The CCP congress is convened every five years, in the fall. Today, it brings together 2296 delegates - the overwhelming majority of whom are men - who have been carefully selected. Initially scheduled for November, it is finally being held a month earlier, which indicates that all the essential decisions have already been taken by Xi Jinping.
The congress will ratify the composition of the next Central Committee (currently 200 voting members and 170 substitutes). The CC will ratify the composition of the Political Bureau (currently 25 members), which will ratify the composition of the Standing Committee (currently 7 members), the latter being the real heart of power. It can be assumed that most of the appointments have already been made, especially for the smaller bodies.
The congress was opened by a long speech by Xi Jinping, which Beijing watchers are beginning to decipher word by word. For the most part, Xi Jinping seems anxious to justify his previous policy choices, including the crackdown on Hong Kong, against the commitments made by his predecessors, and to announce that they will be maintained - from his anti-Covid policy (whose political, social and economic cost is nonetheless great) to his martial posture on Taiwan [1]. In this regard, it should be noted that he has not raised his voice for the time being and that we remain in a sort of status quo, without prejudging what he may announce between now and the end of the congress [2].
While the current financial disorder threatens to provoke a devastating global economic recession [3], Xi Jinping has cut all ties with the United States, which prohibits any coordination of monetary policies, just as he displays total indifference to the dramatic acceleration of the global climate and ecological crisis.
The meeting of the 20th CCP Congress is an opportunity to take stock of the ten years of Xi Jinping’s rule, but this article will focus mostly on two specific issues.
• The first concerns the nature of the change of political regime implemented by Xi Jinping.
Under the patronage of Deng Xiaoping, a political regime, original for China, had been formalized in 1982, when he was paving the way for capitalist development, namely a social counter-revolution. This reform introduced a collegial mode of functioning for the CCP leadership bodies at all levels to avoid the monopolization of power by one man and the revival of a personality cult. One of the main clauses was the limitation of the terms of office for the leadership of the party and the country to two five-year terms, i.e., a maximum of ten consecutive years. This clause had been respected by Jiang Zemin (1993-2003) and Hu Jintao (2003-2013) - and it is the clause that Xi Jinping is going to violate at the 20th Congress by being elected for a third consecutive term. His project is becoming a reality.
Xi set out to dismantle piece by piece the political order implemented under the aegis of Deng, in order to establish another that is essentially its opposite. This is why, even if there is continuity of the (capitalist) social regime, one can speak of a political counter-revolution, the full extent of which must be taken into account. It concerns the overall governance of the country and has the consequence of giving Xi Jinping a personal power unprecedented in the history of modern China, even if his hold on society is less than he would like.
• The second is the nature of the changes that have affected the CCP from Mao to Xi.
Nominal continuity hides major discontinuities in the history of the ruling CCP, and Xi is not a new Mao. This should be obvious. When Mao Zedong’s authority was challenged after the costly failure of the Great Leap Forward (1959) and he wanted to re-establish it, he called on the youth to rebel against the supposed proponents of a return to capitalism within the state apparatus, initiating the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969) and opening a huge Pandora’s box, with all the contradictions at work in society coming to light.
Can we imagine Xi Jinping (or Stalin) doing the same?
There is nothing stranger than to see a regime or a party described as “communist” by mainstream analysts, whatever its social base, the economic regime it defends or fights for, its history. How is a country that plays a key role in the dynamics of globalized capitalism (contemporary China) communist? In what way is a hereditary dynasty (the North Korean regime) that has Juche as its ideology Marxist?
Mao and Xi belong to two different eras. The first was a major player in the long revolutionary wave that began in 1917; the second was a man of the apparatus who played on the internal rivalries within the CCP to gain power in the long counter-revolutionary wave that began in the 1980s. Mao Zedong gained pre-eminence within the CCP by rallying around him cadres from various backgrounds, steeped in the fire of the social and military struggles of the Chinese revolution. Xi Jinping selects top men, at his service.
Let us review these two questions in more detail.
A political counter-revolution
The background
The Maoist regime entered a terminal crisis during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969), at the height of which the party and the administration disintegrated [4], with Mao having to resort to the army to restore “order”, including against his own supporters. Let us date the political death of the original Maoism to 1969, some seven years before the death of the Great Helmsman (probably preceded by a period of senility).
