Book excerpt: Xi Jinping and the new Chinese state.
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The Huawei case has dramatically altered Canada’s relationship with China. But as Elizabeth C. Economy writes in The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State, it’s just one example of a leadership flexing its muscle on the world stage. This is part of a series of excerpts from books shortlisted for this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize, an award for exceptional writing on foreign affairs. The winner will be announced on Feb. 26.
In a 2000 interview in the Chinese journal Zhonghua Ernu, Xi Jinping, then governor of Fujian Province, shared his perspective on leadership. A new leader, he stated, needed to “continue working on the foundations” laid by his predecessor but at the same time “come in with his own plans and set an agenda during the first year.” He likened leadership to a relay race, in which a successor has to “receive the baton properly” and then “run it past the line.” More than a decade later at his first press conference as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 2012, Xi reiterated the baton analogy, stating that the responsibility of the party leadership is to “take over the relay baton passed on to us by history” to achieve the “great renewal of the Chinese nation.”
In receiving the baton, however, Xi and his team have set out to run the race differently from their predecessors — with a distinctive new strategy and at an accelerated pace. They have elected a way forward that largely rejects the previous path of reform and opening up: instead there is reform without opening up. In a number of respects, the leadership has embraced a process of institutional change that seeks to reverse many of the political, social, and economic changes that emerged from 30 years of liberalizing reform. The Chinese leaders have also shed the low-profile foreign policy advanced by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in favour of bold initiatives to reshape the global order.
These dramatic shifts reflect in large measure a belief on the part of Xi Jinping that China at the time of his ascension was at an inflection point. The post-Mao era of reform and opening up had yielded significant gains: double-digit growth for more than two decades, and international admiration for China’s economic and other achievements. Yet as Xi rose up through the party ranks, he also had a front-row seat to the mounting challenges facing the country: The Communist Party had become corrupted and devoid of an ideological centre, the provision of public goods had fallen dramatically behind society’s needs, and even the economy needed a new infusion of reform. In the eyes of Xi, nothing less than dramatic, revolutionary change could save the party and the state and propel China forward to realize its full potential as a great power. Dean of Peking University’s School of International Relations Jia Qingguo suggested to me that Xi Jinping had ushered in the third, 30 years of contemporary Chinese history — crystallizing my sense that Deng’s “second revolution” characterized by 30 years of “reform and opening up” had drawn to a close. Xi Jinping’s “third revolution” was underway.
What distinguishes Xi’s revolution from that of Deng is the strategy he has pursued: the dramatic centralization of authority under his personal leadership; the intensified penetration of society by the state; the creation of a virtual wall of regulations and restrictions that more tightly controls the flow of ideas, culture, and capital into and out of the country; and the significant projection of Chinese power. It represents a reassertion of the state in Chinese political and economic life at home, and a more ambitious and expansive role for China abroad.
Over the course of Xi Jinping’s tenure as CCP general secretary and president, he has accrued progressively more institutional and personal power. Unlike his immediate predecessors, he has assumed control of all the most important leading committees and commissions that oversee government policy; demanded pledges of personal loyalty from military and party leaders; eliminated political rivals through a sweeping anticorruption campaign; and adopted the moniker of “core” leader, which signifies his ultimate authority within a traditionally collective leadership. By many accounts, Xi is the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
Xi and the rest of the Chinese leadership have also expanded the role of the state in society and increased the power of the organs of party and state control, reversing the decades of retreat by the Communist Party from Chinese political and economic life. The current Chinese leadership has launched an aggressive set of reforms that augments rather than diminishes the party’s role. For example, the Party has introduced a vast electronic surveillance system to monitor every aspect of people’s daily lives and a “social credit” system that rewards and punishes Chinese citizens based on their political and economic “trustworthiness.” And while promising a continued opening up of China’s market, the Chinese leadership has nonetheless moved to support and strengthen the role of the party and state in the economy.
This enhanced party control also extends to efforts to protect China’s society and the economy from foreign competition and influence. Xi Jinping has increasingly constrained the avenues and opportunities by which foreign ideas, culture, and, in some cases, capital can enter the country by building a virtual wall of regulatory, legal, and technological impediments. Yet the wall is selectively permeable. While progressively less is permitted in, more goes out. Xi has pushed to enhance the flow of ideas and influences from China to the outside world, through the Chinese media, Confucius Institutes (Chinese government-sponsored language and cultural centres), and think-tanks. Similarly, the Xi government encourages capital targeted at specific sectors or countries to flow out of China (although at times restricting the flow of capital to other sectors or countries).
And finally, Xi Jinping’s call for the rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation has accelerated the nascent shift begun during former Chinese leader Hu Jintao’s tenure to move away from a commitment to maintaining a low profile in international affairs to one that actively seeks to shape global norms and institutions. He has established China’s first overseas military logistics base; taken a significant stake in strategic ports in Europe and Asia; championed China as a leader in addressing global challenges, such as climate change; and proposed a number of new trade and security institutions. Xi seeks to project power in dramatic new ways and reassert the centrality of China on the global stage.
Xi’s third revolution offers a new model of Chinese politics and foreign policy: a uniquely Chinese model that Xi believes will deliver his Chinese Dream and perhaps become a standard bearer for other countries disenchanted with the American and European models of liberal democracy. For the rest of the world, the importance of understanding this China model has never been greater. China is an illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order. At one time, the international community might have viewed Chinese human rights practices as a primarily domestic political issue — albeit one that many observers cared deeply about; now, however, issues of Chinese governance are front and centre in the country’s foreign policy. China exports not only its labour and environmental practices through investment but also its political values through a growing foreign media presence or in some cases, training officials abroad on how to manage the internet. It also seeks to shape international norms and institutions in areas such as human rights in ways that more closely reflect its own values and priorities. Yet China sharply constrains opportunities for foreign cultural, media, and civil society actors to engage with Chinese citizens.
With its growing economic and political power, China increasingly takes advantage of the political and economic openness of other countries while not providing these countries with the same opportunities to engage within China. Even as its StateOwned Enterprises take majority stakes in mines, ports, oilfields, and electric grids across the world, it prohibits other countries’ multinationals from doing the same in China. Addressing this particular challenge requires understanding the new China model within the context of a globalized world. It is a political model that is more authoritarian and repressive domestically and more ambitious and expansive internationally — a combination that provides China with new levers of influence and power with which others will have to learn to co-operate, compete, and counter in order to protect and advance their own interests.