development completely corrupted the CP, making the country more vulnerable to factionalism, and weakening central control,” he says, referring to corruption scandals that surrounded the center of the country. Chinese power at the time. “As an heir to his father’s revolutionary tradition, he saw the task of cleaning up the party as a priority, restoring national authority.”

Under Xi, China has established itself as a leader, but with slower economic growth than its predecessors. His program of economic reforms met with fierce opposition in the party — one ideological wing argued that liberalization corrupted state Marxist principles, and another, linked to less efficient state-run companies, tried to stop a cycle of unemployment.

For Roy, the obvious choice on Xi’s mind was to prioritize increasing the power of the Chinese CP and himself over economic development. The fear, he says, has always been to prevent reforms from taking China down a path similar to that of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, in which perestroika weakened communism and resulted in its collapse.

If China’s haughtiness under Xi bothered Western powers, the relationship with developing countries (the “Global South”) is more complex. According to the sinologist and professor at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) Maurício Santoro, several nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia have experienced high volumes of investment, bringing Beijing closer to this bloc.

So while the predominantly negative perception of China in the US and Europe has not taken root in South America, Brazil is an exception in the way the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) administration has channeled critical opinions.

For now, China has entered the Brazilian electoral debate through the deindustrialization of the country — as much as the domestic politics of Argentina and Nicaragua, for example. For Santoro, however, there is still a vulnerability of the regime that is dear to the conservative electorate and to evangelical denominations: the persecution of Christian groups.

“Most of the country is han [etnia majoritária]so this is something diffuse, spread across the territory, but the regime is concerned with association with a foreign power, in this case the Vatican.”