Xi Jinping Thought

'The Political Thought of Xi Jinping': Geoff Raby, 'Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping & China’s Superpower Status': Marc Jacobs, 'The Reformer' by Qiushi CPC Central Committee Bimonthly.

May 11, 2024

The Political Thought of Xi Jinping

By Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung (Oxford University Press £22.99 hb, 272 pp)

Two of the defining figures of our age are China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Both are authoritarian rulers intent on reshaping the global Western-led order. They despise and mistrust the United States equally, and, to justify their hold on power, promote a nationalist and civilisationist vision that elevates the long historical and cultural roots of their societies.They have defined themselves as indispensable for their respective countries’ futures and standing in the world.

But the similarities end there. Putin’s power rests on his maintaining influence among a small cabal of wealthy oligarchs. Xi is the head of the only effective political institution operat- ing in China: the Communist Party of China (CPC). This is a bureaucracy of some ninety-three million paid-up members, the biggest political party on the planet. It controls the military and all other organs of state power, and is dedicated to perpetuating its own rule.

So, for China and, given its importance, the rest of the world, understanding Xi Jinping Thought and how this translates into policy is an important and urgent subject of study. For this reason, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung’s book The Political Thought of Xi Jinping is timely and welcomed, as are other recent books on this subject, such as Chun Han Wong’s ‘The Party of One: The rise of Xi Jinping and China’s superpower future’ published in 2023 (see below).

When Xi became head of the Party in 2012, he set about systematically strengthening the CPC, rebuilding its legitimacy through far-reaching and continuing anti-corruption drives – catching tigers as well as mice, in Xi’s polemic – and dispatching rivals in the process. Consolidating his power, Xi’s hyper-authoritarianism transformed how China was governed. He became known as the ‘chairman of everything’. He brought ideology back to the centre of Chinese politics, dusted off the cult of personality, articulated a vision of China’s return to greatness in the world, and wrapped it all in a cloak of Chinese nationalism. The authors recount all this well. They construct a framework for analysing Xi’s thought and understanding its application in strengthening and guiding the CPC and state policies. As they say, there is often a gap between Xi Thought and reality, but for them what matters is to ‘conceptualize it as Xi’s guide on the direction of travel for China until mid-century’.

To that end, the book focuses on politics, ideology, governance, social control, economic management, and foreign policy. These are the subjects of its substantive chapters. Each provides a detailed and extensively researched survey of key developments in these areas.

Xi has gone further than the post-Mao leadership and made his thoughts the ‘Core’ that direct, guide, and judge the actions of leading cadres at all levels of the CPC. The book reveals how incredibly busy Xi and the propaganda machinery have been in inserting Xi Thought into all aspects of the Party’s work and beyond that into government policy.

The authors carefully note how Xi has reinterpreted, in his own image, many of the Party’s long-standing doctrines: creating a palimpsest where Xi has overlaid what was there, though the original doctrine is still discernible. For example, Xi Thought is said to be based firmly on Marxism-Leninism, but Xi has made it ‘Sino-centric’. He has introduced elements of supposedly ‘tra- ditional’ Chinese Confucianist values. This has rendered Marx- ism-Leninism less an import from the West and more something home-grown, to legitimise Chinese nationalism.

An especially important aspect of this, for China’s governance, is the redefinition of China’s implicit social contract which served the Party and the country well for more than two decades after the Tiananmen Square violence in 1989. The authors show how Xi Thought has offered the people an ‘upgraded de facto social contract’.The earlier one was basically to stay out of politics and let the Party govern, while people were free to do whatever else they liked within the law, such as becoming rich.

Xi’s formula was Socialism with Chinese Characteristics For the New Era (italics added), which has been inscribed into the Party’s constitution. The first part was Deng Xiaoping’s, which was a catch-all phrase to legitimise the pursuit of material eco- nomic development by whatever means worked: markets from capitalist economies, opening the economy, attracting foreign par- ticipation. This was captured in one of Deng’s many memorable aphorisms: ‘It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.’

