As the West’s eyes linger on China’s artificial islands and expansionist moves into the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Beijing finds itself forced to focus on what’s going on at home.

The social advances of recent decades have been undone.

Embryonic democratic and human rights movements have been silenced. Moves to bring the Communist Party itself under the rule of law quashed.

Every aspect of Chinese society is being brought back firmly under State control.

And there are troubled times ahead.

“There are a number issues that can become real problems for China,” says University of Adelaide Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies Dr Gerry Groot. “Climate change is one. Water shortage is another. A rapidly aging population is a third. Sex imbalance is another … Then there are its repressed peoples.”

The Chinese Communist Party appears determined to muscle its way through them all.

To do so, it’s strengthening its grip on every aspect of the economy, and society.

Online. In the workplace. In public.

Every Chinese citizen is being watched - and graded.

And the shadow behind every loss of liberty belongs to President Xi Jinping.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

After the shock of the 1980s Tiananmen Square uprising, China sought to ease social tensions by relaxing controls. It gave people more freedoms and opening up as the economy boomed.

For two decades, there was a steady flow of positive stories about improvements to human rights and restrictions to the power of the Party.

The days of this more relaxed China are now long gone, Dr Groot says.

But the perceptions of the rest of the world are lagging far behind.

“One of the problems we have in Australia when most people attempt to understand what’s happening in China is they can’t really understand the nature of the Communist Party, how it works and how it controls things,” Dr Groot says.

When talking about China and China, we’re not talking about the general population, he says. We’re talking about what the Communist Party does, through its many arms. It’s an enormous bureaucratic system. And there’s no opposition.

“There are periods when the Party has allowed criticism. But this isn’t one of them,” Dr Groot says. “We’re seeing a crimping of the space for criticism. We’re seeing a rollback of key policies.”

Before Xi Jinping, there was a clear attempt to improve procedural fairness in China. To make it less personalistic, which is a major source of corruption, and to improve the administrative and legal system.

“That was the space that allowed in the NGOs and rights defenders because, for the first time since 1949, ordinary citizens could sue the state,” he says.

“Xi sees that all as the weakening of party control.

“But it’s all gone by the board now. We’ve seen the criminalisation of lawyers. And we’ve seen the very active expansion of the Party through the United Front Work Department into law firms to stop them becoming political through pushing human rights.”

Before Xi, the rule of law had started to mean something, Dr Groot says.

“Now we’ve very clearly got a return to rule by law. And the law means whatever Xi Jinping or the Party wants it to be, that’s the problem.”

Foreign nationals rarely have any negative encounters with China’s Communist Party behemoth, be they ordinary Australians, observers or even travellers in China, “especially business people who tend to have a very limited view of the world,” Dr Groot says.

“But they’re often bouncing up against it in a positive way. So they don’t see it for what it is.

“They’re not seeing what’s happening to Christians … they’re not seeing what’s happening to the Muslim Uyghurs … and the plight of the Falun Gong is way down the list of priorities. They just don’t see it yet. There would have to be something like a Tiananmen moment for people to shake that favourable view of China.”

DYSTOPIA RISING

Poor Winnie the Pooh has become the symbol of China’s all-encompassing dystopia.

The roly-poly bear of children’s literature bore a certain resemblance to President Xi’s soft features. This was seized upon in Chinese social media memes.

The honey-loving bear was quickly banned.

“It’s an expression of resistance, and even that’s too much for the Party,” Dr Groot says. “The leadership has become highly politicised, and they try to push that down the system. People at lower levels, to try to cover themselves, become hypersensitive to anything that might be interpreted as negative to their seniors.”

In China, dogma is rapidly replacing pragmatism.

“This dystopian element is really interesting because, under Maoism, there was a lot of emphasis on ideological correctness,” Dr Groot says. “Mao’s belief that as long as you had the right political attitude, anything could be achieved. It’s one of the reasons for the disasters of the ‘great leap forward’ between 58 and 61.”

Restoring this ideological correctness is a central plank of President Xi’s presidency.

