Book review: Efeito Xi Jinping por Ashley Esarey e Rongbin Han (eds.), review by Olivia Cheung (H-Net Reviews)

Cheung on Esarey and Han, 'The Xi Jinping Effect' [Review]

H-Net Reviews

Esarey, Ashley; Han, Rongbin, eds..  The Xi Jinping Effect

 University of Washington Press, 2024. 304 pp. $32.00 (paper), ISBN 9780295752815.

Reviewed by Olivia Cheung (King's College London)
Published on H-Diplo (March, 2025)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=61434

Xi Jinping is known for his authoritarian rule, foreign policy ambitions, and confrontational stance toward the United States. Shortly after taking power in late 2012, Xi articulated the goal of achieving “the China Dream of national rejuvenation” by mid-century.[1] To reach this, he has focused on reinvigorating the Chinese Communist Party on the basis of centralizing powers in his hands. He has disregarded conventions, launching an unprecedentedly intense rectification-cum-anticorruption drive; elevating his “thought” as the state ideology; restructuring the party, military, and state; abolishing term limits in 2018; taking a third term in 2022; and ending the “hide and bide” foreign policy. Politically, Xi appears invisible, but does his power translate to effective governance? Even under former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s totalitarian rule, resistance and subversion persisted. As a Chinese saying goes, “From the top comes policies; from the bottom, coping strategies.” To govern as effectively as he holds power, Xi must overcome not only resistance and inertia, but also deep-seated structural factors and international forces beyond his control.

To what extent does Xi impact China’s governance and policies? The Xi Jinping Effect, edited by Ashley Esarey and Rongbin Han, examines this question. The book is divided into four parts, with the first three addressing the Xi effect on domestic affairs—internal party governance and ideological rectification (part 1), socioeconomic inequality (part 2), and mass surveillance and control (part 3). Part 4 considers Xi’s impact on Taiwan and China’s relations with Southeast Asia. While these areas are significant, it is unclear why they were chosen over others. Notably, Xi has invested in technological supremacy, party control in business, securitization, military-civilian fusion, rebooting “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong, befriending the Global South, competing with the United States, and changing the global governance system in a more Sino-centric fashion. Would focusing on these areas yield a different assessment of the Xi effect?

If I were to study the Xi effect, I would use X’s strategic intentions as the starting point and anchor. Based on an analysis of Xi’s speeches and writings, I would identify the areas he is most and least determined to change, his benchmarks of success, time frame, and the trade-offs he is willing to make.[2] Thereafter, I would sort Xi’s policies into categories depending on the strength or outcome of the Xi effect as Xi intended them to be. I would then select several cases from each category for analysis with a view of producing findings that will have a good degree of generalizability. Putting Xi’s preferences and worldview, or Xi Jinping Thought, front and center implies taking Xi’s agency fully into account in appraising the Xi effect. Assessing the Xi effect by checking whether Xi Thought was faithfully implemented should allow us to probe more deeply into the nature and limits of Xi’s strongman rule, this being the very phenomenon that motivates a study of the Xi effect in the first place.

The book concludes that the Xi effect is highly uneven. It is found to be the main reason behind the “total surveillance” of society (chapter 6), especially the Xinjiang Uyghurs (chapter 7). It has shown to be robust in anticorruption in the party-state (chapter 1). Its impact on ideological governance in the party (chapter 2) and society (chapter 3) is sweeping. Furthermore, it has risen above all factors in shaping China’s Taiwan policy (chapter 8). In these areas, Xi has overturned long-standing post-Mao policies. It is nothing short of a “counter-reformation” (chapter 2) of the post-Mao or Dengist reform, one that will most likely endure as long as Xi is in power. The authors of these chapters, except chapters 7 (on Xinjiang) and 8 (on Taiwan), observe that the changes ushered in by Xi are not entirely new. They either built on or adapt existing trends or took a page from earlier periods. Deng Kai, David Demes, and Chih-Jou Jay Chen (chapter 7) point out that Xi’s “total surveillance” system was made possible by the preceding Hu Jintao regime’s decision to build a national population database (p. 154). Andrew Wedeman traces the origin of Xi’s anticorruption campaign to Mao’s times (chapter 1). Timothy Cheek observes ideological governance under Xi had roots in the Qing dynasty (chapter 2). Gerda Wielander demonstrates that Xi’s reaffirmation of “faith” in the party, though overtly political, strikes a chord with popular thinking at the social grassroots (chapter 3). Prior to Xi, many human right dissidents in China publicly proclaimed the importance of keeping faith. Like Xi, they also saw faith as a “spiritual and motivational force” to help them move forward (p. 73). Whereas they claimed inspiration from Christianity (pp. 73-74) to confront the authorities, Xi, an atheist, urged people to submit to the party out of faith in its moral righteousness.

In contrast to the above chapters, Martin King Whyte (chapter 4) and Alexia T. Chan (chapter 5) conclude that the Xi effect is slight, if not negligible, in improving socioeconomic inequality. Both present ample evidence of persistent and increasing urban-rural inequality under Xi. Their findings juxtapose to Xi’s declaration, in 2020, that the antipoverty campaign he started in 2015 had delivered a “miracle.” Xi claimed that the campaign had lifted seventy million rural Chinese out of “absolute poverty.”[3] Yet, the everyday poverty documented in chapters 4 and 5 shows that the success of the antipoverty campaign was short-lived. Whyte attributes the lack of a Xi effect in reducing inequality not to Xi’s weakness but his reluctance to take “bold” steps to combat inequality (p. 117). Chan goes further. She finds that the persistence of second-class citizenship under Xi is intentional and “serves state goals” (p. 146). Both further observe that structural factors have come into play. For example, Chan finds that the problem of “unfunded mandates” has persisted under Xi (p. 139), whereby the central government announced goals to improve the people’s livelihood without supporting cash-strapped local governments to translate these goals into actual policies. I would add that the massive increase in local government debt under Xi is another important structural factor, this being one that is inadvertently contributed by his other policies, notably the crackdown on the property sector and shadow banking.[4]

The middle point between a strong Xi effect and a weak Xi effect is found in China’s relations with Southeast Asia. Brantly Womack (chapter 9) shows that the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s signature foreign policy program, has strengthened connectivity between China and Southeast Asia, and with that, their asymmetric power balance to the advantage of China (p. 229). Yet Womack stresses that Southeast Asia is not only “concerned” about Xi’s arrogance but also “the possible side effects of China’s confrontation with the United States”—a prominent feature of Xi’s foreign policy (p. 229). Womack concluded that Southeast Asia’s reluctance to take a side between the United States and China is a more decisive factor than Xi’s personality, diplomacy, or aggressive actions in shaping their approach to China.