The authors note how Xi has reinterpreted, in his own image, many of the Party’s long-standing doctrines

Xi’s addition of ‘For the New Era’ can itself be seen as a pragmatic adaptation to the actual conditions prevailing in contemporary China – building on what has gone before rather than an abrupt break with what has gone before. Material needs have been met, and so policy focuses on quality-of-life issues. This does not require recourse to notions of Marxism to explain. A weakness, however, is that Marxism is not defined by the authors. Xi has also added two additional elements to the social contract. One is to ‘actively defend regime security and accept more intrusive Party control over their lives’. The other is to ‘reinvigorate the mass line’. This harks back directly to Mao and is entwined with Xi’s cult of the personality, another Mao throwback. ‘While Xi guides the Party to pursue higher standards in improving the quality of life for the people, he also expects and requires them to embrace the Party and him, the core leader, and to express their support more overtly.’

Under Xi’s rule, China is unquestionably a different place today from what was in the decades of the reform era, which began in 1979. What is arguable, however, is how sharp is the discontinuity under Xi.

The authors, for example, make much of the end of collective leadership and the institutionalisation of the transfer of power, whereby the General Secretary of the Party served two five-year terms. But the institutionalisation was an understanding, not a rule enshrined in law. Having operated on only one occasion – Hu Jintao’s transfer to Xi – it was hardly a convention steeped in time, such as Britain’s unwritten constitution. When Jiang Zemin, Hu’s predecessor, stepped down after thirteen years in the job, he held on to the chairmanship of the powerful Central Military Commission for another two years, and then only reluctantly gave it up.

In any event, this institutional arrangement, on which the authors put so much weight when defining Xi’s tenure, was ar- guably bust at the time of his ascension. His princeling rival, Bo Xilai, backed by former Standing Committee member and inter- nal security tsar Zhao Yongkang, sought to block Xi. Although we will never know the inside story, it was in effect some sort of attempted palace coup. It is worth recalling that at this time, just as he was about to take power, Xi Jinping went missing for two weeks. This has never been explained.

If the institutional norms had been followed, perhaps Xi may have been a different leader. But given that he took over in a power struggle, it is arguably unsurprising that what fol- lowed were continuous anti-corrup- tion drives to clean up the Party and weed out rivals, and a resort to more authoritarian rule. In such circum- stances, a return to ideology and a cult of a personality could be attributable to systemic factors and not just to the belief system and personality of the man. It is at least worth considering this counterfactual.

China’s political system is Leninist. When collective decision making was ditched, China reverted to its Leninist origins of political and social organisation. The authors are firmly of the view that the man creates the require recourse to notions of Marxism to explain. A weakness, however, is that Marxism is not defined by the authors. Xi has also added two additional elements to the social contract. One is to ‘actively defend regime security and accept more intrusive Party control over their lives’. The other is to ‘reinvigorate the mass line’. This harks back directly to Mao and is entwined with Xi’s cult of the personality, another Mao throwback. ‘While Xi guides the Party to pursue higher standards in improving the quality of life for the people, he also expects and requires them to embrace the Party and him, the core leader, and to express their support more overtly.’

Under Xi’s rule, China is unquestionably a different place today from what was in the decades of the reform era, which began in 1979. What is arguable, however, is how sharp is the system, which is inevitable in a discussion of the political ideas of the leader of an authoritarian state. But in China the leader rules at the indulgence of the Party élite. The leader can be changed – not the Party.

Both Xi (now seventy) and Putin (seventy-one) will probably be gone during this decade, but it is much less likely that the CPC will disappear. Whoever leads this resilient Leninist institution will continue to be of enduring interest.

NB: Geoff Raby was Australian Ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011. His book China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New World Order was published in 2020 by MUP, which will publish his forthcoming book, Great Game On: China’s quest for pre-eminence in Eurasia, later this year.

Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China’s Superpower Status

By Chun Han Wong (Repost from November 06, 2023)

Reviewing ‘Party of One’, written by Chun Han Wong, a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal, represents a challenge. Although Wong’s book has obvious value, it is not what it purports to be. It does not provide revelations into the processes by which China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power–this would require a strong comprehension of the inner-workings of the China Communist Party, something Wong, himself, admits he does not possess; nor does the book offer many insights regarding what the political future of China might be, apart from implying that this future will more than likely be complicated. That at which Party of One succeeds, however, is detailing, from multiple perspectives, an intricate and vivid account of Xi Jinping. It also offers a good summary of the policies Xi has carried out since becoming Party leader, and expounds upon the impacts Xi’s changes are having on China and the world.

