The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is about to be held, and Xi Jinping is confidently seeking a third term. Over the past decade, the leader, born in 1953, has consolidated his enormous power within the party and profoundly changed China’s social landscape and international geopolitics.
Many believe that despite China’s economic and technological progress under Xi Jinping, the rising wave of nationalism and personality cult is reminiscent of the “Cultural Revolution” era half a century ago, and as hostility between China and the West escalated, Many observers fear that the Cold War is coming again.
So, what is Xi Jinping’s ideology? How has Beijing’s propaganda machine allowed the country’s huge population to change attitudes and perceptions of domestic politics as well as the outside world?
While political decision-making in China is often kept out of the public and media spotlight, political slogans on state media may be a window into the country’s political winds.
“Party propaganda (slogans) reflect party priorities and the balance of power within the party. So we can learn more about what’s going on in some of the black boxes through this propaganda,” Eurasia Group said. ) said Neil Thomas, senior China analyst.
The BBC has compiled and analyzed the frequency of certain political slogans and names of leaders in the People’s Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, to help you understand how China under Xi Jinping is different from before. The data source is based on the open source database of the newspaper.
The Birth of Xi’s Core
Although China has been governed by a one-party dictatorship from 1949 to the present, not every CCP leader has the same power. Xi Jinping is seen as China’s most powerful leader in decades, even compared to founding leader Mao Zedong and second-generation leader Deng Xiaoping.
One indication is the use of the word “core”. In Chinese political discourse, the term emphasizes the extraordinary power and legitimacy of leaders and is not used casually by state media.
In the 1940s, Mao Zedong initiated the Yan’an Rectification Movement, purged the opposition, established his leadership within the party, and first proposed the concept of “leadership core”. Although the term was not used as a convention at the time, there is no doubt that Mao Zedong was at the heart of the party’s power during his nearly three decades in power.
Deng Xiaoping promoted reform and opening up, and even though he never held the title of China’s head of state or the top leadership of the Communist Party of China, for more than a decade after 1978, he was widely regarded as the de facto top leader of China. In 1989, the democratic student movement was surging, and the CCP elders proposed to “resolutely support the Communist Party of China with Comrade Deng Xiaoping as its core” to maintain unity within the party, so that the “core” became the official political term of the CCP.
After the “June 4th” crackdown in 1989, Deng Xiaoping called for support for Jiang Zemin to become the top leader of the CCP and directly gave him the title of “core”, in contrast to Hu Jintao, who took over as general secretary in 2002, who was never called “core” “. During his tenure, the CCP’s political decision-making has increasingly moved towards the collective leadership of the Politburo Standing Committee, known as the “nine dragons for flood control”. The official expression was changed to “the Party Central Committee with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary”.
Immediately after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he parted ways with this collective approach to leadership. He set up a number of leading groups within the party, continuously took back decision-making power in the economy and other fields, and launched a large-scale anti-corruption campaign, and hundreds of senior officials above the deputy ministerial level were “sacked.” Despite the popular popularity of the movement, some scholars and observers have questioned its use to root out dissidents.
Senior officials and state media have also proposed “fixing on one”, demanding that the authority of the Party Central Committee be maintained, and warning opponents within the Party not to “arbitrarily discuss the Central Committee.”
At the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2016, the word “core”, which had been inactive for more than ten years, returned again and became an official political slogan to praise Xi Jinping’s status. At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held the following year, Xi Jinping’s “core position of the Party Central Committee and the core position of the whole Party” was written into the Party Constitution.
David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project, believes that the revival of the word “core” in the era of Xi Jinping shows that the party is now leaning towards a more personal leadership, even a cult of personality.
“The importance of leaders developing a sense of individuality and core beliefs is a process,” he explained. “Part of this process is the core concept. Xi Jinping needs this rhetorical consolidation of power, which is almost equivalent to real consolidation of power.”
The frequency with which the names of successive leaders appear in the People’s Daily provides another evidence of Xi Jinping’s power. In 2017, his name was mentioned by the newspaper as often as Jiang Zemin (2001) and Hu Jintao (2008) combined, and in 2019 it surpassed Mao Zedong’s 1976 peak.
return to red
While consolidating his own power and cultivating a personality cult, Xi has spent the past decade trying to regain the party’s grip on Chinese society.
During the Mao era of the planned economy, the CCP exercised all-round control over society. After the reform and opening up, the control in the economic and ideological fields was significantly loosened. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping called for the separation of the party and government for a period of time. “The party committee can no longer do everything and interfere in everything,” he said.
However, as soon as Xi Jinping took office in 2012, at a Politburo meeting, he reiterated the expression commonly used in the Mao era that “the party, government, military and civilian studies, east, west, north, south, central, and central, the party leads everything”, and demanded that “all aspects should be consciously Report major work to the party committee.” At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017, “the party leads everything” was written into the party constitution.
