Xi Jinping is likely to lead his country into uncharted territory when he emerges this month as China’s ideal leader for five years.
The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) begins on October 16. The conclusion of the week-long event is expected to pave the way for him to become the longest-serving leader of the ruling party since Mao Zedong.
From the outside, Xi’s resolve to remain in place would likely seem unprecedented. But for him, it would possibly be the next herbal step on the road to cementing a lasting legacy in China’s ruling party.
Xi was elected general secretary of the CPC in late 2012, when he also became chairman of the Central Military Commission, before taking office as president the following March.
The certainty underlying the widespread confidence in his continuation as leader comes from the way he consolidated his strength over the decade and derailed the party’s past move toward institutionalizing collective leadership, to which no man can exercise too much authority.
He began by worrying about the main points of policymaking and continued with a year-long anti-corruption crusade that purged countless officials of disloyalty and corruption, adding to those in leadership positions. He installed sympathetic executives in vital positions to bring his vision to light in a more centralized way of making decisions.
The high-level design was also discovered in the People’s Liberation Army, the wing of the party’s army, which Xi began reforming in 2015.
In 2017, Xi oversaw an amendment to the party’s statutes to accompany his ideas, collectively known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, exercising an ideological point that only Deng Xiaoping, the reformist leader, and Mao, the founding party. .
A year later, Xi amended China’s charter to remove presidential term limits, the position that gives him the mandate to constitute the country around the world as head of state.
The centralized nature of their authority has made it difficult for their foreign counterparts to convey their views. Kurt Campbell, President Joe Biden’s most sensible policy adviser for Asia, said in 2021 that most sensible Chinese diplomats attending high-level meetings were “far from there, less than a hundred miles” from Xi’s inner circle.
But how the former governor of Fujian Province ascended through the party ranks to ideal authority tells part of the story.
The Chinese president has built around himself a cult of personality unprecedented since the time of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The party may now see this decade as a mistake, but Xi has learned from it about the difficult prospect of creating an idol image.
Favorable strategic narratives are established through leadership, whose propaganda office tells state media how to frame them well and Chinese audiences how to interpret them correctly.
In 2016, he demanded from the Chinese press a sense of absolute constancy in the official line and therefore from him as the “core” of the party. He told the state media workers: “The party and the state media constitute the propaganda position of the party and the government, they must bear the surname of the party.
Xi is rarely absent from discussions of national achievements or the party’s ability to govern, and is described as someone who elevates China’s prestige globally or presents answers to external challenges.
According to Shu-ting Liu, a policy analyst at the National Security and Defense Research Institute, Taiwan’s top military think tank, the structure of Xi’s symbol through Chinese state media was “a slow, long-term procedure that is very complex. “. “
It does so through Xi’s policy of “media convergence,” the integration of classic and new media resources with technological equipment to change, manufacture and positive public perceptions of the CCP, Liu told Newsweek.
“The CCP faces demanding internal and external situations such as the Russian-Ukrainian war, COVID, and the US-China strategic festival. In all such cases, the CCP is shaping the symbol of Xi Jinping with the means of convergence,” he said. On the one hand, it emphasizes links with the ‘party’; On the other hand, it focuses on the “state” to win public support. »
On October 8, Chinese broadcaster CCTV aired a new series titled Navigator (领航), which details Xi’s achievements over the past decade, adding his handling of the industry’s war with the United States, quelling unrest in Hong Kong and battling the pandemic.
“This approach of treating ‘crises’ as ‘political achievements’ will come under constant scrutiny, as is the case with China’s complicated economic and social problems,” he said. Liu. And of course they are Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping. who will have to take care of it. “
CCP propaganda also portrays Xi as the party’s “helmsman,” a nod to Mao’s honorary “Grand Helmsman. “As such, the Chinese president directs domestic and foreign policy with corporate control and deep ideological control.
In recent years, Xi has linked the country’s reaction to the pandemic to the CPC’s political legitimacy and its own private legacy, making it difficult to justify a change in policy.
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s former prime minister, once described Xi as someone seeking Mao-like status. But Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, argued that Xi was looking for more than that.
“Xi doesn’t have Mao’s status, he must surpass Mao’s,” Tsang told Newsweek.
“For Xi, Mao delivered a component of this, founding the [People’s Republic of China], but failed to repair China to its peak,” the professor explained.
“The personality worship factor reflects the way Xi sees himself, China and China, as well as the truth that he is a guy in a project, a project to make China wonderful again. “
“For Xi, the way to make China return wonderfully is for the party to run everything under his leadership, which means he sees them in 3 concentric circles, with him in the center, the party in the middle, and China forming the outer circle. . Tsang said.
“Therefore, through the construction of a cult of personality, he sees himself making China great, because the grandeur of the core radiates outward. It also implies that Xi may not bother to justify his third term. Instead, he will probably make sure he stays at the head of the party and China through acclimatization,” he said.
Xi’s vision of “national rejuvenation,” his “Chinese dream,” includes many clues, adding the seizure of Taiwan and the building of a world-class army. In the end, it was the belief of a Chinese country that, despite everything, overcame Western and especially American hegemony to return to occupy a central place.
Xi’s impression of a universal leader is hard to shake. That’s what made Thursday’s anti-government protest in Beijing so weird.
Social media footage showed a man, dressed in a shopkeeper’s suit and helmet, in front of a small fireplace as he stood atop sitong Bridge in Haidian district.
A banner hung over the railing read: “Food, COVID testing. Reformation, cultural revolution. Freedom, confinement. Vows, a leader. Dignity, lies. Citizens, slaves. “
Another suggested that schools and workplaces go on strike and “overthrow the dictator and traitor Xi Jinping. “
Weibo, China’s main social media service, censored the words “Haidian,” “Beijing,” “Sitong” and “warrior” (勇士), after users used them to describe the guy who was later detained by police.
The local government has commented on the event.
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