Every chapter in this book is highly informative on the latest developments of China under Xi. However, not all of them addresses the Xi effect explicitly or systematically. In some chapters, there is a lack of a focused examination of the Xi effect. Policy changes under Xi are taken as evidence of a Xi effect at work, almost at face value. Other chapters, notably chapter 9, make efforts to isolate Xi’s agency from other factors contributing to the policy outcome observed under Xi. The lack of a shared theoretical framework to examine the Xi effect is not particularly conducive to understanding the Xi effect. This brings me back to my earlier suggestion of using Xi Thought as a yardstick to appraise the Xi effect, one that is, from what I can see, feasible to be adopted by all chapters.

As discussed earlier, the book concludes that the Xi effect is highly uneven across policy issues. It would have been helpful if the book had also addressed the implications of this observation more deeply, beyond pointing out the tension between agency and structure. At a start, perhaps the following questions could be addressed. Has Xi’s success in implementing a system of total surveillance in society, which greatly raises the cost of the public expression of dissatisfaction, inadvertently reduced his commitment to take bold steps to improve the quality of living for China’s workers? Has the persistence of income inequality in China weakened Xi’s ideological governance? What are the common variables behind the strong Xi effect in anticorruption, ideological governance, social control, and China’s Taiwan policy?

Finally, it would have been invaluable had the authors reflected on whether the conclusions drawn in their studies can be extrapolated and why. In the book where this is done, it is often insightful. For example, in chapter 3, Wielander links Xi’s ideological governance—namely his strategy to “tighten control of all faith-based activity and to position the Party itself as an object of faith”—to China’s emergence as a “fundamentalist power” that challenges the “international order built on commonly shared values” (p. 71). This is a fascinating insight that speaks of the role of domestic factors in how China sees its place in the world. It contributes a more textured understanding to the role of domestic factors in Chinese foreign policy, a welcome variation to the dominant accounts, which focus heavily on international structural factors. This is only one of many examples of the usefulness of this volume in unraveling the complexities of Xi’s China.

As Xi is nearing the middle of his third five-year term, we are increasingly witnessing a distinct Xi effect on China’s relations with the rest of the world. Xi’s personal rapport with Putin, head-of-state diplomacy with world leaders, and the three global initiatives he introduced as a better alternative to the liberal international order are some examples.[5] To bring the analysis of the Xi effect up to date, it would be helpful to examine closely Xi’s tianxia worldview and his role in foreign policymaking. This could be one of the directions which the research program of the Xi effect may develop.

Notes

[1]. Jinping Xi, Xi Jinping tan zhiguo lizheng [Xi Jinping: The Governance of China] (Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe, 2014), 35-36.

[2]. Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2024).

[3]. Ibid., 102, 112-13.

[4]. Victor Shih and Jonathan Elkobi, Local Government Debt Dynamics in China: An Exploration Through the Lens of Local Government Debt and LGFV Debt, November 27, 2023, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, https://china.ucsd.edu/_files/2023-report_shih_local-government-debt-dynamics-in-china.pdf.

[5]. These are the Global Development Initiative (2021), Global Security Initiative (2022), and Global Civilization Initiative (2023).

Olivia Cheung is a lecturer in politics at the Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London. Her research specialization is the domestic politics and foreign policy of China. Her latest major publications are The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2024), coauthored with Steve Tsang, and Factional-Ideological Conflicts in Chinese Politics: To the Left or to the Right?(Amsterdam University Press, 2023).

Citation: Olivia Cheung. Review of Esarey, Ashley; Han, Rongbin, eds.. The Xi Jinping Effect. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. March, 2025.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=61434

Xi Jinping Knows Who His Enemies Are - Book Review

Book Review

Xi Jinping Knows Who His Enemies Are

A new book lays out the Chinese leader’s stark worldview.

Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping, François Bougon, 

Trans. Vanessa Lee, Hurst, 232 pp., $19.95, September 2018

BY TANNER GREER

Foreign Policy, NOVEMBER 21, 2019, 3:21 PM

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives for a bilateral meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (out of frame) ahead of the 11th edition of the BRICS Summit in Brasília on Nov. 13. SERGIO LIMA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Xi Jinping is a Chinese renaissance man. Self-assured, self-possessed, and utterly unflappable, Xi is equally at home on the hearths of struggling farmers and in the greeting halls of foreign capitals. State media likes to juxtapose the years he spent in the caves of Shaanxi with the days he spent governing Shanghai’s glittering towers. Here is a man as men should be: a leader who can grasp both the plow and the bond market! So things go with Xi Jinping.

Though Xi studied chemical engineering, he presents himself as a littérateur. In Russia, he peppers his speeches with Dostoevsky and Gogol; when in France, Molière and Maupassant. To better grasp the meaning of The Old Man and the Sea, Xi traveled to Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar in Havana. Xi has a hankering for historical sites like these, especially those associated with famous scenes from the stories of Chinese antiquity. He cultivates a reputation for taking history seriously; his speeches are filled with allusions to obscure sages and statesmen from China’s past.

