Xi Jinping’s power grab stokes fears about personal rule

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. Picture: Getty Images

China’s most popular question-and-answer website, Zhihu, with more than 100 million registered accounts, has been removed from all app stores for a week because it failed to censor content adequately.

A typical recent exchange helps explain:

Q: Do you support keeping the driver on the road non-stop?

A: Of course! He is the driver, how can I not support him? And he has to obey the traffic rules … doesn’t he?

The imminent change to China’s constitution to remove constraints on the number of five-year terms a president can serve is a risky move for the National People’s Congress, whose annual 10-day session starts today. Even the 90 million Communist Party members, let alone the broader population, are split on its benefits.

Many in China — probably most — believe the party is good, that socialism is the best system, that it is right to suspect the West. Many also naturally back President Xi Jinping’s coherent vision of a powerful China.

But considerably fewer support the idea of a president for life — of the return of an emperor. That’s in part because for a century, China’s opinion leaders have argued against emperors and personal rule. And the Cultural Revolution’s cruelties and chaos underlined the dangers of turning a leader, in this case Mao Zedong, into a cult.

Most people in China have long accepted that some of the promises held out by the party as it fought to rule — promises of freedom, the rule of law, democracy and human rights — are no longer on the agenda. Many have become prosperous, they have control over their own social lives, they can travel widely.

But the shift back to a more centralised, personal form of rule, opens the door to widespread, low-key review within the informed public of China’s governance, even though this cannot be allowed to move into any public platform, online or offline. Some Chinese are asking: who can constrain Xi over the coming years?

His elevation aligns the party’s legitimacy fully with that of its leader, potentially making it more vulnerable even as it grows from strength to strength. If he stumbles, so does the party, since unlike the post-Mao era it cannot now just quietly replace one committee-chairman-type with another in the same mould.

International experts on Chinese governance are dispirited: “He squanders a precious opportunity to institutionalise the peaceful transfer of power in the PRC, undermining the example set by Jiang in 2002 and by Hu in 2012. Equally important, this latest action further alienates a number of critical constituencies whose power Xi may be underestimating,” say Cheng Li and Ryan McElveen of the US Brookings Institution.

They warn that “based on his continued consolidation of power and ambitions for the country, and himself, Xi’s ‘new era’ may resurrect an old problem”.

As Xi came into power, he excited much support for his promise to change a management government focused on its own glory and power into a service government focused on improving daily lives and opportunities, including by pulling the government out of business.

Such a wonderful aim remains technically feasible for such a can-do regime as China’s. But the atmospherics swirling around this NPC session as it opens, indicate a focus instead on entrenching leadership and enhancing its status.