With another mandate assured, if he does not walk towards life tenure as China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping summoned his top lieutenants to the historic revolutionary base of Yan’an, the cradle of the takeover of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party.
Standing in the cave from which Mao led his troops from the Red Army, China’s most powerful man in decades, warned: “The party must carry forward the spirit of Yan’an.” Xi insisted that that “war cry” is as necessary today as it was in the 1940s, when the communists fought first against the Japanese invasion, and then against a civil war with the ruling Nationalist Party.
external front
The nature of the battle for which Xi is getting ready it is guessed from the background of the country’s two dozen top leaders, selected at the twice-a-decade political meeting, which has just concluded with Xi ousting all those who opposed him.
His choices for that leadership reflect a focus on developing advanced military and technological capabilities, so that Beijing can resist any pressure from the United States and its allies (visit a few months ago Nancy Pelosi to Taipei triggered new tensions with the Americans), particularly when it comes to enforcing territorial claims on Taiwan, the autonomous democratic island of 23 million people.
“The Chinese leader wants to mark that under his leadership, just like under Mao in the 1940s, the party will be able to get what it wants,” said Guoguang Wu, a senior fellow at the Stanford Center on Chinese Economy and Institutions. Despite China’s growing global influence, Xi is still concerned that the Asian giant’s growth slowdown and its trade war with Western industrialized economies weaken its domestic power,” said Wu, who worked as an adviser to Chinese reformist leader Zhao Ziyang in the 1980s. “Xi has great ambition.
In his own words, he would like to return China to the center of the world stage. But for that purpose, China is not strong enough,” the analyst added. Thus, during the last meeting of the party, andhe Chinese leader underscored the serious challenges facing the nationraising security concerns along with economic concerns, calling for the country to be “united in the fight.”
internal front
Xi’s political stomp cemented his role in setting the political agenda. His former rivals, and possible successor Li Keqiang, were expelled. And the 13 people promoted to join the 24-member Politburo not only have strong personal ties to Xi, but also the technical knowledge and experience to operate on his political priorities: advanced technologies, security and military might. Five of them, Ma Xingrui, Zhang Guoqing, Li Ganjie, Liu Guo Zhong and Yuan Jiajun, have worked in the state military and industrial complex, which is responsible for China is fast approaching the United States in space flight and arsenal of advanced nuclear missiles.
The promotions reflect Xi’s “focus on science and technology expertise as a critical input for China to innovate and break out of the middle-income trap,” said Neil Thomas, senior China analyst at Eurasia Group. The other major issue looming over Politburo appointments is Taiwan: 15 of the two dozen members have some sort of link to the island, either through managing business ties, or as part of the military that some day can be in charge of a Russian-like invasion of Ukraine, a scenario for which Taiwan already trains military and civilians for resistance: last weekend they carried out military exercises and civilian drills. And they weave cooperation with Japan, Australia and the United States, given the possibility that China seeks to change the balance of power in the area.
seduction or cudgel
Cai Qi, one of the political builders Xi relied on (his efforts in two Chinese provinces helped the current leader skip promotion stages to become party chief in 2017), is one of the promoters of rapprochement with Taiwan through diplomatic and commercial channels: encourages Taiwanese investment in China and vice versa, and closer ties with politicians from the Kuomintang, the opposition party in the Taiwanese parliament.
Xi, who spent many years in Fujian and Zhejiang, two coastal provinces with strong commercial ties to Taiwan, subscribed to this current of seduction. But the recent promotion to the Chinese council of He Weidong, leader of the Taiwan-focused Eastern Command, a hardline 65-year-old general, represents a more concrete threat and marks Xi’s new agenda for Taiwan.
Shen Ming-Shih, director of research at the National Defense and Security Institute in Taiwan, explained that the changes show that Xi is “losing patience” with Taiwan. The decision to retain Zhang Youxia, 72, is likely due to Xi’s desire for combat experience at the top of the PLA (he fought in the 1979 China-Vietnam war). And the promotion of Chen Wenqing, the current head of Chinese espionage, a man who helped Xi purge rivals with corruption investigations, it’s a double play: the hawk that will keep an eye on its own, but will also “warn about a Taiwanese threat when it is necessary to justify an invasion,” warns Ming-Shih. “Spies have come to power” in Xi’s China, just like the KGB in the Soviet Union, Wu, the Stanford scholar, endorsed. A move that puts Taiwan at serious risk.
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