But Xi is also eager to present himself as a man of the future. He revels in touring laboratories and centers of scientific innovation. He dabbles in complexity science and has tried to integrate its findings into Chinese Communist Party policies. There is a certain flexibility to China’s leader: To financiers, he adopts the argot of debts and derivatives. To Davos revelers, he drifts easily into the trendy buzzwords of the global business class. To soldiers, he speaks in military idiom (on many occasions happily attired in army greens), and to party members, the jargon of Marxist theory. For the common people of China, he consciously models an ideal of patriotic service and loving family life.

But what of the person behind the persona? Unearthing that man is the goal of François Bougon’s book Inside the Mind of Xi Jinping, translated from the original French into English in 2018. A journalist and editor who covered China throughout the Hu Jintao and Xi eras, Bougon aims to untangle the web of literary, historical, and biographical influences that have shaped Xi’s ideology. Bougon’s conclusions may surprise: His Xi is not far removed from the propaganda caricature. Though he undoubtedly has a cohort of speech writers ready to supply him with learned literary allusions, Xi’s public image is grounded in fact. Xi is comfortable in the presence of both the princelings and the poor. Xi genuinely treasures literature. He has a sincere love for China’s historical heritage.

That is all real. But it is a reality used for larger purpose.

That is all real. But it is a reality used for larger purpose.

 Xi’s constant allusions to traditional Chinese thought, for example, are not mere flashy displays of personal erudition. Behind “this wide-ranging borrowing,” Bougon observes, is “a sign that [Xi] finds the Marxist-Leninist base solid enough to graft onto it the long history of ‘wonderful Chinese civilisation.’” Xi’s allusions signal to party members that one can be a proud Marxist and proud of China’s traditional culture at the same time. So-called “Xi Jinping Thought” promises to weave the strands of China’s history and heritage into one grand whole.

Xi generally divides this history into four historical acts. The first is China’s imperial and pre-imperial past, the so-called “5,000 years of history” that culminate in the splendor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) at its height. This, in Chinese terms, is their country’s “ancient history.”

The remaining years are divided into three parts: “the century of humiliation,” in which China was ravished by imperial powers; “the New China era,” Xi’s favored term for China under Mao Zedong; and “the era of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which began under the guiding hand of Deng Xiaoping and continues on to the present. Xi quite consciously draws inspiration from each of these eras when framing his policies. Most references to China’s pre-modern past are superficial, more important for their aesthetic effect than ideological power. Far more serious is Xi’s quest to reclaim the legacy of New China. Harmonizing the institutions of 21st-century China with the party’s Maoist ideological heritage is central to Xi’s political project. Bougon argues that it is the defining feature of Xi’s inner sense of purpose.

Xi’s driving need to rehabilitate Mao is partly born out of practical necessity. For Xi, venerating the old helmsman is the difference between death and survival. “If at the time of reform Comrade Mao had been completely repudiated, would our party still be standing? Would our country’s system of socialism still be standing?” he asked the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee several days after being elevated to the position of general secretary. Answering his own question, he quoted the words of Deng: “These things cannot be cut away from the entire history of our party and our country. To grasp this is to grasp everything. This is not just an intellectual issue—it is a political issue.”

But this political calculation is only half of the story. Added to it is a sincere emotional attachment to Mao and his era. This nostalgia for Maoism at first seems an incredible delusion. Why does Xi yearn for an era that saw his father, a prominent Communist Party leader, maligned, mother tortured, sister killed, and himself banished? Xi’s own answer to that question: Yanan. Xi’s associates New China not with the terrors his family experienced in Beijing but with the seven years he spent as a “sent-down youth” farming with the same peasants his father had governed 20 years earlier as a young revolutionary. More than a decade before Xi was elevated to dictatorship, he described his time farming the yellow loess of Yanan as “seven years of rural life [that] gave me something mysterious and sacred.”

Xi came to Yanan as a bitter teenager unafraid to flout party rules. (He ran away once during his first year there and spent some time doing forced labor because of it.) He would leave Yanan a man so deeply committed to life in party service that he would apply for party membership 10 times.

Bougon traces how these experiences with the peasants of Yanan formed the bedrock of later political positions: a withering distaste for conspicuous consumption, the belief that corruption among party cadres brings disaster, a idolization for the revolutionary heroes of his father’s generation, and the deep conviction that the party must present the Chinese people with larger ideals worth sacrificing for. “Even now,” Xi said in 2004, “many of the fundamental ideas and basic features that I have formed were formed in Yanan.” Two years earlier, he voiced a similar message: “Wherever I go, I will always be a son of that yellow earth.”

Xi is deeply troubled that the same spirit of self-denial and sacrifice that was instilled in him at Yanan is missing from later generation of party members. (His own belief in his sacrifice has not prevented his family from accumulatingimmense wealth, both inside China and off-shore in foreign accounts; as with other leaders, Xi has particularly targeted any institution that reports on this.) This is one of the reasons Xi resurrected what Bougon labels the “national imaginary” of Communist China.

Xi delights in the legendary heroes whom Maoist propagandists manufactured in Xi’s childhood: the selfless youth Lei Feng, the incorruptible cadres Jiao Yulu and Gu Wenchang, the martyred soldiers of Mount Langya, and so forth. He invokes their names and examples in speech after speech. The box office failure of three films about Lei Feng in 2013 seems to have been one of the spurs for a renewed insistence on patriotic movies. That their deeds are exaggerations or fabrications does not concern him much. Absent a personal history of sacrifice for the sake of revolutionary ideals, a spirit of consecration must be cultivated through myth. Xi believes he is the personnel caretaker of the national mythos that Chinese society needs to survive and thrive in an era of intense international competition.

This self-conception helps explain Xi’s other great obsession: defeating the so-called hostile forces inside and outside of China that would weaken the people’s faith in the political and ideological system that Xi helms. The view that China is locked in an ideological struggle for survival predates the Xi era—Bougon traces it to the later years of Hu’s administration, but scholars like John Garver and Matthew Johnson have traced the origin of these ideas all the way back to the late 1980s—but it is essential to understanding Xi’s policies. Bougon highlights a speech given in 2009 as especially important statement of Xi’s beliefs: “There are certain well-fed foreigners who have nothing better to do than point the finger. Yet, firstly, China is not the one exporting revolution.”