With the re-emphasis of “Party leadership”, the authorities continued to dig “scythes and hammers” into all walks of life in society, including encouraging private enterprises to set up Party branches through preferential policies and incentives.
In 2018, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a new regulation requiring listed companies to establish party branches. Under this party building upsurge, from HSBC China Securities Subsidiary, to the group of food delivery guys on the streets of Ningxia, party branches have been established.
The authorities have also stepped up their efforts to publicize the party’s exploits. In 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Qingdao City, Shandong Province hosted a collective wedding with the theme of “Thank the Party and Follow the Party”. Monks from several Buddhist academies were also mobilized to participate in party history knowledge contests and learning activities.
China’s media and theaters are also increasingly occupied by a large number of red works, and even the Mao Zedong-era model drama “Take Tiger Mountain by Wisdom” has rarely been brought back to the stage.
To find out why Xi Jinping is doing this, look to two words: “red country” and “great struggle.” For this leader who was born in the second generation of red and seems to have a strong sense of historical mission, he has repeatedly expressed his vision for China directly through these two words with strong historical imprints.
“Red Jiangshan” comes from the slogan “Red Jiangshan will never change color”, which is intended to emphasize the revolutionary roots of the CCP and call for continuing to adhere to the ideology and ideals of socialism. From 1980 to the end of 2012, in the more than 30 years of reform and opening up, the word appeared only 19 times in the People’s Daily, most of which were a historical review of the early days of the CCP.
But the term was mentioned explosively after Xi Jinping came to power, especially after he inspected a series of red revolutionary shrines in 2021, and was mentioned 72 times in 2021 alone. Xi Jinping said that it is necessary to strengthen the education of revolutionary traditions for young people, and “infiltrate the red gene into the blood and the heart”. Only in this way can “the red color be passed down from generation to generation”.
Similarly, the term “great struggle” can be traced back to the Mao era. As a revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong’s “struggle” included both military enemies and political opponents. Xi Jinping has made “the great struggle” his slogan.
In 2017, the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China mentioned the “great struggle” and listed it as the “four greats” together with the “great project”, “great cause” and “great dream”, which became Xi Jinping’s new era of governance policy. a part of.
In September 2019, Xi Jinping mentioned “struggle” 58 times in his speech to young and middle-aged cadres at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and mentioned that it is necessary to “carry forward the spirit of struggle and enhance the ability to struggle” in all fields such as internal affairs, foreign affairs, and national defense.
Niu Ben said Xi’s increasing emphasis on struggle shows that the party’s task of governing China is more difficult, and Xi is trying to use the history of past struggles to inspire today’s Communist Party members to unite under his leadership.
“China is facing unprecedented challenges in the era of reform, both domestic economic development, which has begun to slow compared to previous periods of double-digit growth, and changes in the external environment, which is increasingly viewed by the United States and the West. Even a threat to competitors.” Niu Ben said.
drift away from the west
In the decades following the Communist Party’s establishment, relations with the West, especially the United States, have remained frosty. In the 1970s, China was at odds with the Soviet Union, and the distance from the United States was rapidly growing. But this “honeymoon period” was hit after the June 4 crackdown in 1989.
During the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, China and the United States were often accompanied by frictions and spats, but overall cooperation continued to strengthen. In 2001, China joined the WTO with the support of the United States, which is considered to be an important reason for the new round of economic take-off; in 2008, when the fireworks of the Beijing Summer Olympics were in bloom in the Bird’s Nest, the number of Western international dignitaries in the stands was unforgettable. Including then US President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and so on.
But times have changed, and the Beijing Winter Olympics, which will open in 2022, have been diplomatically boycotted by many Western countries. The Xi administration’s human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang and its crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong have drawn growing international backlash. After the trade war that started in 2018, Sino-US relations have further moved from economic friction to all-round political and ideological confrontation. Some observers worry that China and the United States will move towards a comprehensive decoupling.
Beijing has continuously accused the United States and the West of “interfering in China’s internal affairs” and trying to “suppress” China’s development. In 2021, Xi Jinping said in his speech at the centennial celebration of the founding of the Communist Party that Beijing would not accept the arrogant sermons of “master teachers”, and said that foreign forces’ oppression of China would definitely “break blood”.
In the People’s Daily, it is evident that the Chinese authorities have increasingly criticized the United States. Articles mentioning both “America” and “hegemony” at the same time increased sharply after 2019. Most of these articles criticized the hegemonic behavior of the United States and accused the United States of framing and suppressing China.
