President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign is roiling China. Here are the top five things you need to know:
1. It’s Not an Anti-Corruption Campaign
Xi Jinping has vowed to end corruption and jail both high- and low-level officials, “tigers” and “flies” in Communist Party lingo. That, however is not what he is doing. He is, in reality, conducting an old-fashioned political purge. He is not jailing his family members who have quickly amassed great wealth, and he is not going after his political supporters. Xi has, however, been incarcerating political opponents, like the notorious Zhou Yongkang, the former internal security czar, and anti-corruption campaigners.
2. Xi Jinping Is Uniting His Political Enemies
Xi is now jailing the high-level supporters of his immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, and there is evidence to suggest he is also targeting Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, considered by many to be the biggest tiger of them all.
Jiang’s Shanghai Gang and Hu’s Communist Youth League, long-time rivals, are now, for the first time ever, working with common purpose against Xi. This has created a new dynamic in the Communist Party: the more Xi prosecutes his political foes, the more united—and stronger—his foes become.
3. The Campaign is Affecting Economic Decision-Making
Chinese officials are privately saying growth is 2.2%, not the 7.0% claimed. Not surprisingly, leaders are fighting among themselves over whom to blame and rumors are swirling around Beijing about forced retirements.
The blame game is particularly dangerous because it is occurring during the anti-corruption campaign, when many feel vulnerable. Beijing’s policymakers, as a result, are on edge.
As a practical matter, insecure officials do not want to grant approvals or make routine decisions, so economic decision-making has noticeably slowed.
4. The Campaign Is Popular but Repression Is Increasing
The campaign against venal officials appears popular among the ‘laobaixing,’ common folk. By and large, people do not care that Xi is conducting a fearsome political purge; they like seeing the high and mighty fall.
Yet the general popularity of the campaign has not convinced Xi to loosen political control. He has conducted Maoist “mass line” campaigns, implemented a prolonged attack on civil society and political speech, and initiated his signature movement promoting “ideological purification.”
Xi’s extremist positions do not resonate with most people, but they are enforced with increasingly coercive measures.
5. Xi Is Breaking Apart the Communist Party System
The dominant narrative is that Xi quickly consolidated his political position after becoming the Communist Party’s general secretary in November 2012. But if this were true, there would be no need for continued purges. Each purge creates new political enemies, who must then be eliminated.
Yet whether Xi is consolidating control or not, he is threatening the basis of Party rule by “deconstructing” the web of patronage relationships that keeps the ruling organization in power.
He has also been breaking established norms designed to ensure stability. For almost four decades, powerbrokers tried to maintain a delicate balance among the Party’s competing and shifting factions, groups and coalitions.
Deng Xiaoping, after Mao Zedong’s turbulent years, calmed the political waters by reducing the cost of losing political struggles, giving losers less incentive to struggle on and possibly tear the Party apart. Xi, however, is reversing the process, thereby destabilizing the system. His motto has been described by a Party insider as, “You die, I live.”
So at this moment the Communist Party looks headed to another round of debilitating leadership struggle, something evident from the series of rumors of coup plots and assassination attempts, especially in the first months of 2012 on the eve of Xi taking power, and again in 2014 and 2015. These rumors for the most part have been false, but clearly something was—and still is—amiss in elite circles.
The period of stability that everyone has taken for granted—and which has permitted China to prosper—appears to be coming to a close.