In numerous speeches, Xi has identified the Soviet Union as the most prominent victim of revolutionary export. The United States and allied hostile forces, he maintains, successfully destroyed the Soviet Communist Party through a strategy of cultural subversion. Xi is determined not to let the same fate befall the Chinese Communist Party. In Bougon’s words, Xi has becomes a “culture warrior.” This culture war is more deserving of that title than the political debates that are given that name in Western countries. It has led to the jailing of historians; crackdowns on internet personalities, human rights activists, feminists, and labor organizers; censorship in literary journals, newspapers, and Chinese social media; an all-out assault on Chinese Christianity; and the labyrinth of detention centers in Xinjiang. It is also, though Bougon does not mention them, the impulse behind the coercion and surveillance of activists, students, dissidents, former officials, and Chinese-language media outlets outside of China’s borders. Culture and ideology spill across borders. To fight his culture war, so must the iron hand of the Communist state.

Bougon conveys all of this with a wry touch. Most readers will find Bougon’s portrait of Xi and his era disturbing and dispiriting. It naturally leads to fundamental questions about the aim of U.S. policy toward China. How should the United States, Europe, and the democracies of the Pacific Rim deal with a regime whose leaders believe that Western ideals and culture pose an existential threat to their rule—even their lives? What enduring compromise is possible with a leader who treats cultural change the way most leaders treat insurrection or terrorism? How do we accommodate a superpower directed by men like Xi? Bougon does not provide answers to these questions. One can only hope that his sharply drawn picture of Xi inspires us to.

Tanner Greer is a writer and strategist based in Taiwan. Twitter: @Scholars_Stage

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China’s Overrated Technocrats

Beijing is famous for putting engineers and scientists in charge. But that doesn’t make for better leaders.

DEBUNKER | 

JAMES PALMER

The Resistible Rise of Xi Jinping

China's president radically changed his country, and the Communist Party, through skill, determination — and a series of lucky breaks.

ARGUMENT | 

JAMES PALMER

Xi Jinping se torna imperador, e apresenta seus grandes planos para a China, exemplo para o mundo segundo ele (WP)

Depois de Deng Xiaoping, a China tinha encontrado uma maneira de escapar da maldição da sucessão, criando um sistema de alternância no poder, limitados os mandatos a dois, num equilíbrio entre diversas tendências no PCC, tecnocratas, comunistas, conservadores e globalistas. Xi está rompendo com isso, criando um mandato interminável para ele. Sabemos como isso é um trampolim ao poder absoluto.

 

Xi presents China as ‘new choice’ for humanity as he readies for next term 

By Christian Shepherd and Lily Kuo

The Washington Post, October 16, 2022 

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping is applauded as he waves to senior members of the government as he arrives to the opening ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on Oct. 16. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged Sunday to turn China into a “great modern socialist country” that represents a “new choice” for humanity, as he opened a Chinese Communist Party meeting where he is expected to secure a precedent-breaking third term.

From a lectern onstage at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Xi spoke without a mask for an hour and 45 minutes to open the twice-per-decade meeting that sets the national agenda for the next five years.

Xi declared that the new “core mission” of the party is to lead a country “united in struggle” to be a powerful, modern socialist nation by 2049, a hundred years after the People’s Republic was founded. As the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, Xi has promoted his nationalist vision of a “Chinese dream” to reclaim the nation’s place at the center of global affairs.

Under banners that read, “Long live the Chinese Communist Party” and “Fully Implement Xi Jinping Thought,” delegates in the packed hall followed along with their own copies of his remarks, turning the pages in unison, studiously taking notes and applauding enthusiastically. The meeting, broadcast on the state-run CCTV, caught some delegates sleeping.

Xi said China’s “great rejuvenation” is now an “irreversible historical process” and the party had already created a “new choice” for humanity with its unique path to modernization — a nod to China’s emergence as an alternative to Western democracies.

The congress adds urgency to Xi’s ambition at a time when China’s economy is slowing and Beijing faces renewed criticism from Western nations over aggression toward Taiwan and its close partnership with Russia.

For China to become a military, economic and cultural power, he added, the party will need to navigate “abrupt changes” in the international situation and be ready to weather “high winds and dangerous storms.”

“In recent years, Xi has been placing a lot of emphasis on calling on the party leadership to revive a spirit of struggle,” said Dali Yang, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Chicago.

Analysts are closely watching the six-day meeting for signs that recent criticism of the party may have weakened Xi or other politicians. Former Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli made his first public appearance since he was accused by Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai of sexual assault.

Xi did not mention the war in Ukraine or Beijing’s deteriorating relationship with the United States, which ordered export bans earlier this month that could cripple China’s high-tech aspirations. He briefly touched on China’s increasingly criticized “zero covid” policy, claiming it had earned his country “international acclaim.”

When Xi took office in 2012, the smooth transfer of power was seen as a sign that China’s political system had evolved from personal rule toward a system of regularized leadership transitions. But Xi defied expectations.

With unending anti-corruption campaigns and an emphasis on discipline, he took charge of the party. The rest of Chinese society was brought in line with security clampdowns that pushed human rights activists underground and crushed resistance in Hong Kong and the far western province of Xinjiang. Under his rule, international criticism of China has been met with fierce pushback from “wolf warrior” diplomats.

The gathering will conclude when delegates formally approve Xi’s report, pass changes to the party constitution and choose a new Central Committee. The committee then meets and appoints a new 25-member Politburo and the seven-member Standing Committee, which is the apex of power.

Xi is almost certain to be reinstated as general secretary and head of the party’s Central Military Commission, his two most important positions.

Observers are watching who will be promoted to join him on the Politburo for any signs of challenges to Xi’s rule or an anointed successor. But after a decade of Xi concentrating power in his own hands, few consider either outcome probable. Term limits for the presidency were scrapped in 2018, clearing the way for Xi to rule for life if he so chooses.

