China’s unstable house of cards

China’s President Xi Jinping might imitate Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s tightening grip on power.

China’s President Xi Jinping, seen welcoming his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week, has ruthlessly transformed the Communist Party. Picture: AP

The world’s most powerful institution, the Chinese Communist Party, is being transformed from within.

But the full extent of the ambitions of its tough general secretary, President Xi Jinping, for his party and for his own rule remains mysterious to almost all of the party’s 89 million members.

This is the issue that transcends all others for China, even the country’s grave and looming debt crisis.

Many within and beyond the party are asking if Xi’s convulsive changes can prolong its rule for a further generation — and whether that will require letting Xi stay in charge for a further decade, mirroring the international leader he so admires, Vladimir Putin.

But the weight of history may be against the ambitious Xi. This entire week in China is a public holiday, starting today, in honour of the founding of the People’s ­Republic by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949.

And today the clock starts ticking down to the country’s most significant event every five years — next year’s national party congress.

Speculation is intensifying about the party’s new agenda, about the delay in unveiling the emerging leadership team and especially about the manner in which its general secretary, Xi, is reshaping power in 21st-century China.

Party experts wonder if the lack of publicity about potential successors means that Xi is considering a third five-year term, which would conclude in 2027 — unprecedented, apart from the crucial exception of Mao. Xi is an admirer of Putin, who has manipulated the Russian constitution to retain power for 16 years.

All else in China is contingent on how that big power play works itself out. Xi, now four years into what is, since Deng Xiaoping’s days, a routine 10-year term, was initially expected to be a ruler in the style of his post-Mao predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, essentially a chairman relied upon to cobble together workable, faction-unifying consensuses.

But he has proved a more ambitious and powerful figure, reorganising, step by step, the way the party works, driven by a strong centralising impetus. And he has deployed the party’s unassailable authority over China’s real and virtual worlds to silence critics, control courts, and require non-government organisations to defer to the state.

He launched a ferocious, continuing campaign against entrenched corruption, appointing his childhood friend and senior official Wang Qishan to run the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection — which, rather than the police or any government agency, initiates every significant case.

The CCDI stands at the apex of party agencies. It underlines this role by issuing public statements lambasting the failings of the propaganda department. Xi gives it a free hand to pursue targets previously protected by the People’s Liberation Army and other powerful institutions.

Since the death of Mao 40 years ago, the Politburo Standing Committee of nine men — no woman has ever ascended to that level — was the most powerful in China, deciding all significant policies and appointments. But under Xi, it ­effectively became a rubber stamp.

It was cut to seven members and key decisions are now made in the commissions, whose role Xi bolstered considerably — since he, rather than broader party institutions, has power to act as their chairman and determine their memberships. Thus he chairs the commissions for comprehensively deepening reforms, for finance and the economy, for state security, for foreign affairs, for Taiwan affairs and for internet security.

He can make crucial inputs in the other commissions, 11 in all, which cover all core sectors. Steve Tsang, director of the China Policy Institute at Britain’s Nottingham University, says that in terms of policy, “they are much more important and powerful than the ministries. The more important a policy matter, the more likely that it will be made by the top leadership supported by” the relevant commission.

Thus Xi moves to centralise policymaking. Also, he is enhancing control over key officials. The Politburo will this month revamp the code of conduct for party members, as Xi continues to tighten his control over cadres.

Wu Jiaxiang, a party member who has held senior roles in the propaganda department and the party’s general office — and who believes that only an authoritarian figure can deliver effective reform in China — tells The Australian that Xi needed to shake up the country’s governance structure, since “in China, the leaders have no right to organise their own cabinet, (so) they end up, at least for their first five-year term, with the cabinet members left over by their predecessor”.

Xi, though, “is an ambitious leader, not like someone we’ve had before in the party — so he has created his own power structure”. The 11 party-state commissions can sign off on decisions and then send them for implementation without even needing formal approval by the Politburo or its standing committee, says Wu.

This is most evident in Xi’s reshaping of the People’s Liberation Army, which is the party’s, not the government’s, military. He shifted its structure into five main national districts, established a new multi-service headquarters, and took on the title of commander-in-chief. Swift and comprehensive change is easier in the army — unlike the political and bureaucratic sphere, where retired leaders maintain considerable sway — as “the influence of retired generals is virtually zero”, Wu says..

