In less than two years, several extraordinary changes have happened in China, each concentrating power in the hands of President Xi Jinping and the party’s apparatus.
Here is a list:
- Schoolchildren are now given lessons in Xi’s thoughts, so the leader of the China, the first one since Mao Zedong that is leader-for-life, now has his ideas about the country codified in school curricula
- There is a social points system in which those who engage in behaviour thought badly of by the authorities (which includes saying the wrong things) are restricted in their movements and job opportunities, with even their children’s opportunities reduced. This is being enforced via the most advanced system of surveillance, AI, facial recognition, and data-bundling ever constructed
- The government has cracked down on the emerging super rich and the most powerful home-grown tech companies. This has included forcing top-executives to hand over billions in tax arrears, breaking up of some of the biggest companies, and regulating the entire tech sector, effectively making them subservient to the government. Jack Ma, who runs the huge Alibaba firm (rival to Amazon), was reportedly locked up for a month, forced to neuter his own company and cough up billions
- The emergence of unions has been encouraged within large companies that effectively bargain for more training, higher incomes, and more labour rights, particularly for the least well paid
- There has been a huge drive against the most visible forms of showing off wealth. This includes media celebrities’ tax evasion, open speculation in the housing market, over-investment in private education for children, regulation against too-expensive medical equipment catering for the super rich, regulation against over medication, and a health investment drive towards diseases had by the poor
- There is a drive towards a positive Chinese self-image wherein wealthy families donate to the poor. This has included a crackdown on “anti-Chinese identity politics” and an ethos of “common prosperity” wherein the rich get praised for their works for the poor. A move against the distraction-based business model of the internet, with a decree that children under 18 can only play online games for fewer than three hours a week.
These moves are truly extraordinary in how much they impinge on social and private life. They include directions I am very much in favour of, such as bringing big tech into line, celebrating a noblesse oblige ethos among the rich, an empowered labour movement that champions the poorest, and moving against the excesses of internet distraction and of conspicuous consumption.
Yet it also includes methods that go towards a degree of top-down social control that asks the impossible of people (total monitoring of one’s every move) and hence will make the social system dysfunctional and pre-revolutionary.
China’s youth is being indoctrinated towards a personality cult that involves a radical departure from the past 35 years which saw the celebration of individual economic success.
There are two competing narratives: Xi is engineering a new cultural revolution which will tear the country apart; Xi is the bastion of a new socialistic paradise which will enhance China’s future for decades to come.
Narrative of ‘a new cultural revolution’
The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 should mainly be understood as Mao trying to isolate and destroy his enemies inside the Communist Party by inciting revolutionary zeal among the youth against his “bourgeois” opponents.
The destruction of the relics of ancient China that the war on the bourgeois entailed was simply collateral damage in that political fight. The same held for the loss of an entire generation of urban intellectuals sent to the countryside because their parents were supposedly bourgeois party members.
What data have we got to indicate we might be at the eve of another such internal bloodbath? Well, Xi now of course has been leader for well over a decade; he has apparently had 1.5 million party members punished for “corruption” (which is just a purge of opponents by another name); he is allowing a personality cult to develop (as with Mao); his censors have become increasingly strict on anything remotely critical of the party line (Mao again); dissent from Hong Kong was repressed; control of the media was strengthened further to stifle any opposing voice; critical artists, such as Ai Weiwei, were exiled; there was a crackdown on independent powers (the rich); increasingly aggressive rhetoric against foreigners; and the tentative beginnings of fanatical teaching among youth.
An impressive list of signs that point to serious internal strife, no?
But there’s another, less well-known sign that life is actually quite unpleasant for many Chinese upper-middle classes: despite the fact their kids are not allowed to travel to Australia, the number enrolled in Australian universities via online learning is higher than previously enrolled physically, while fees are just as ridiculously high. That tells me upper-middle-class parents are even more desperate than before that their kids should escape China.
What data goes against the narrative that internal strife is coming soon?
For one, many of the reforms should reduce tensions rather than increase them because they reduce inequality and improve life for the poorest, unlike the changes in the Cultural Revolution which amounted to a dramatic impoverishment.
