Xi Jinping’s authoritarian politics is China’s “new normal”

Xi Jinping seized power in China in 2012 and immediately launched a series of purges and ideological crackdowns that set the tone for his rule.

For some experts, this is only a temporary problem. They say Xi Jinping’s strongman politics represents a departure from China’s long-term reform and opening-up path and reflects the relatively liberal economic and political policies that began under Deng Xiaoping more than 40 years ago. That’s what it means. In this optimistic view, it is possible, and perhaps even possible, that the next Chinese leader will return to this policy. They argue that Xi cannot rule forever, so more liberal-minded Chinese and foreigners can simply wait for him to do so.

For example, longtime China watchers David Rampton and Thomas Finger argue that there are two distinct governing traditions in Chinese politics. One is to prioritize “national and regime security over economic growth,” and the other is to “prioritize benefits gained through interdependence and economic growth.” Openness. ” Xi Jinping, they say, “accepts the former,” but future Chinese leaders may well choose the latter.

Ci Wei-Chi of the University of Hong Kong agreed: “There is no reason to believe that the political situation will not return to a normal trajectory in China after the Xi administration.”

So does Robert Daley, the Kissinger Chair at the Wilson Center. He argues that Xi “represents the main elements of China’s braid: nationalist, isolationist, paranoid and totalitarian elements.” But there are other equally strong forces, including liberal internationalist ones. They are not in the ascendancy right now. ” He claims that “China’s progressives are not gone” and that “the pendulum will swing again.”

But the expectation that Xi Jinping’s increasingly totalitarian China is likely to “lean” toward liberalization after his eventual death is almost certainly fool’s gold.

This is because what some people see as different “chains” of governance are not as clear-cut as they seem. Party leaders overwhelmingly congratulated Xi Jinping on his appointment, not because they wanted him to liberalize the country, but because they wanted a strong leader who could clean up the system. That’s worth remembering.

In 2011 and 2012, widespread corruption and rent-seeking undermined the party’s legitimacy. As a result, a consensus has emerged within the Chinese Communist Party and among the people that there is a need to crack down on corruption, strengthen party unity, reinvigorate ideology, and reaffirm control of the economic sphere.

Nimrod Baranovich argues that “Xi Jinping’s rapid shift from collective leadership to strongman rule early in his tenure created a serious crisis among China’s ruling elites that the regime needed to return to such control.” “It was the result of a widely shared consensus that we were facing a crisis.” . In fact, Yu Zeyuan of Singapore’s Lianhe Caobao newspaper said: This caused fear not only among the corrupt but also among his opponents within the party, and he was widely praised. ”

Simply put, the selection of powerful people was part of the plan, not a deviation from it.

It is also often said that Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule stands apart from that of his predecessors Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, who sought to balance power between competing voices. became. This argument presumes that China’s past leaders would not have preferred the kind of unified management that Mr. Xi currently has. In fact, all three suffered from hateful sectarian politics and power-sharing arrangements that forced them to make concessions to their opponents.

Throughout the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s cycles of economic and political opening and tightening were not the result of his preference for cooperation and compromise, but rather the need to overcome competing pressures from opposing conservative and liberal members of the coalition. It was a result of sex. Hu Jintao was also forced to balance between his “Youth League faction” and Jiang Zemin’s powerful “Shanghai faction.”

In fact, these competing elements within the party constrain executive decision-making. In Beijing, however, these restrictions were widely seen as an obstacle rather than an aspect of effective governance. China’s leader at the time, Hu Jintao, was also regularly criticized for his “inaction” and was deeply disappointed. “China is far from harmonious,” lamented Zhang Ming of Renmin University when President Hu resigned in 2012. Conflicts and contradictions are worsening. In fact, it is reaching a critical situation. ”

From this perspective, what distinguishes Xi Jinping from his predecessors is not his desire to take more control of decision-making into his own hands, but rather his success in exercising authority over unruly comrades. .

Moreover, the foundations for China’s broader internet control that Xi Jinping has laid down were laid in the early 2000s under President Hu.

As CNN reported in 2012, “The Hu administration has shown little tolerance for political opposition, rounding up the most vocal dissidents and social activists and putting them in prison or under house arrest. or disappear for several weeks.”

Under Hu, the party also expanded surveillance on hundreds of millions of bloggers, who were forced to register under their real names, while keeping traditional media in check. Mr. Xi has invested in the social surveillance and control mechanisms established by his predecessors, who were far from supporters of freedom of expression.

Indeed, perhaps the most important reason to resist the siren song of unfounded optimism about China’s future political direction is the unprecedented power and scale of the country’s AI-driven techno-totalitarianism. China now has hundreds of millions of cameras connected to supercomputers that can identify the nation’s people of interest in real time. These systems are now fully institutionalized and deeply integrated with the security state at all levels.

It is difficult to imagine how even the most liberal-minded future Chinese leaders could uproot such a system. Rather, China’s high-tech surveillance systems – from payment systems to ride-hailing to shopping and food delivery – will collect more and more personal data each day. And China, by definition, cannot become a freer and more open society if it remains a techno-totalitarian state.

China is unlikely to liberalize rather than “return to the future” after Mr. Xi (who may rule for decades to come). In the absence of a succession plan, the reins of power will most likely fall into the hands of China’s version of Vladimir Putin. This person is part of the currently anonymous part of the security state apparatus that understands how to wield power within the system.

Joshua Eisenman is a senior fellow in China studies and Thomas Sexton is a junior fellow in China studies at the U.S. Foreign Policy Council.