“Xi is trying to reimpose a correct political line. The problem is, they can’t really decide what that is!” Dr Groot says.

“He believes in the legacy of the Party and the role of the Party and the centrality of the Party for China to achieve greatness. And, basically, unsaid is only he can do it. Clearly, enough people in the party have bought that for him to exercise this power.”

So Xi is trying to forge a new Chinese identity - founded on his own thoughts.

“He seems to think of himself as indispensable, and as a guardian of the revolutionary heroes – like his father and others including Mao. So you cannot criticise Mao anymore.”

Dr Groot says the Communist Party still wants to emphasise Marxism. But they’ve given up on the ideas of class struggle, fighting capitalism and eliminating the profit motive.

“It’s because that’s an obvious weakness a lot of outsiders tend to dismiss this new ideology as window dressing. But I think that’s a mistake.

“They’re desperately casting around for ways to fill that vacuum. They way they’re doing it is to redefine aspects of previous Chinese customs and traditions as part of Marxism. Now the fact that it doesn’t fit proper Marxist theory is not the point.”

DEMOCRACY ECLIPSED

Signs of China’s social reversal began to emerge a decade ago.

The economy was booming. The populace was experimenting with its new-found freedoms.

But clouds were beginning to appear on the horizon.

“Growth is fine,” Dr Groot says. “But there’s an enormous debt burden.”

There is central state debt. There is private company debt. There is local government debt.

But, for the first time, there’s also personal debt. And this is a new experience for many Chinese.

Managing that debt relies on continued growth.

“Growth is going to have to slow because of the need to try to preserve the environment, and because China’s likely to run out of water,” Dr Groot says, referring to reports of acute water shortages and pollution.

“They’re also running out of a young workforce as well, as the population is ageing quite rapidly,” he added.

Growing debt. Shrinking growth. An unbalanced social demographic.

It’s all pointing towards difficult times ahead.

“If the Communist Party can’t manage the economy – even if it’s just a dramatic slowdown rather than a dramatic recession – then the Party is going to have lots of trouble because so many urban people will be hurt,” Dr Groot says.

“They used to worry about the countryside. But they now know that’s not where future problems will be. Instead, it will be the rising urban middle class, many of whom have become accustomed to constantly improving standards of living, many of whom have got themselves into extensive debt to buy apartments and things …”

The fallout of China’s one-child policy is now being felt. Mainly because so many families chose to have boys - not girls - to support them in their old age.

Those boys are now men. And their prospects for romance are remote.

“People who have sons who want wives have often got themselves into severe debt to buy apartments so the son can be marriageable,” Dr Groot says.

“If all of a sudden, the bottom drops out of the property market, it could be a disaster that the Communist Party would find hard to control.”

But Beijing is busily putting in place measures to weather just such a storm.

ONE UNITED FRONT

The Chinese Communist Party’s strength lies in its carefully managed United Front Work Department.

It’s a complicated, interwoven structure of social and professional associations. The Party establishes all of them. The Party appoints all association leaders. And while associations inform the Central Committee on developments in their field, they’re also a tool to enforce Party policy.

“The United Front is particularly useful in managing crises,” Dr Groot says.

“Just before Xi came into power in 2012 – when they increased the size of the United Front Work Department quite dramatically by 40,000 - I wondered if that was because they were worried about problems arising.”

Political muscle in China does not come from being a President with a limitless term. It comes from being Party Chairman.

“Xi’s power comes from the fact that he is the head of the party. And there was never any limit on that. There were informal conventions that had sort of arisen that many hoped would continue and be formalised. But these are now gone.”

And the dominant hand he wields over Chinese society is the Communist Party’s United Front Workers Department.

The United Front is very close to Xi’s heart. His father was a key figure in the organisation. And if you control it, you control the Party.

“There’s a really fascinating aspect of social dynamics in China … the paradox of trust.

“That paradox is that people trust the centre – Xi Jinping and the Central Committee – but they don’t tend to trust the Communist Party and government officials nearest to them. They also have little trust in other Chinese people that they don’t know.”

