How the rest of the world responds to what is happening in the People\u2019s Republic of China, is in my view the critical question of our time. How we do so, will determine the future of liberal democracy, of independent legal systems, of free-thinking writers and free-spirited artists, of religious institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We must ask, what does China want, and what will it do? Its long-time former foreign minister Qian Qichen said that \u201cdiplomacy is the extension of domestic policy\u201d. In order to learn why China is behaving as it is internationally, it is essential to understand what drives the communist party that has ruled it for 72 years \u2013 and which is today effectively the sole institution in China. No organisation exists, from a football team to a church to a university to a private business, that is not guided, or at least able to be guided, by a party representative or branch within it. The party\u2019s General Secretary Xi Jinping famously says: \u201cGovernment, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west \u2014the party leads them all\u201d [1]<\/a>1 \u2014 Nectar Gan, “Xi Jinping Thought \u2013 the Communist Party\u2019s tighter grip on China in 16 characters”. South China Morning Post, 25 d’octubre de 2017. Disponible en l\u00ednia.\n<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is crucial to understand something about general secretary Xi himself. He is also, in his second most important role, the chairman of the Central Military Commission, and in his least important role the President of the Chinese state. Xi is today the most powerful person in the world, aged 67 now constitutionally able to govern for life without a single constraint except the underlying requirement to maintain the confidence of influential members of the party. He has, through the continuing anti-corruption purge that elevated him to the top job, replaced the key officials in both party and government and also in the People\u2019s Liberation Army, that is, the party\u2019s own army, not the Chinese state\u2019s. China\u2019s elite decision-making, via a melange of \u201cleading small groups,\u201d seven of them chaired by Xi Jinping, and the Politburo Standing Committee of seven men (no woman ever chosen in 100 years), has become under Xi especially, a black box. But its core thinking is clear to all who care to take an interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi is a risk-taker, a dice-roller. He keeps pressing on because of course he believes in historical determinism, in communism\u2019s ultimate victory, and also because of his personal experience of political success \u2014although this naturally involves struggle. In a recent speech Xi used the word for struggle, douzheng<\/em>, 60 times. In his three hour address to the 19th national party congress \u2014for which I was in the Great Hall of the People, my binoculars fixed on him\u2014 Xi said: \u201cThis great struggle, great project, great cause, and great dream are closely connected, flow seamlessly into each other, and are mutually reinforcing. Among them, the great new project of party building plays the decisive role\u2026 Our mission,\u201d he stressed, \u201cis a call to action. Let us engage in a tenacious struggle.\u201d One of the earliest and most important instructions issued by the party under Xi\u2019s leadership, Document Number 9, requires party members and all officials to guard against and vigorously oppose seven threats: universal values, press freedom, civil society, citizens\u2019 rights, reviewing the party\u2019s version of history, and endorsing either the \u201ccapitalistic class\u201d or the independence of the judiciary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is crucial to understand that Xi is, in his second most important role, the chairman of the Central Military Commission, and in his least important role the President of the Chinese state. There\u2019s no successor to Xi in sight<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Xi bears little resemblance to other political leaders anywhere. He is neither a pragmatic factional player nor a cynical tyrant like the side-kick he has called \u201cmy best, most intimate friend,\u201d Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He is a true believer, an evangelist, and his party that he leads for life contains all truth and is his religion. Two Australian parliamentarians were instructed by the Chinese embassy to \u201ctruly repent\u201d if they were to be granted visas to visit China. The party is no more questionable than God\u2019s existence in a theocracy; it contains all truth. The 20th century German philosopher Carl Schmitt, a considerable influence on Nazi governance, and a foremost critic of parliamentary democracy and cosmopolitan liberalism, who titled his major work Political Theology<\/em>, creating statism as a form of religion, has become in recent years one of the most widely studied and admired philosophers at Chinese universities and party schools.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n For Xi, China is the greatest, most ancient of civilisations; the party has wrapped itself around everything to do with \u201cChina\u201d that it views positively; and the party itself is encapsulated by the figure it has made, however reluctantly and accidentally, its leader for life \u2014himself. His Thought On Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is now enshrined in both party and state constitutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no successor to Xi in sight. At some stage, of course, that will create grief for Xi, and for the party. He is surrounded by loyalists. Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, a Chinese speaker, said in March: \u201cMost of Xi\u2019s senior officials are terrified of him. They are highly unlikely therefore to be providing frank and fearless advice\u201d [2]<\/a>2 \u2014 Asia Society Policy Institute, “Beijing\u2019s Early Reactions to the Biden Administration: Strategic Continuity and Tactical Change”. 18 de mar\u00e7 de 2021. Disponible en l\u00ednia.