Second, Xi is nowhere near as unpredictable as Mao was: he is far calmer and also seems to be more loyal towards those in his inner circle, meaning that he has less need to mobilise the population against his enemies close by.
Third, the reforms are nowhere near as sudden as Mao’s were: the changes, such as the social points system, were tried in provinces before slowly being extended over the whole country. Ditto for the moves on the tech giants, the financial industry, and health: reforms in how they are handled are more incremental and thus less designed towards polarisation than towards letting people get used to new things. So the authorities are trying to take the roughest edges off their reforms.
Fourth, the trajectory of the economy and the whole education system is still towards massive expansion so the population is still getting better educated, healthier, and wealthier. Hence there is less reason for great discontent.
Narrative of a socialist paradise
How about the main alternative story then: China is building the true socialist paradise where “new humans” who are perennial do-gooders are being raised? A paradise that requires reforming the economy from one serving the super rich to one in which production is high but oriented towards a high level of welfare for all. A paradise in which everyone lives harmoniously in a manner they should, with no conflicts or unnecessary arguments.
Inequality is being confronted; economic power within firms is being redistributed towards the bottom; the visual benefits of riches are being curtailed; a kind of “puritan behaviour with Chinese characteristics” is being propagated and increasingly followed; a control system is built to measure and ensure compliance; and there is the fact that this kind of vision fits the Chinese very well.
The latter is perhaps the strongest thing this story has going for it: it is in the nature of Chinese collectivism to see a perfectly harmonious society as the thing to strive for. The vision is of a well-behaved, child-like citizens, with benevolent leaders who are like stern parents overseeing that populations lead the good life. This is also the vision the emperors propagated, elevating social harmony to the highest good. Hence this kind of vision can naturally count on a huge deal of goodwill from within the Chinese population, particularly the bottom half. Xi doesn’t have to push much to get such a view enthusiastically endorsed.
What goes against this vision, however? The main problem is that China has tried this “total harmonious society” story many times already, failing spectacularly every time, most clearly at the end of the last communist experiment. Umpteenth time lucky? The thinking Chinese person has to have doubts. Indeed, I think the top of the party itself does not believe it can be done and so must somehow retain the inherent disruption that comes from “dynamic markets” while being harmonious otherwise. Deng Xiaoping’s lessons have not yet been forgotten.
So the big problem with the vision of harmony is that power corrupts and the only thing one can do about it is to set up the systems of power in perennial competition with each other, which is explicitly non-harmonious. The West hit upon that trick about 250 years ago, but China failed in the 20th century to copy it within its political institutions, instead going once again into the collectivist social harmony cul-de-sac.
Yet I think the Chinese leaders know this and thus know they should not kill the main form of independent power-creation that China has — private enterprise. They know they should find some kind of accommodation with the richest and most dynamic members of society, allowing them to get rich and powerful, but not too powerful.
The tricky bit in that balancing act is the dynamics within the political system, which are towards total political control and thus against the existence of a vibrant powerful private enterprise community. I suspect the leadership is keenly aware of the issue and is trying to plot a way out of this central problem of Chinese history.
My answer to the question of where the Chinese reforms are going is: “I don’t know.” All I am willing to say with confidence is that it is not going where the Chinese top openly says it’s going. A vision of perfect harmony that failed China many times before means the leaders don’t know the path they are truly on.
Still, a new cultural revolution doesn’t look all that imminent either, so we’ll just have to see what else it is going to look like.
It all reads like an organise religion to me. Perhaps that’s what ‘cult’ like societies are, organised religions. But, despite my reservations about the CP and it’s methods, I always come back to the question “If not them, who do I want in charge of 1.4b people?” I can never answer it satisfactorily. I do know, however, that the so-called USA model is not one to apply. The social, economic and political dysfunction evident there still worries me greatly, and would be disastrous on a much bigger scale.
Yes both types of Government have their pitfalls and advantages.
Western Countries are discovering that as the years roll on, a lot of Western ideology is failing the people, with more and more people being left behind.
There needs to be some very serious thought put into re-engineering ideologies to suit more modern times.
Unfortunately though in the West this will probably never happen, as those who wield power, especially the very rich, will not want to give up their privileged positions.