“Xi Jinping is aiming not just for a third term but for a fourth term as well,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation think tank. “He has 10 more years to choose his successor.”

Xi’s leadership style, characterized by a preference for splitting people into enemies and friends, means he is not someone who is willing to compromise, said Chien-Wen Kou, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taiwan.

“This tells us how he thinks about dealing with enemies,” Kou said. “He essentially will not make a concession on his basic principles, whether for China-U.S. ties, relations with Taiwan or his approach to corrupt officials.”

Even if there is resistance to Xi’s agenda, it is unlikely to appear during the carefully scripted congress. After months of closed-door negotiations between Xi and other top-ranking officials, the work report broadcasts policy prescriptions to the party’s rank-and-file. For the party, the choreographed process, culminating in a vote by show of hands to rubber-stamp the new agenda, is a way to bolster legitimacy in line with claims that China, too, is democratic.

Many of Xi’s most significant updates to China’s policy outlook took place at the last party congress, in 2017, when he announced a “new era.”

“Xi has tried to revive some Maoist policies for the economy,” such as focusing on state-owned enterprises, tackling inequality and creating a system of “internal circulation” as a way to prepare for decoupling from the United States and the West, Lam said.

In a nod to these goals, Xi called “high-quality” growth the primary task of the next stage of China’s development and said internal circulation — a bid to bolster domestic markets to become self-reliant — should be made “lively and reliable.” He said the party would continue to support “common prosperity,” one of his key slogans.

Ever stronger party leadership, guided by Xi’s personal ideology, was a common theme of the speech. Channeling Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, he said the military — the “barrel of the gun” — must forever listen to party orders. And the party will never change, Xi added, because it had learned the art of “self-revolution” to break historical cycles of rising and falling governments.

Under Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, the party experimented with small moves toward what it called “intraparty democracy,” allowing a straw poll by senior officials as a way of gauging support for various leaders to reach the Politburo and its Standing Committee.

Xi scrapped those changes in 2017. Instead, he met with party elders one by one to gather recommendations, helping him prevent the formation of cliques that could challenge his power. “It’s another example of Xi Jinping’s paranoia,” said Susan Shirk, a scholar of Chinese politics at the University of California at San Diego.

Tighter control doesn’t necessarily mean Xi will get the outcomes he wants. In a recently published book, Shirk argues that Xi’s centralized power and top-down pressure on officials pushes cadres toward overenthusiastic praise and over-compliance with Xi’s objectives, which can lead to policy mistakes. “The bandwagoning of subordinates to prove loyalty and protect their own careers leads to overreach,” she said.

Shirk argues that Xi is unlikely to use his third term to change course. “He’s really boxed himself into a tough next five years,” she said. “After the congress, subordinates will be all the more intimidated and fearful unless Xi diffuses his personal authority to share it with other senior leaders.”

Just before the speech, CCTV interviewed Jiang Lijuan, a local official from Zhejiang province, who breathlessly praised Xi’s “personal guidance” in the development of her village. She said the residents had formed a habit of watching the evening news to “see what the general secretary was up to, just like you would care for a family member.”

Lyric Li in Seoul and Vic Chiang and Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

 

 

The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future, by Chun Han Wong - Book review by Benjamin Tze Ern Ho (H-Net Reviews)

H-Net Reviews

Wong, Chun Han. Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future. : Avid Reader Press, 2023. xvi + 395 pp. $20.99 (paper), ISBN 9781982185749.$30.00 (cloth), ISBN 9781982185732.

Reviewed by Benjamin Tze Ern Ho (Nanyang Technological University)
Published on H-Diplo (February, 2025)

Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=61176

Among contemporary China watchers, there is a view that President Xi Jinping—in more than a decade of ruling China—has refashioned and remodeled the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China’s political landscape into his own image. A case in point can be seen in the emphasis in recent years (particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic) on national security concerns instead of economic development, consequently affecting China’s relations with the rest of the world (particularly the West and the United States, which Beijing views as having designs on undermining its national security). Not surprising, scholars have attempted to divine what Xi’s worldview might be and how his thinking has shaped China’s foreign policy practices. Some notable works in recent years include Kerry Brown’s Xi Jinping: A Study in Power (2022), Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung’s The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (2023), and Kevin Rudd’s On Xi Jinping: How Xi's Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World (2024).

While these widely acclaimed books have provided good clues and insights into the thought forms and political world that Xi inhabits, their analyses tend to focus on specific aspects of Xi, such as his personality (Brown and Rudd) and his political ideas (Tsang and Cheung). Chun Han Wong’s Party of One moves the needle on the study of Xi in a decisive manner, in this case, attempting to connect Xi’s ability to effect real changes in China’s sociopolitical space through his executive power vis-à-vis the CCP. Among Chinese scholars, there is an acknowledgment that the CCP is not monolithically defined and that there exists a variety of views, factions, and ideological positions within the party. That said, I argue that under Xi, these factions are rendered powerless or irrelevant unless they happen to square with his own personal views. To evidence this, Wong uses his years of experience as a Wall Street Journal reporter who honed his craft in China. He provides us with a multilayered and multi-textured portrayal of Xi and illustrates how the CCP and China have been thoroughly “Xi-nicized” as Xi has stamped his influence not only within the party but also on the broader Chinese society.