This is part of the United Front’s success.

“One element of United Front work that plays into that is to have all these associations that people can actually associate with and feel some sort of commonality with – especially ones based on home province.”

This broadens the Party’s reach. And power.

“Interestingly, one of the reasons we’re not hearing about what’s happening to the Tibetans and Uyghurs, in particular, is the success of the United Front Department in shutting down these disparate critics,” Dr Groot says. “They’ve even turned up in Adelaide to do their work.”

THOUGHT CONTROL

It’s political correctness in the extreme. Be it mass media or simple web-based social chat rooms, all must conform with the Party line.

That applies to current affairs. It also applies to history.

“There used to be a lot of fairly free discussion at Chinese elite levels and in academia,” Dr Groot says, “but one of the interesting things about Xi is his crackdown on opinion and an increasing importance on ideological education.”

News editors and producers, internet content managers and celebrities must now undergo extensive and repetitive political education.

“The biggest danger for the Communist Party is some sort of economic crisis - not an external one,” Dr Groot says, “but they keep on focussing on external threats to keep people looking away from internal problems.”

And keeping the minds of the populace ‘on topic’ is an important Party policy.

Schools and universities are pushing strict Party political training - even down the level of defining how the ‘perfect’ Chinese woman conducts her life.

Culture is being manipulated. Patriotic and militant traditional tunes are ‘killing pop’, Chinese state media proudly declares.

The Chinese Communist Party has even pushed through laws preventing the criticism of the Party, its history and its people. It’s a direct reversal of the relaxations of the 1990s which resulted in tacit admissions that things hadn’t always been rosy.

“You criticise those now, and you can be accused of historical nihilism,” Dr Groot says. “The consequences can range from being rapped over the knuckles to losing your job to being imprisoned.”

It’s political correctness, with Chinese characteristics.

“One of the really interesting things about Xi Jinping, I think, is that he seems to take a lot of past propaganda at much more face value than any of his predecessors did,” Dr Groot says. “His predecessors tended to know the difference between what really happened and what they say happened. But he’s much more literal about it.”

DISSOLVING DIFFERENCE

If there’s one thing the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like, it’s difference.

Difference of thought. Difference of race. Difference in ideas.

“There’s a strong racial element to Chinese nationalism,” Dr Groot says. “The willingness to entertain difference, for example even among Tibetans, Uyghurs or Kazakhs – or even the Hui who are the sort of ethnic Chinese Muslims – has declined dramatically.”

Among the most dramatic recent moves have been against religious believers.

“It is a sudden change in policy towards forced assimilation.”

The Muslim Hui, in particular, have become very wary about attending mosque, Dr Groot says.

“The Communist party is trying to redefine what it is to be Christian and what it means to be a Muslim, that’s what I mean about forced assimilation. Sinoficationis what it’s called. And basically, they’re rewriting the Bible. They’re even trying to find out ways they can reinterpret the Koran to better suit the Communist Party’s role.”

And China’s not attempting to hide the fact.

Zhang Yijiong, the leader of the United Front Work Department, told the October Chinese Communist Party Congress that all religious faiths must subscribe to the country’s “socialist core values.” He said the Party wanted to prevent anyone from “taking advantage of religion to harm national security” and “endangering national unity.”

It’s a recurring theme.

Dr Groot highlighted the recent plight of at least 500 people who posted on WeChat groups that had endorsed the opinions of a Chinese-American billionaire real estate investor who had been openly critical of the Communist Party.

“They have been called in by local Party and United Front representatives for cups of tea, forced off WeChat groups and so forth. That’s a little example of what they can do if they want to.”

It’s all part of China’s dystopian reality.

“Surveillance in China isn’t taken seriously by many people,” Dr Groot says. “But what they don’t realise is that if the Party becomes interested in you, in a very short time they can pull together dozens, hundreds of bits of information about you, and build a very comprehensive picture about you probably within minutes if not hours.”

Such monitoring isn’t new, Dr Groot says. Even in the 1990s and 1980s, Chinese authorities could do this in a day or so.

