Xi’s power moves

Moves are under way to revive a title most associated with Mao. These and changes to the top party structure are designed to strengthen Xi’s hand amid challenging times.

There are moves to revive the post of chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. This is one of the changes to the top party structure designed to strengthen President Xi Jinping’s power, says global affairs correspondent Benjamin Kang Lim (below).

• As chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mao Zedong ruled China with an iron fist for nearly 30 years. While the revolutionary hero may forever be associated with the slogan “the Chinese people have stood up”, with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he also nearly brought the nation to its knees again when his power ran unchecked.

The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a reign of terror which saw Chairman Mao purge his political rivals, mobilising radical youth in political campaigns marked by humiliating “struggle sessions”, torture, arbitrary arrests, killings and suicides. One of its victims was Deng Xiaoping, who was demoted from vice-premier to a worker at a tractor factory in Jiangxi province in 1969. Deng consoled himself that at least he was able to care for his son who was left a paraplegic after jumping out of a building to escape a mob of marauding Red Guards.

After Mao’s death in 1976, one of Deng’s acts on returning to power was to abolish the post of party chairman in 1982, to avoid a repeat of the Great Helmsman’s demented excesses and the cult of personality that enabled them.

Deng sought to diffuse power through a system of collective leadership – embodied in the party general secretary and the Politburo Standing Committee. He also introduced a peculiar unwritten rule in which he named his handpicked heir’s successor – a move that was tantamount to imposing a term limit on the general secretary who had to eventually pass on the mantle.

That succession system Deng put in place is deemed obsolete today. And President Xi Jinping looks set to create a new one more in keeping with the times.

The CCP intends to resurrect the post of chairman at the party’s 20th congress in 2022 and make other moves that would further tighten President Xi’s grip on power, two sources with ties to the Chinese leadership told The Straits Times, requesting anonymity. They noted that while Deng eschewed formal titles as head of state or the CCP, he was the power behind the throne; Mr Xi, on the other hand, is choosing to be more transparent on who is the one wielding ultimate power in China.

Other major changes in the works by an ad hoc committee include a restructuring of the CCP’s top echelons and bending the customary retirement age.

The party’s elite Central Committee, which is holding its fifth plenum from Oct 26 to 29, is expected to endorse the broad outlines of the ad hoc committee’s work on these internal changes. Given the CCP’s opaque ways and obsession with secrecy, the details of the restructuring will not be formally unveiled to the public until the 20th congress.

But it is understood that the changes would involve reinstating one to three vice-chairman positions, shrinking the current seven-member Politburo Standing Committee to five or even three. Premier Li Keqiang is tipped to become head of Parliament in

2023, but it is not clear at this juncture if he will become a party vice-chairman and concurrently a standing committee member.

It is also unclear at this stage if the post of general secretary would be scrapped to make way for the revived post of party chairman. But it is unlikely that Mr Xi would hold both positions.

The upshot: Power will be further concentrated in the hands of Mr Xi and a handful of party leaders. The changes are driven by several imperatives. These include the growing strategic power rivalry with the United States as well as the need to accommodate rival political factions, party sources say.

“China needs a political strongman at this juncture to deal with an increasingly hostile US,” a source with ties to the Chinese leadership told ST.

STEADY HAND NEEDED

The thinking behind the redesign of the top power structure is that China needs an experienced and steady pair of hands to guide the nation at this critical juncture. Apart from having to confront a hostile US, it also faces a fundamental restructuring of an economy still vulnerable after the devastating blow of the Covid-19 pandemic, the challenges posed by environmental degradation, income disparities and an ageing population, not to mention the never-ending battle against corruption.

In short, it would be too risky to change horses mid-stream. “Xi cannot (step) down. A younger leader would lack experience and not be able to fend off US pressure,” a political commentator who writes under the pseudonym Lan Jiang said last week, referring to increasingly fraught relations with Washington, with both countries crossing swords over a lengthening list of issues including the coronavirus, trade, technology, Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea.

Mr Xi has accumulated more titles than any of his recent predecessors since coming to power in 2012. Other than president, general secretary and Central Military Commission chairman, he is also being referred to as the party’s “core” and the “people’s leader”. But he has yet to acquire two of Mao’s titles: chairman and “great leader”. He is unlikely to be referred to as the “great leader”, which is reserved exclusively for Mao.

In 2018, Mr Xi’s hold on power was strengthened when China’s Parliament amended the Constitution, scrapping the two-term limit on the presidency, thereby allowing him to stay on in the post indefinitely if he so chooses.