To make sense of Chinese politics these days, one way is to recognize that the CCP sits on top of Chinese society and Xi sits on top of the CCP. By marrying Marxist-Leninist principles of control with a veneer of Chinese traditional thought (taken from the repertoire of Confucian and Legalist ideas), Xi has managed to exert and extend his control of the party and society in ways unimaginable since Mao Zedong—thus making him the paramount leader of modern China today. This is where Wong’s investigation and analysis in writing this book helps his work stand out from other comparable works. By telling the stories of the ordinary Chinese and Chinese officials, Wong is able to weave a compelling narrative of how Xi’s leadership has been decisive in spreading the widespread changes we see today in Chinese society. The common Chinese saying “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away” is sometimes used to lend credence to the belief that many local officials often disregard the wishes of the central authorities in Beijing, especially if these instructions run up against their own local priorities. Reading the Party of One, one comes away with a slightly different take in that “heaven may be high, but the emperor is not far away.” In other words, Xi’s influence is total and his political tentacles and reach go very far. As Wong observes in his analysis of how the party has exacted control over its own cadres (wherever they may be), “the leadership keeps tabs on elite party families through informants within their staff—scrutiny that dissuades many princelings and retired elders from criticizing Xi” (p. 73).

The focus on the mark Xi has made on the party is the strongest and most compelling aspect of the book. All eight chapters are single-mindedly focused on one outcome of Xi’s rule: the party. As I have observed elsewhere, Xi’s derivation of power and influence is intrinsically linked to his preeminence and position in the party.[1] To use a J. K. Rowling analogy from the Harry Potter books, Xi and the party have made “horcruxes” of one another.[2] Without the party with which to execute his wishes and commands, Xi would just be another Chinese citizen (out of the 1.3 billion citizens) or political official (with political ambitions but without the political platform to implement his ideas). Likewise, without a unifying figurehead in the person of Xi, the party would inevitably be consigned to factional struggles and internal competition, and in the worst case it would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union some three and a half decades ago.

Xi has worked to ensure that party survival is contingent on the party being obedient—even subservient—to his wishes, while his ability to stay in power depends on his mastery of the party and his use of the party apparatus to achieve his own political goals. Unlike Mao who viewed himself as above the party, Xi’s fortunes are wholly linked to his place and position within the party. Wong thus tells the story of Xi’s power and influence within the party, from invoking anti-corruption measures (as of this writing, its defense minister Dong Jun is under investigation for corruption, suffering the same fate as his two predecessors), to writing the rules of governance, rejiggling the economy, and projecting its influence globally. While most of these observations and insights will not be new to seasoned Chinese watchers, Wong does an excellent job unpacking and putting on paper what has hitherto only been discussed or speculated about. His wide contacts of sources within China (intellectuals, dissidents, ordinary citizens) allow him to connect the dots in the Chinese political space and to conclude that “Xi’s efforts [in maintaining domestic stability] have yielded a nonpareil system of social control” (p. 92). By allowing his contacts to tell their stories where possible, Wong provides us with a kaleidoscope of narratives testifying to the overarching narrative: Xi’s words are law, what he says becomes policy.

Since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and opening up in the late 1970s, China has prided itself on wanting to be open to the outside world so as to ensure economic growth. Even during the Tiananmen period of the late 1980s, where relations between China and the West witnessed a downturn, Beijing’s purge of liberal-minded colleagues was only short-lived as Deng himself embarked on his southern tour in 1992. This was followed by Jiang Zemin’s declaration that China aimed to build a socialist market economy, enshrining Deng’s path as official orthodoxy. All these have seemed to change under Xi; the party—not the market—reigns supreme. As Wong puts it, what is happening to China today is an economic “hybrid system that combines central planning with market mechanisms, where state and private enterprises act in concert to advance the party’s economic agenda” (p. 131, emphasis added). In other words, what is ultimately important to Xi is not economic efficiency (in which market forces play their role for better or worse) but the party’s benefits as a result of economic policies. The longevity of the party, not the health of the Chinese economy, is ultimately of key importance. A more vivid example would be the extended lockdown by Chinese government during the coronavirus pandemic in which Beijing did not open up almost a full year after many countries started to open their economies and to live with the virus as being endemic. As a result of the draconian measures taken during the pandemic, the Chinese economy tanked and Beijing today is still trying to recover from the economic damage.[3]

Given the above, one may think that Xi’s godlike status within Chinese society will be eternally secure or that there are no areas of weaknesses in Xi’s political armor. This is not the case, and this is where I think Wong’s portrayal of Xi—as being essentially unchallenged from both within and without—is not quite as clear-cut as the Party of One suggests based on my reading. To be fair, Wong in the conclusion makes the correct observation that “Xi’s China is brash but brittle, intrepid yet insecure” (p. 280); however, Wong does not go so far as to quite point out the chinks within the party, unlike other public intellectuals, like Singapore’s Bilahari Kausikan who talks about Xi as being a “single point of failure within the CCP system.”[4] In other words, by arrogating power to himself, Xi is creating a system that is ripe for disaster, especially when things turn sour. The lack of decentralized decision-making power means potential paralysis in decision-making. By second-guessing what Xi likes, rather than what he needs, Chinese officials and policymakers have little agency to “speak truth to power” and instead end up parroting official Chinese-speech. As evidenced by the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese officials in Wuhan were slow to act as they could not make any meaningful decisions until permission was given from the top in the early stages of the pandemic back in January 2020. Likewise, the recent purge of senior officials at the highest echelons of China’s political office, such as its former foreign minister Qin Gang and three defense ministers, suggests a level of incongruence between decision-makers at the top (including Xi) and the information they are given to make decisions (why weren’t these problems spotted and highlighted earlier?).

Seen this way, the problems within the Chinese political system should not be viewed in isolation and as having no bearing to the broader structure that has enabled the existence and even permissiveness of these problems. As William Shakespeare puts it in Hamlet, “there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” One would hope that in sitting at the apex of power in the Chinese political system, Xi’s philosophy of the world would be sufficiently enlightened to recognize that in his party of one, the buck stops with him.

Notes

[1]. Benjamin Ho, “Why Xi Jinping Cannot Back Down on Coronavirus,” National Interest, June 4, 2022.

[2]. In the Harry Potter books, a horcrux is an object in which a dark wizard or a witch had hidden a detached fragment of their soul in order to become immortal or invincible.