“But the nature of things has changed. Once upon a time people could be guided, controlled and watched over by the other people in their work unit. But with the diversification of the economy and the rise of private employment, other means had to be found. Colleagues no longer make that difference.”

Now, Beijing has another tool to do that for them.

COLD COMFORT

China is using technology to build the foundation of its dystopia.

And it’s being imposed under the guise of security, safety and efficiency.

“If you think about Chinese history, you’ve never had a China which is so integrated organisationally and bureaucratically, with roads, with railways, with the military, with the police … there’s never been in all of Chinese history a level of integration as there is now,” Dr Groot says.

Now, the Chinese – like much of the rest of the world – are almost eager to carry the ideal surveillance device with them everywhere: their smartphones.

“The Party can monitor everything on your phone – and it’s almost impossible to get around China without a smartphone. If you go to China and you can’t use Alipay or something, you’re going to have a hard time using your credit card and cash is often simply not welcome.”

This is an anti-corruption measure. But it’s also incredibly convenient. Even beggars have Alipay accounts – so people simply swipe their phone over a beggar to give them some money.

“The social media service WeChat is also completely compromised. But everything’s on WeChat,” Dr Groot says. “The reason a lot of official stuff goes through WeChat is precisely because they know it is monitored. Not because it’s private.”

Knowing one’s words can be seen, approved - and potentially improve your social standing - offers a sense of security, he says.

It’s all because of the Party’s social credit scheme – which is not one scheme but a number of them – is purportedly welcomed by lots of people. It amounts to a secret loyalty score applied to each and every citizen. It can affect everything from job prospects to travel opportunities.

“Most people are just passively accepting,” Dr Groot says. “And those people that are anti-Party are going to keep to themselves. Especially when it’s so easy to ferret them out these days if they do anything, or if they post anything.”

But the desire to win Party approval can drive people to extremes.

“You end up with ridiculous examples of actions – such as local officials going and paying homage at trees that were planted by Xi Jinping or something. Because it can’t hurt to go over the top, right? But you might get into trouble for not showing you were doing something.”

It’s all about covering your bases and keeping the Party onside.

“A lot of officials don’t know how to cover themselves. That’s a problem. That encourages overreaction and over-zealousness,” Dr Groot says.

SIGNS OF THINGS TO COME?

Not everything about the surveillance state and social score sits comfortably with China’s population, however.

“One of the ironies about this Chinese dystopia, and some of the Chinese have twigged to this, is that they can pick out a dissident in a crowd of 10s of thousands - but they can’t stop scammers,” Dr Groot says. “Or they’re unwilling to stop scammers, presumably because the scammers are still able to get around anti-corruption campaigns”.

But it’s been high-profile anti-corruption campaigns that have stood President Xi in good stead with ordinary people.

“This is because they don’t trust rich business people, and a lot of those have been jailed or disappeared,” Dr Groot says.

“Although there has been a bit of blowback lately. The anti-corruption campaign is very popular, but you can see that it hasn’t really been all that effective in some key areas.

“That’s why the first massive strike they’ve had in ages has been happening … there’s a national trucker strike. That’s a huge surprise. It’s had very little coverage.”

Truck drivers have been ceasing work all over the country over poor conditions, corrupt charges and corporate manipulation.

So there is still room within society for civil action.

“Some people can get away with actions that others can’t. So, there’s been repeated protests by not insignificant numbers of retired soldiers, in particular, complaining about their pension conditions and failure to deliver on promises to look after them.”

And failure to address such core issues can eventually fester into open revolt.

“Very rapidly, China’s social problems could create a backlash even the best surveillance state will struggle to contain,” Dr Groot says. “They will have to use brute coercion in ways that will undercut Party legitimacy.

“Xi Jinping and the technocrats seem to be counting upon improvements in artificial intelligence and surveillance can compensate for any other weaknesses on how they can control people. So even if there is a crisis, I’m sure the Party can weather it. But whether Xi Jinping and the leaders can is another question.”

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