It depends on which ‘western’ ideology. Who on earth would want to emulate America’s version of democracy. On the other hand socialist democracy models of northern Europe seem to be the way to go. Too bad our 2 major parties prefer to gravitate toward the US style.
I’m not really sure that western capitalism isn’t as cult-like. Your other questions and observations are well put, and I tend to come to similar conclusions.
Being a regular traveller to China it was obvious to me years ago that many things good and bad that are happening there now were going to be made a reality eventually. The rich were getting richer and the poor were a little better but still poor. Continued poverty is a vehicle for future trouble. It was expected a decade ago that China’s rise would one day see it in the cross hairs of the US. It was only a matter of time when the US would attempt to curb China’s economic power. China cannot afford to be economically diminished if it wants to achieve eliminating poverty and maintain the political status quo. China as an equal peer is intolerable to the US and it’s Anglocentric allies. The B&R is an affront to the US world order. Many of the more recent draconian policies by China are designed to tighten the grip on the country as a more liberal system would leave it vulnerable to US destabilisation to which the US are experts at. In the last decade there has been a proliferation of hundreds of NGO’s with obscure funding that only seem to exist to demonise China and stir up external and internal trouble. War is not an option but white anting is. If China felt less threatened by western hostility their might have been a chance it would have become more democratically inclined but that would be too much to ask for.
“… China’s rise would one day see it in the cross hairs of the US. It was only a matter of time when the US would attempt to curb China’s economic power.”
This could be setting up a repeat of the USA’s previous policy of choking off the rise of an Asian – Pacific rival. The USA rejected various overtures for better relations and instead between 1939 and late 1941 initiated provocative steps to collapse the economy of Imperial Japan. Didn’t that end well. How many Americans know the events preceding 7th December 1941, the ‘Day of Infamy’?
But this time the rival countries begin with far more destructive capabilities and its unlikely to end the same way.
The great danger in the current CCP model of governance is leadership succession.
Everything goes fine while the strong leader is there. But the stronger the leader, the weaker position any potential next generation leaders will be in. It seemed for a while the Part had solved this by restricting leaders to what was effectively 2 terms. People could wait there chance for a go at the top job. Now Xi has broken this system, which means there will be a potential free for all when he goes. It also means the timing of his going depends not just on his views, but on his mortality – both personally and politically. If he makes a big mistake the knives would come out. A failed invasion of Taiwan is an example of a politically fatal action.
I agree with the conclusion that we simply don’t know where these social changes in China will lead. However, the Party leadership is at least trying to address some very significant issues that also apply in the so called democratic West. Australia is one of many developed countries that are failing to even try and address major social, economic and environmental issues.
At what point does a mediocre outcome in China – compared to what they were aiming for – look like a reasonably successful model for much of the rest of the world given the lack of plausible alternatives?
The two term limit actually protects a dear leader, why bother killing him off or endangering one’s own life and the whole system if you only have to wait a few years. I wonder what drove the decision to abandon it, pure vainglory seems an inadequate narrative. Perhaps he is aware of leadership disaster waiting behind him and is waiting it out for the next ‘suitable’ leader to gain sufficient stature in the CCP. A riddle wrapped in a mystery …
Thanks for a penetrable potted analysis of China’s most recent political and social century. I claim no China expertise, but the incrementalism strikes me as very Hayekian. Nothing is exclusive and nothing is absolute.
Is Xi similar to Putin; is the CCP similar to United Russia; is the prevarication in both states the same; is the repression of those demanding transparency in China similar to Russia? Authoritarian states? Sontag states that ‘authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear’…this can’t be good for any future opposing thoughts or challenge.
No, the differences between Xi and Putin easily outweigh any superficial similarities. The various initiatives listed in the article that can be more or less labelled socialist – encouraging or demanding socially beneficial behaviour and reducing inequality, and reining in over-powerful technological or commercial entities – are unthinkable for Putin, who is basically running a corrupt kleptocratic gangster state for the benefit of the rich few.
Sounds like Oz to me.
With Putin himself being one of the major beneficiaries.
Interesting quote from Sontag. Again, western economies seem to be just as reliant on the fear, at least the current version of it, at least the US and Australian version of it.