As party general secretary, Mr Xi is first among equals in the standing committee but in real terms he is politically stronger than his predecessors except for Mao and, arguably, Deng.

“Xi is general secretary in name, but already wields power close to that of a party chairman,” said Professor Wang Hsin-hsien, a

China expert at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. “If he becomes party chairman, he will have the final say whenever there are differences of opinion.”

Signs that there will be major changes in the top power structures could be gleaned from Mr Xi’s call for “enhancing top-level design” – communist jargon for reform of the party’s top echelons – during an inspection tour of Hunan province last month.

The fact that Mr Xi made the call in Hunan, Mao’s birthplace, lent weight to the reading by party insiders that one of the changes would involve the revival of the party chairmanship, with Mr Xi assuming the post.

Mr Xi’s call, it should be noted, was not the first by a Chinese leader. His immediate predecessor, Mr Hu Jintao, coined the phrase “top-level design” during the waning years of his second five-year term, but whatever changes that were contemplated then were never implemented or made public.

If confirmed, Mr Xi would be the party’s fourth chairman since the 1949 revolution and Mao’s true heir.

After Mao died, Hua Guofeng became party chairman but he was outmanoeuvred by Deng in internal power struggles. Between 1980 and 1982, Deng replaced Hua as Central Military Commission chairman and gave Hua’s two other posts – party chairman and premier – to other people.

Deng appointed one of his proteges, Hu Yaobang, as party chairman in 1981, but Hu relinquished the post the following year and settled for the position of general secretary.

“Mao was the first-generation (party chairman). Hua Guofeng and Hu Yaobang’s terms (as chairmen) were too short,’’ said a party source. Mr Xi’s elevation to the top position would make him effectively the second-generation chairman and true heir to Mao.

President Xi has lofty ambitions for China, including making the country great again and eventually reunifying with self-ruled democratic Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own. The boldness of his visions reinforces the argument that term limits should be lifted as he would need more than 10 years to realise these goals.

Given his track record, few political elites could, or dare, argue against Mr Xi serving a third and possibly fourth five-year term at the helm of the party which, according to the country’s Constitution, “leads everything”.

While the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in China under his watch, Mr Xi’s decision to impose harsh measures, including a prolonged lockdown of a province of almost 60 million people, was instrumental in China being able to get back on its feet rapidly, certainly much faster than the US and other Western countries still grappling with a resurgence of the outbreak.

Mr Xi’s sweeping crackdown on corruption is part of his pledge to improve “party building”, or good governance, but critics say it has been selective, targeting political rivals. A risk taker, Mr Xi has no qualms about making enemies. More than one million party, government and military officials and their business cronies have been ensnared in the clampdown.

AGE LIMIT

Mr Xi has also shown a willingness to depart from norms which he considers arbitrary or serving no good purpose. The expectation among party insiders is that he is also likely to bend another unwritten rule which calls for officials to step down at 68, to allow a select group of high-performing loyalists to stay on.

The rule was bent in 2018 when Mr Wang Qishan, who had retired from the Politburo Standing Committee, was made state vice-president at the age of 70.

If the age limit is set aside again in 2022, one beneficiary is likely to be Vice-Premier Han Zheng, who will be 68 then. Mr Han is close to former president Jiang Zemin. Having him stay on in the standing committee would be one way to keep the Shanghai Gang, a political faction headed by Mr Jiang, onside.

Another likely beneficiary is Mr Chen Xi, who heads the party’s organisation department overseeing the promotion and demotion of cadres. Mr Chen, who belongs to President Xi’s faction dubbed the “Xi Family Army”, will be 69 in 2022.

Premier Li, who belongs to a faction headed by former president Hu Jintao, will be 67 in 2022 and is technically eligible to stay on in the standing committee.

Many Western media outlets have painted President Xi as a dictator with an insatiable appetite for power. The acquisition of the chairman title would likely reinforce fears that China is headed down the Mao route again, with power held tightly in the hands of one man who, in his dotage, could ruin the lives of millions with unwise decisions.

But the changes in the power structure may not necessarily go down that path. The streamlining of the standing committee could be read as one way to avoid factionalism at the top; that in time, China could return to collective leadership with Mr Xi’s most trusted political allies holding key positions and taking more of the burden of running the country from him.

It will be foolhardy to try to decipher China’s future from the present volatile circumstances. But what is clear is that Mr Xi has no desire to copy Western liberal democracy. He is still reshaping the Chinese political model, which has so far helped China defeat the coronavirus but is still subject to myriad challenges both internally and externally. Only time will tell if Mr Xi will prove to be more adept than Mao.