Wong’s portrayal of Xi is not particularly positive. This is understandable. In 2019, after Wong co-wrote an article about an investigation by Australian authorities into the gambling activities of Ming Chai, a cousin of Xi Jinping, China did not re-extend Wong’s press credentials, effectively barring him from the country. As such, rather than first-person interviews (which Wong could no longer conduct), Party of One relies mostly on information gleaned from newspaper and journal articles. The number of these sources is impressive, filling up more than a hundred pages of notes.

Wong divides Party of One into an introduction, eight chapters and an afterword. Each of Wong’s chapters focuses on a different, Xi-related topic. These include: Xi’s background; Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns; China’s wolf warriors; and, Xi’s approach to Taiwan. A common thread among the chapters is the contrast between Xi’s strategies and those of his immediate predecessors, especially Deng Xiaoping. While Deng warned against the dangers of one person, autocratic rule in China, Xi is the embodiment of such rule. And, in contrast to Deng’s exhortations for China to lay low and bide its time, Xi has embraced an activist and aggressive approach to his relations with the outside world.

Something that emerges from Wong’s work is the incomprehensibility of Xi’s rule. Wong depicts Xi as someone not particularly sophisticated, and lacking in education (“Xi is not cultured. He was basically just an elementary schooler.”). Xi’s policies are portrayed as taking a shoot-from-the-hip approach, long on ideology, but poorly composed. Xi, himself, comes across as immature and thin-skinned, a leader, who, although obviously skilled in the art of Chinese politics, does not really understand the world outside his nation. Wong also makes clear that the transactional, self-seeking, and less than honest (e.g., manipulating history to fit one’s interests) approach Xi has applied to China is not working in the outside world. Xi’s “China Dream,” for example, an amorphous plan to land China on top of the world’s hierarchy, comes off as nothing more than a Darwinian approach to world dominance, lacking in substance.

If anything, for the China watcher, Wong’s book is both frightening and sad. It is frightening because China is currently facing multiple crises, chief among them demographic collapse. Then there is the United States, representing China’s largest market, a country no longer interested in globalization, and clearly intending to decouple from China. Other problems are a Chinese agricultural sector increasingly unable to serve the needs of its populace, and a world in which China has few friends. These are all issues that will require skills of leadership that are thoughtful and nuanced. This is not the sort of leader that Wong portrays Xi Jinping to be.

The sense of sadness arising out of Wong’s work relates to the fact that due to its size China’s impact upon the world is significant. Party of One directs much emphasis to Xi’s strategy of social control, focusing on Xi’s approach to unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet in particular. Wong makes clear that Xi and his cohort are pushing the boundaries of what should be considered ethically acceptable. Still, Xi’s policies have reduced social unrest. Because of this, pressure on other world leaders will arise to follow Xi’s lead. By establishing such precedents, Xi has done the world great harm. This is regrettable.

Party of One is a good read. It is interesting, well written, and flows well. It is also important. Xi Jinping has had, is having, and will continue to have a huge impact on both China and the world. Wong’s book provides an excellent overview of Xi as a leader, his policies, and about who Xi is. For these reasons, ‘Party of One’ deserves strong recommendation.

The Governance of China

By Xi Jinping, Volumes I, II, III, IV

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in November 2012, the new central leadership with Xi Jinping as general secretary has led the whole Party and the people of China in confronting the problems and challenges they face: to drive reform and opening up to a deeper level, to modernise the national governance system, and to marshal their enormous strength behind the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Under the leadership of the CPC, the country is striving to build a bright future for socialism with Chinese characteristics.

China is attracting growing attention worldwide. The world wants to know what changes are in progress in China, and what impact they will have on the rest of the world.

As general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and president of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping has delivered many speeches on a broad range of issues. He has offered his thoughts, views and judgments, and answered a series of important theoretical and practical questions about the Party and the country in these changing times. His speeches embody the philosophy of the new central leadership.

To respond to rising international interest and to enhance the rest of the world's understanding of the Chinese government's philosophy and its domestic and foreign policies, the State Council Information Office, the Party Literature Research Office of the CPC Central Committee and the China International Publishing Group have worked together to produce this book – The Governance of China.

The book is a compilation of Xi Jinping's major works from November 15, 2012 to June 13, 2014. It includes speeches, talks, interviews, instructions, and correspondence. The 79 pieces are arranged in 18 chapters, and notes are added to help readers understand China's social system, history and culture.

NB: The Governance of China Vol IV also contains 45 pictures of Xi Jinping at work and in daily life, with focus on the period since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012.

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