The use of another iconic word “anti-China forces” also rose rapidly at the same time. “Anti-China forces” were widely used by Chinese officials to criticize “Falun Gong” in the 2000s, but in recent years they have been used to refer to unfriendly Western countries and groups.
Xi Jinping once stated bluntly at an ideological work conference that “Western anti-China forces have been trying to use the Internet to ‘bring down China'”. He added that “the Internet might become our ‘sickness'”.
In the face of these “flood beasts” from abroad, Xi Jinping’s authorities have increasingly emphasized national security. A series of laws and regulations, such as the Anti-espionage Law, the Anti-Terrorism Law, the Cybersecurity Law, the National Intelligence Law, the Law on the Management of Domestic Activities of Overseas NGOs, and the Data Security Law, have been promulgated intensively.
Under the influence of this series of new regulations, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been subject to increasingly strict supervision and even closure. Ride-hailing giant Didi was fined 8 billion yuan after a year-long investigation by authorities on charges of “data processing activities that seriously affect national security.”
The authorities have also stepped up publicity of national security knowledge to the public and encouraged the public to report “those who endanger national security.” Beijing’s state security department has issued incentives to provide up to 500,000 yuan in rewards to citizens who play an important role in the detection of espionage cases.
On social media, “walking 500,000” and “1450” have become popular words for some nationalists to label dissidents. The former refers to the “500,000 spy catch bonus”, while the latter is used to accuse the Taiwanese cyber army of smearing the Chinese mainland.
“Xi Jinping is very wary of any potential challenge to the party’s monopoly of power, or to his own leadership of the party,” Niu Ben said. “Thus, blaming foreigners is an easy way to divert attention from domestic issues and away from the CCP’s political policy flaws.”
The New “Central State”
But the mainstream voice under Xi Jinping believes that moving away from the West does not mean closing the door to China, because Beijing has more friends from developing countries.
In September 2013, when Xi Jinping came to power shortly after he came to neighboring Kazakhstan, when he gave a speech at Nazarbayev University, he first proposed the initiative to jointly build the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, which became the national strategy for the “Belt and Road”. ‘s predecessor.
China’s neighboring countries from Central Asia and Southeast Asia to Argentina and Chile on the other side of the world have all joined the transnational economic belt dominated by Beijing in just a few years. The program is loosely grouped together by many different projects, but on an unprecedented scale. In 2017, the Belt and Road Initiative was written into the Chinese constitution.
Under the framework of the “Belt and Road”, a large number of Chinese-funded projects have taken root around the world. According to official Chinese data, as of 2021, more than 140 countries, more than 30 international organizations and China have signed Belt and Road cooperation documents.
Maintaining party control and ensuring domestic security and stability are Xi’s top priorities. But the Belt and Road Initiative is at the heart of his strategy to expand China’s influence and establish China as a global leader. China claims the Belt and Road Initiative is a development tool for “win-win cooperation”, but critics have questioned that the initiative could lead some countries into a “debt trap”.
While the ambitious Belt and Road initiative has been thwarted in the last two years by China’s further economic slowdown and the Covid-19 pandemic, it still reflects another major goal of Chinese leaders: achieving national rejuvenation and reshaping the world order .
The long history has led the Chinese to believe that they are “the country in the middle” for a long time. Although China has lagged behind the West in recent centuries, this is only temporary. Therefore, the CCP put forward the slogan “The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” more than 20 years ago. After Xi Jinping came to power, he further summarized it as the “Chinese Dream”.
As China’s economy grew, the term “national rejuvenation” was more frequently mentioned in party newspapers. In a 2016 article, Communist Party elites bluntly stated that the country has the second largest economy in the world and is therefore “closest to the center of the world” and that China needs a “renaissance” of its own, by digging The essence of history and culture, the realization of the past for the present.
In 2019, a new institution was established in a grand antique-looking building near Beijing’s Olympic Park, called the “China History Research Institute,” which was directly promoted by the government of Xi Jinping. The agency quickly gained massive popularity on the Internet, and it continues to fight back against any views of “historical nihilism” that differ from official ideology.
In an article published in 2019, the institute dismissed the claim that modern humans originated in Africa with a niche point of view. The author said, “The ancient human beings and their culture in the land of China have continuously evolved and inherited the same line. The ancient human beings represented by the Peking Man are indeed the ancestors of the modern Chinese.”
At the same time, Xi Jinping also frequently called for the promotion of traditional culture such as traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese martial arts.
In 2017, when then US President Donald Trump visited Beijing, Xi Jinping personally showed him the Forbidden City, the imperial palace of China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. When Trump asked him whether Egypt had a longer history, Xi Jinping responded without hesitation: “The culture has never ceased, and only China has been passed down.”
“We call the descendants of the dragon,” Xi said.