Since 2012, President Xi Jinping has mounted an aggressive anti-corruption campaign against the so-called “tigers and flies,” corrupt officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as well as local bureaucrats and businessmen throughout the country. Over 1500 officials have been prosecuted for corruption so far, including Xu Caihou, chairman of the Central Military Commission and Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and head of China's security services.
Accompanying the effort to root out corruption in the CCP is a tightening of controls on Chinese society. There has been a crackdown on social media and the Internet in addition to arrests and detentions of feminists, environmental activists, journalists, and civil rights lawyers. Party members were warned not to hold “improper discussions” on government policy, and in March, President Xi visited the People’s Daily, the Xinhua News Agency, and CCTV, insisting that editors and reporters pledge loyalty to the party. “They must love the party, protect the party, and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action,” Xi said.
However, there has also been resistance to this political and ideological narrowing. In response to a new law on the registration of domain names, numerous Chinese internet users lamented controls on the web and posted their opposition to the draft on a government website. Ren Zhiqiang, a 54-year-old real estate tycoon with 37 million followers on Weibo, criticized Xi’s trip to newsrooms and subsequently had his account shut down. Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Global Times, bemoaned the overuse of Internet censorship and had his post deleted. An anonymous letter claiming to speak for CCP members charged Xi with undermining collective leadership and urged him to resign. The letter appeared on a few small websites and spread via email before quickly disappearing.
While there have been cycles of political repression and opening in the past, the noted China-watcher Orville Schell calls the latest wave, “a fundamental shift in ideological and organizational direction that is beginning to influence both China’s reform agenda and its foreign relations.” Greater economic and political liberalization appears to be stalled in the best-case scenario, and in the process of being rolled back in the worst. Facing slowing economic growth and greater social unrest, Xi may try to distract from domestic problems by relying even more heavily on nationalism and by pursuing a more assertive foreign policy.
After 30 years of development and globalization, it is unlikely that the central leadership thinks it can entirely bludgeon Chinese society into submission. The middle class now numbers over 100 million, and there is a rising rights consciousness among urban dwellers and factory workers. More Chinese people travel and study abroad than ever before, and they have access to different types of information. Many elites are looking to emigrate.
The CCP doesn’t want to completely reign in civil society. The Chinese leadership cannot hope to achieve its goal of becoming a truly innovative economy by alienating its most creative citizens. Strong bureaucratic control of scientific and academic agendas and a climate of fear impede the establishment of a creativity-based research culture. When hackers from within China launched attacks on GitHub, the largest host of source code in the world, because it was hosting technology that would allow Chinese users to circumvent the Great Firewall, they also prevented Chinese software developers from using the site. Political control ran directly counter to economic objectives.
At some point in the near future, if the CCP wants to kick start the economy, it will have to shift focus away from the ideological and political campaign back to economic reforms. This will require both institutional change and a loosening of controls on society. There is great uncertainty however about whether Xi Jinping will be able to recognize that moment and act. If he cannot, China will continue on a path of low growth, stagnation, and ever-greater repression.
