The Conundrum of Xi Jinping’s Power

Some China watcher believes that Chinese President Xi Jinping is nearly as powerful as Mao. In fact, they do not know how powerful Xi is compared with Mao.

How Mao Gradually Lost Most of His Power
Mao has absolute power before he made the mistake of the Great Leap Forward. In fact, if he was not so powerful, he simply could not launch the stupid campaign for unrealistic fast economic growth as most of the officials in charge of economic development in China advocated a moderate balanced economic growth. Before Mao’s Great Leap Forward, they achieved a growth rate of more than 10% p.a., quite fast in the world.

As those officials were led by powerful veterans Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun, Mao denounced Zhou severely as a conservative and scared Chen Yun. He had thus finally obtained consensus in CCP for his Great Leap Forward. Unfortunately, Mao’s Great Leap Forward was a disastrous blunder.

Due to the blunder, he gradually lost power to his chosen successor Liu Shaoqi and had to start the Cultural Revolution to grab power back from Liu. As most communist veterans supported Liu, Mao used first Red Guards and then Rebels to deprive veterans of their power.

To ensure success in his power struggle against Liu and Liu’s supporters, Mao needed the support of the troops so that he replaced Liu with the then Defense Minister Marshal Lin Biao as his successor and gave Lin the control of Chinese troops. When he found that Lin had grown as powerful as him, he brought down Lin. Then he had doubt about the loyalty of his powerbase Chinese troops in the face of Soviet attack.

Mao was wise to ally with the US to counter the Soviet Union. However, in fighting CCP civilian and military officials, he had used up his political capital and became unable to control the rebels. As a result, he was no able to put an end to the chaos caused by his Cultural Revolution.

Mao said that Cultural Revolution had to be carried out about every 8 years. He started his Cultural revolution in 1966 but by 1976 when he died, he was still unable to finish his Cultural Revolution. Disruption of production continued in most areas of China. As a result, there were nothing to shop except aluminum pots and enamel ware even in Hangzhou, a prosperous city before the Cultural Revolution well-known in the saying “There is paradise above in heaven while there are Suzhou and Hangzhou below”.

By that time, Mao’s power was quite limited. Xi would have been unable to achieve anything if he had had as limited power as Mao. As powerful as Mao? Nonsense.

Deng Xiaoping was powerful to order conservatives to obey him, but he did not have conservatives’ support for his reform and opening-up.

Jiang Zemin had established very strong powerbase to be the core of CCP’s third generation of leadership, but like Deng he could only silence conservatives’ opposition to his reform but had not won over their support.

In his reign for a decade, Hu Jintao had promoted lots of the members of his CYL (Communist Youth League, Hu’s powerbase) to high official posts, but he was challenged by Bo Xilai, head of the powerful conservative faction. Hu lacked the power to punish Bo when Bo’s crime of serious corruption was discovered. It was Jiang Zemin, the core of the third generation of CCP leadership, who was able to make the decision to punish Bo severely.

In spite of the decade of his rule, Hu had not become the core of CCP leadership, but Xi obtained the position as the core of CCP leadership in five years.

How has Xi succeeded in obtaining the power?

First, as soon as Xi took over the reign, he had gained the support of both reformists and conservatives by his China dream.

A couple of weeks after he took office as CCP General Secretary, Xi gained popularity by his surprise closure of all the black jails local officials set up in Beijing to imprison petitioners.. By so doing he dealt a heavy blow on powerful local officials.

He then announced that he would scrap the unpopular reeducation through labor system. Though the system was officially abolished about one and half years later, it had ceased operation soon after his announcement on abolishing it. Due to the system, police had the excessive power to imprison people in reeducation labor camp for as long as four years without any legal procedures. Before Xi’s surprise attacks at local officials and removal of the excessive power of the police, the police used the excessive power to protect corrupt officials and persecute those who dare to expose officials’ crimes of corruption. By abolishing the system and removal of police’s excessive power, Xi had dealt a heavy blow on Chinese police and laid foundation for his fight against corruption.

You may ask why Xi was able to deal heavy blows on the powerful vested interests of local officials and the police when he had just taken over the reign and had not yet set up his powerbase.

In September 2012 before Xi succeeded Hu Jintao, Xi disappeared mysteriously for two weeks. In that period, he visited all the powerful elders to gain their support for his fight against corruption and tightening of party discipline. In spite of their differences, all the elders supported Xi as they had the consensus that the rampant corruption would cause CCP to collapse. They had the experience that in spite of its larger military and US support the KMT lost the civil war to CCP due to its serious corruption.

Due to powerful elders’ support, Xi had real power as soon as he took over to enable him to deal heavy blows on local officials and the police. However, his sound powerbase was built in the five years since he took office through his successful fight against corruption, enforcement of party discipline and reorganization of Chinese military.

As a result, Xi has now become the most powerful leader in CCP history, much more powerful than Mao when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution but perhaps as powerful as the Mao before Mao made the mistake of the Great Leap Forward.

The most important battle Xi has won in obtaining absolute power is his fight against rampant corruption. As corruption has been an evil in China for centuries, it is too long a topic to discuss here.

You may wonder what about China’s collective leadership. It will be discussed in my next post “The Conundrum of China’s Collective Leadership”.

Article by Chan Kai Yee

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