\n<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both the party and Xi are today pervasive, they are able to observe every online message or phone call sent or received by every Chinese person, and to watch through the grid management system every step people take in the real world too. Xi has centralised, restructured and personalised governance through a form of counter-reformation, refocusing on ideology and on the party\u2019s control over China\u2019s understanding of history. Accountability, in this structure, always operates upwards and not downwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The party takes the view that the \u201cmasses\u201d are unable to think coherently, only to feel. Hence, Chinese people cannot be trusted to vote \u2014but one can very readily \u201churt the feelings of the Chinese people,\u201d as the deputy ambassador to Canberra, Wang Xining, said recently that Australia had done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi\u2019s narrative carries conviction, because he is so sincere about it. While the Soviet Party thought 30 years ago that its problems lay in ideology and party orthodoxy, the CCP came to the opposite conclusion, which Xi underlined in asking: \u201cWhy did the communist party of the Soviet Union fall to pieces? Because in the ideological domain, competition is fierce! To completely repudiate the history of the party, to repudiate Lenin and Stalin, was to wreak chaos\u201d [3]<\/a>3 \u2014 Tanner Greer, “Xi Jinping in Translation: China\u2019s Guiding Ideology”. Revista Palladium, 31 de maig de 2019. Disponible en l\u00ednia.\n<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi\u2019s top priority has been to purify the party which he saw lapsing into slackness and corruption, insisting on personal loyalty, and on the party\u2019s absolute centrality. Networks used to comprise the greatest asset for those within the Chinese hierarchy, as well as for foreigners dealing with the PRC, opening space for much to be negotiated. Now there are rules, which spring from the grand narrative of party ideological primacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi\u2019s top priority has been to purify the party which he saw lapsing into slackness and corruption, insisting on personal loyalty, and on the party\u2019s absolute centrality<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n To rise in Xi\u2019s China one must demonstrate how well one knows and walks this righteous path. The Xuexi Qiangguo<\/em> app, \u201cStudy the great nation\u201d (the title also includes a Chinese pun about studying Xi), provides a questionnaire that takes about an hour to complete, about Xi\u2019s speeches, philosophy and life story; all 91 million party members must complete it daily, as must all managers in state institutions such as universities, and many in private firms too. Bonuses, promotions, or the reverse, hinge off these app scores, which are published. It is now no longer enough to be expert; one must be convincingly red as well [4]<\/a>4 \u2014 Shan Li i Philip Wen, “This App Helps You Learn About China, While China Learns All About You”. The Wall Street Journal, 14 d’octubre de 2019. Disponible en l\u00ednia.\n<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Xi has faced three especially big challenges over the past year: how to resolve the persisting protests in Hong Kong, how to survive the initial gross mishandling of the Covid pandemic, and, less troubling \u2013 how to cope with a weird American president, a problem that has now gone away, although he may find the new president, who is better known and understood in Beijing, over time becoming more difficult to deal with than Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Hong Kong, he applied tactics he had already used to subjugate China\u2019s vast western hinterland. Wear down critics, isolate them, punish them, and install devout personal loyalists to key supervisory roles. After party secretary Chen Quanguo did such a good job of \u201csinicising\u201d Buddhist Tibet, Xi sent him to Xinjiang to do the same to the Muslim Uighurs. By sinicising, Xi means preferencing the dominant so-called \u201cHan\u201d culture including its language, Mandarin, over China\u2019s many other diverse cultures and languages. Beijing started off claiming it was preventing terrorism by targeting Uighurs it branded \u201csplittists\u201d. But it became a program of preventing Uighurs from being Muslim and, to a certain extent, from being Uighur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Beijing\u2019s eyes, job done. Then after Covid had closed Hong Kong down, Xi imposed on the city the National Security Law so troublemakers there could be tried and jailed in the mainland. Beijing recently also changed the governance structure so that all leading officials, judges, and those allowed to stand for the legislature, must demonstrate their Chinese patriotism and respect for the communist party, to a new vetting panel. The arrangement of one country two systems agreed for Hong Kong between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher never appealed to Xi, and has been abandoned. Xi\u2019s New Era governance insists on one country, one system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi regained his firm footing through a classic propaganda coup \u2014being newly dubbed the People\u2019s Leader winning the People\u2019s War against Covid<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n After an initial period of almost-panic when many in China turned critical over the party\u2019s attempts to silence whistle-blower doctors over the emergence of Covid, Xi regained his firm footing through a classic propaganda coup \u2014being newly dubbed the People\u2019s Leader winning the People\u2019s War against Covid, while the capitalist nations wilted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Having faced such challenges over the last year, Xi looks to be on much surer ground in this new Year of the Ox, an auspicious year for folk who, like Xi, keep on keeping on, with a premium for strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taiwan, a lively and prosperous democracy with a population greater than Chile, and now also the world\u2019s exemplar in combatting Covid, is Xi\u2019s next and most important target, his final big borderland challenge. Invading and holding down Taiwan is the most assured route into the communist hall of fame for Xi, who next July 23 presides over the party\u2019s centenary. Such great anniversaries are often marked in China by grand military parades. But the party\u2019s anxiety about its own hold over the Chinese people is such that these events are never permitted to be viewed by any member of the public. The streets are closed off, and police instruct even those with apartments facing them that if they venture onto their balconies to watch, they may be shot by army snipers.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWho is Xi?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Pervasive purification<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Victory over three big challenges<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
The next main goals<\/h5>\n\n\n\n