Factions, nevertheless, remain. Until recently, they were mainly identified as the princelings or taizidang — children of party veterans such as Xi himself, the son of former vice-premier Xi Zhongxun — and those associated with the Youth League, the tuanpai, such as Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang. Wu, a supporter of Xi, believes the paramount leader is opposed by a shadowy “party within the party” of tuanpai members and others determined to hobble him — he compares the situation to House of Cards.

He accuses this group of even plotting a series of disasters and tragedies in an attempt to destabilise Xi — whom they target, in part, because of his anti-corruption campaign, which “makes power bitter, not sweet as they like it”.

It’s like a soccer match, he says, where the opponents score in the first half but are soundly defeated in the second half — meaning Xi’s second five-year term, which will commence following next year’s 19th party congress.

And what gives Xi an advantage, Wu says, is that “one of his biggest characteristics is he is unpredictable”.

Zhang Lifan, a historian whose father was leader of China’s pre-1949 Democratic Party, says that Mao relied on “leading small groups” during the Cultural Revolution “to drive power away from his senior colleagues, to defeat the authority of the Politburo standing committee”.

Xi, he says, is unique among Mao’s successors in believing that running the country is in his genes, as a member of a leading “red family”. He is also unique, Zhang says, in repudiating the imperial tradition, carried through into the communist dynasty, that top officials are entitled to continue playing a role in governance after their retirement.

The princelings “believe they are the largest shareholders in the super-corporation that is today’s China”, he says. “They view other factions, such as the tuanpai or the Shanghai group, as mere professional administrators, not legitimate owners.”

Zhang says one of Xi’s biggest drawbacks is educational — he was robbed of his high schooling during the Cultural Revolution. And his admiration for Mao limits his capacity to drive reform.

“There are many different voices within the party, including those who disagree with Xi. But they dare not speak out for concern about the anti-corruption campaign. If they raise their voice, they might fall into that trap,” Zhang says.

“Instead, they are just (biding) their time, especially (waiting) for Xi to make a mistake, possibly by pushing a policy to the extreme” — and hoping this happens before he can cement a third term, which would need to be clearly foreshadowed at next year’s congress.

“He just hasn’t achieved enough in his four years so far, to warrant that,” Zhang says. “But he appears not to be thinking yet about a successor.”

While Xi might wish to enhance his authority and have final say on every key issue, “he doesn’t yet possess such convincing power”, Zhang says.

“And the power he has accumulated has exceeded his capacity to manage effectively.”

Despite Xi’s trademark “Chinese dream”, his New Silk Road trade and investment framework across Asia now dubbed One Belt, One Road, the party’s fundamental vision is of its own rule continuing for ever. But by postponing reform, Zhang says, Xi “may be missing the last chance to save the party”.

Jin Canrong, a professor of international studies at Renmin University, says that “since last year, China’s officialdom has become anxious about the future, and President Xi has met ‘soft ­resistance’ from regional elites and local governments”. His colleague Shi Yinhong, director of the American Studies Centre, says that China’s strategic priority should be domestic reform — but it is “fighting on several fronts ... overextending itself strategically”, with combative positions towards neighbours Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, and its “hardline stance” in the South and East China seas.

How long can such an autocracy survive? Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in the US, author of China’s Trapped Transition and China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay, says that no modern autocracy survived beyond the Soviet Union’s 74 years.

Ideologies decay and ruling elites become corrupt and fall apart. Only democratic countries — except for oil-producing autocracies and city-states like Singapore — have escaped the “middle-income trap” that limits further leaps in living standards, he says. Ultimately, economic modernisation under one-party rule is doomed to fail, he believes. At the same time, middle-class loyalty to China’s party is eroding due to environmental concerns, poor services, inequality and entrenched corruption that Xi’s campaign has not dislodged.

The party has shrugged off all previous predictions of its downfall. And it would be unwise to bet against its survival in the medium term. But despite the firmness with which Xi rules, rising economic risks, including the debt crisis, mean those questions won’t go away.