[3]. “China Posts Record Deficit in 2022 on Covid Zero, Property Slump,” Business Times, January 30, 2023, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/china-posts-record-deficit-2022-covid-zero-property-slump; and Sun Yu and Yuan Yang, “Why China’s Economic Recovery from Coronavirus Is Widening the Wealth Gap,” Financial Times, August 18, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/e0e2940a-17cb-40ed-8d27-3722c9349a5d.

[4]. Bilahari Kausikan, “Address by Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan at the Third Atal Bihari Vajpayee Memorial Lecture,” Ministry of External Affiars, Government of India, Media Center, January 23, 2023, https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/36142/Address_by_Ambassador_Bilahari_Kausikan_at_the_third_Atal_Bihari_Vajpayee_Memorial_Lecture_January_23_2023.

Benjamin Tze Ern Ho is an assistant professor in the China Programme, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He specializes in the study of Chinese international relations and Asian comparative political order.

Citation: Benjamin Tze Ern Ho. Review of Wong, Chun Han. Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. February, 2025.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=61176

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Quanto tempo de reinado terá o Imperador Xi Jinping? - Francis Pike (The Spectator)

 

How long will Xi Jinping rule China?  The Spectator, June 12, 2022 Francis Pike

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-long-will-xi-jinping-rule-china

For some time now it has been assumed that in November the National Congress will rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s continued role as China’s supreme leader for a third five-year term, which would make Xi the first Chinese leader for a generation to serve more than two terms. 

Just a year ago his position as one of China‘s three pre-eminent leaders was confirmed when the 400 members of the Central Committee passed the third ‘Historical Resolution’ in the Chinese Communist Party’s 100-year history. The previous two were organised by Mao in 1945 and Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The resolution highlighted the concept of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ as a historical equivalent to that of his two legendary predecessors. But a number of crises, international and domestic, have put a question mark against Xi’s continued omnipotence. 

When Xi met Putin before the Beijing Winter Olympics, the allies, who had moved ever closer over the last decade, declared that there were ‘no limits’ to the Russia-China relationship. What followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, about which Xi was forewarned, is therefore a puzzle. Although China voted against the UN resolution to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s active support for Russia has been notable by its absence. 

There has been no public expression of support for Putin’s ‘special military operation’. Xi himself has subsequently stated that China is ‘committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries’. Russia has asked for military aid from China but no answer, at least publicly, has been forthcoming. If, as one suspects, China is helping Russia, it is being done in secret. 

Neither does it seem that China wants to risk being involved in trade wars with the West. It is notable that Union Pay, China largest credit card company, has, like Visa and Mastercard, stopped working with Russian banks. Chinese companies, particularly those established in the US, appear to be equally circumspect about breaking US sanctions. 

The Russia-China allegiance may now be superglued but to what strategic benefit to China? It is difficult to see how China’s geopolitical ambitions can be burnished by its support for an ally, albeit half-hearted, whose actions are causing global inflation and, in some countries, starvation. This is not how you win friends among the ‘non-aligned’ nations – just look at the borrowing default, food riots and political crisis in China’s ally Sri Lanka over the last month. 

If China’s friendship with Putin is toxic internationally, it also seems likely that this toxicity applies in some measure at home. The leadership of China is opaque when it comes to identifying opposition to Xi. However, it is highly unlikely that factions who supported the cautious internationalism of Deng Xiaoping and his successors can be happy with the consequences of Xi’s overtly aggressive foreign policy which appears to have united the West in a Russia-China containment strategy. It has to be asked whether it was Xi or other government members who decided that there should be limits to Xi’s ‘no limits’ relationship with Russia. 

The domestic economic costs of Xi’s campaign against western values are also becoming apparent. Under the influence of the Wang Huning, the communist party’s chief ideological theorist, a member of the Politburo’s seven man Standing Committee, Xi has pursued increasingly authoritarian attacks on the stars of China’s new economy. 

Last year technology entrepreneur Jack Ma, the charismatic founder of Alibaba, was ‘disappeared’ and his company Alibaba forcibly restructured. A swathe of new regulations has hit China’s tech sector. The US$100bn online digital education industry, deemed inegalitarian, has been devastated by new regulation. Cryptocurrency has been banned. Even China’s social media stars such as Zhao Wei, a billionaire actress, pop singer and influencer whose online presence was erased in August last year, have been reined in. 

Wang, a social puritan, believes that a ‘nihilist individualism’ has undermined the moral fabric of the US. He and Xi are determined that China will not be infected by such Western-style moral corruption, which they believe is fostered by social media. 

Xi’s regulatory crackdown on technology companies has crashed stock prices. According to TechNode, a Chinese technology media company, there is an ongoing bloodbath in tech sector employment. Xiaohongshu, sometimes described as China’s Instagram, has recently laid off 10 per cent of its staff. According to Reuters, even the major tech companies such as Alibaba and Tencent are planning large-scale redundancy programmes. 

Investment in start-ups, already in decline before Covid, has plummeted. Many technology entrepreneurs are quitting mainland China and heading to safer regulatory locations such as Singapore or the US. 

Furthermore, China’s main technology and financial hub, Shanghai, has been particularly badly affected by Xi’s doubling down on his zero-Covid stance. Shanghai’s officials and its business elite are reportedly furious. Unlike other zero-Covid zealots, such as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who have given up on draconian lockdowns, Xi appears determined to stay the course. As long as Xi remains committed to the policy of zero Covid, how is China ever going to open up its borders? It is a question that must have occurred to many within China. 

As a result of Xi, a perfect storm of problems is now bearing down on the Chinese economy. His foreign policies, particularly in relation to his threats to Taiwan and his support for Russia, are scaring off foreign investors. Revelations about Xi’s brutal suppression of China’s Uighurs are a further negative for investment in China. Foreign Direct Investment has fallen to just 2 per cent of GDP compared to 6.5 per cent in the mid-1990s. Meanwhile Chinese companies are offshoring manufacturing capacity to countries such as Vietnam. 

At the same time the Chinese property sector is in a cyclical downturn. Xi’s clampdown on property leverage following the collapse of residential property behemoth China Evergrande Group is crashing the property market and construction sectors. This is a disaster for China’s regional governments whose finances are highly dependent on property sales. 

No wonder then that, after a first quarter of negative GDP, global investment banks are busy slashing their growth estimates for China in 2022. Real GDP growth is now forecast to halve from 8.1 per cent in 2021 to around 4 per cent in the current year. Even that may prove optimistic. 

This is not the economic background that Xi would want in the run up to the Politiburo Standing Committee elections in November. Confusingly, Xi’s lockdown orders to Covid-hit cities, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, not a Xi acolyte, has emerged from the shadows to exhort Chinese companies to get back to work. In some quarters there is clearly alarm at the economic downturn. Does Li’s sudden appearance centre stage indicate a power struggle at the heart of government? 

Xi’s government remains broadly popular. The Edelman Trust Index shows that the Chinese government enjoys a 91 per cent trust rating compared with just 39 per cent for the US government. But Xi’s future will not be decided by the Chinese people; power struggles are fought within the Communist Party behind closed doors. 

Though there is no sense that things are so bad that Xi might fail in his bid to win a third term as China’s leader, there can be little doubt that his reputation is tarnished within some political factions – particularly the ‘Shanghai gang’ who dominated Chinese politics for a generation until Xi’s emergence. While we should not expect a political earthquake at the National Congress in November neither should we rule one out, particularly if the economic outlook in China continues to deteriorate.

Written byFrancis Pike

Francis Pike is a historian and author of Hirohito’s War, The Pacific War 1941-1945 and Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II.

The Xi personality cult is a danger to China - Gideon Rachman (Financial Times)

  The Xi personality cult is a danger to China

A one-party state, combined with ritual veneration of the leader, is a recipe for misrule

Gideon Rachman

Financial Times, Londres – 14.9.2021

 

Chinese children as young as 10 will soon be required to take lessons in Xi Jinping thought. Before they reach their teenage years, pupils will be expected to learn stories about the Chinese leader’s life and to understand that “Grandpa Xi Jinping has always cared for us.” 

This should be an alarm bell for modern China. The state-led veneration of Xi has echoes of the personality cult around Mao Zedong — and with it, of the famines and terror unleashed by Mao during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. From Stalin’s Russia to Ceausescu’s Romania to Kim’s North Korea and Castro’s Cuba, the combination of a personality cult and Communist Party rule is usually a recipe for poverty and brutality. These comparisons may seem far-fetched, given the wealth and sophistication of modern China. The country’s economic transformation in recent decades has been remarkable — leading Beijing to promote a “China model” from which the world can learn.

But it is important to make a distinction between the “China model” and the “Xi model”. The China model of reform and opening, put in place by Deng Xiaoping, was based on a rejection of the cult of personality. Deng urged officials to “seek truth from facts”. Policy should be guided by a pragmatic observation of what works, rather than the grandiose statements of Chairman Mao. 

To allow officials to experiment with new economic policies, it was crucial to break with the fear and dogma associated with an all-powerful leader. Term limits for the Chinese presidency were introduced in 1982, restricting any leader to two five-year terms. In the post-Deng years, China has managed two orderly leadership transitions — from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, and from Hu to Xi in 2012. 

Term limits were also intended to solve the succession problem that often plagues one-party states. Henceforth, the party’s collective leadership would matter more than the charismatic leadership of a single man. 

But, in the Xi era, the Chinese Communist party has once again embraced a personality cult. It incorporated Xi Jinping thought into its constitution at a congress in 2017. This was an honour previously granted only to one other leader, while still in power — Mao. In 2018, the Deng-era term limits for the Chinese presidency were abolished — setting the stage for Xi to rule for decades, if not for life. 

The current intensification of the Xi cult, looks like preparation for next year’s party congress — at which the Chinese leader’s desire to stay on in power indefinitely, will have to be rubber-stamped by the party he controls. 

Xi is almost certain to get his way. His supporters and organised sycophants will hail the move. How could they not? The Chinese leader is meant to be a “good emperor” — a wise leader, who is making all the right moves to modernise the country.

It is certainly possible to make a case for Xi’s signature policies — such as a crackdown on corruption and a more assertive foreign policy. The current campaigns to reduce inequality, and to control the power of the big technology companies, can also be justified. 

But all of these policies could also easily go wrong. Intimidating Taiwan could lead to a needless confrontation with the US. Cracking down on big tech could frighten entrepreneurs and hobble the private sector. 

The real difficulty is that if things do go wrong, it will be very hard for anybody to say so openly. All personality cults are based on the idea that the great leader is wiser than everyone who surrounds him. He cannot be acknowledged to have made mistakes. Chinese critics of Xi’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic have been sent to prison. There will be no public inquiries or parliamentary hearings into the pandemic in Xi’s China. 

The Xi cult is also intrinsically humiliating for China’s educated middle-class and senior officials — who have to study Xi thought daily on a special app. They are expected to express reverence for the leader’s musings and to parrot his favourite phrases, such as “green mountains and clear water are equal to mountains of gold and silver”. Anybody who finds this ritual objectionable or laughable, would be wise to keep their thoughts to themselves. The Xi cult means that insincerity and fear are now baked into the Chinese system.

 Extending Xi’s leadership long into the future is also a recipe for a future succession crisis. The Chinese leader is 68 years old. At some point, he will no longer be fit to govern. But how will he be removed? Xi’s creation of a cult of personality and his moves to become, in effect, “ruler for life” are part of a disturbing global pattern. 

In Russia, Vladimir Putin is also pushing through constitutional changes that will allow him to remain as president well into his eighties. Donald Trump used to “joke” enviously that the US should emulate China’s abolition of presidential term limits. 

But the US has checks and balances, which have so far managed to thwart Trump’s worst instincts. In a country such as China — without independent courts, elections or a free media — there are no real constraints on a leadership cult. That is why Xi is now a danger to his own country.