Power was temporarily seized by the Gang of Four (1973-1976), whose retrograde, hyper and stupidly bureaucratic rule created the conditions for a later comeback of cadres who had been marginalized, repressed, tortured and imprisoned. Two of the party’s top leaders did not survive: Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai, who died in detention. Few of them maintained a certain continuity of state authority during this dark period, such as Zhou Enlai, whose role was key, particularly on the international stage.
In 1978, one of the survivors of the 1966-1976 decade and one of the key historical leaders of the Chinese revolution, Deng Xiaoping, regained ascendancy in the party. He initiated reforms that paved the way for capitalist development. He helped to give China a “post-Maoist” political system (his 1982 reform), and in 1989 he helped (after some hesitation, it seems) to crush the June Fourth Movement in Beijing and in many other parts of the country. This counter-revolutionary “moment” has gone down in history as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre”, but this is too restrictive and misleading a name, given the geographical and social scale of the repression and its objective: to break down popular resistance to reform [5].
Deng was not a democrat, which Xi Jinping will obviously not reproach him for, but he learned from the crisis that had plunged China into chaos and sought to establish safeguards to ensure that it would not happen again by curbing personal ambitions and ensuring the collegiality of the functioning of the governing bodies at every level. Since Xi was himself the son of a CCP leader, Xi Zhongxun, who was sent to the countryside for “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution (accompanied by his offspring), some hoped that he would approve of his elder brother. Not at all. He had nothing against personal power, as long as it was his own.
A radical change in the political system
• The renewal of the leadership every five years allows successive generations to get into them. After the establishment of a “post-Maoist” order, the two most powerful historical leaders appointed the general secretaries: Deng Xiaoping appointed Jiang Zemin and Chen Yun appointed Hu Jintao. After their deaths, the next generation lacked the authority to do the same. Hu convened a conclave of 400 senior officials in 2007 to endorse his foal, but Jiang reportedly scuttled his undertaking, paving the way for Xi Jinping [6]. Thus, Xi Jinping was chosen as general secretary. From now on, he “sorts out” the cadres as much as possible from the beginning of the renewal process. The holy of holies, the Standing Committee, has come under his close control; the question of succession is obviously not an issue, since he will succeed himself.
• Deng Xiaoping had placed his close relatives in key positions, but avoided holding multiple offices, being himself only chairman of the Central Military Commission. Xi Jinping is General Secretary of the party, Chairman of the Central Military Commission and President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The winning triplet to ensure his personal power. It is possible that, on top of everything, the 20th Congress will reinstate the title of party chairman (Mao’s, which Deng had abolished) [7].
• Xi imposed a constitutional reform in 1978 that lifted all restrictions on the length of terms of office. He can thus, if he wishes (which is clearly the case at present!) and if he keeps control of the apparatus (he does everything to) become president for life.
In 1978, one of the survivors of the 1966-1976 decade and one of the main historical leaders of the Chinese revolution, Deng Xiaoping, regained ascendancy in the party. He initiated reforms that paved the way for capitalist development. He helped to give China a “post-Maoist” political system (his 1982 reform), and in 1989 he helped (after some hesitation, it seems) to crush the June Fourth Movement in Beijing and in many other parts of the country. This counter-revolutionary “moment” has gone down in history as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre”, but this is too restrictive and misleading a name, given the geographical and social scale of the repression and its objective: to break down popular resistance to reform [8].
Deng was not a democrat, which Xi Jinping will obviously not reproach him for, but he learned from the crisis that had plunged China into chaos and sought to establish safeguards to ensure that it would not happen again by curbing personal ambitions and ensuring the collegiality of the functioning of the governing bodies at every level. Since Xi was himself the son of a CCP leader, Xi Zhongxun, who was sent to the countryside for “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution (accompanied by his offspring), some hoped that he would approve of his elder brother. Not at all. He had nothing against personal power, as long as it was his own.
– “Uncle Xi” is developing an unbridled cult of personality that has little to envy to the delirious personality of Mao of the Cultural Revolution, using the means offered by a particularly developed system of social control (with the injunction to read his works daily). At the previous congress, in 2012, the official status recognized to his “thought” had remained a notch below that of Mao. Five years later, he probably wants to see it raised a good notch above his illustrious predecessor.
The tone was set a year ago at the November 2021 plenary meeting of the Central Committee. The resolution it adopted states that the present times represent “the most magnificent epic in the history of the Chinese nation over millennia”, “Chinese-style socialism [having] entered a new era” since the accession to power of Xi, whose “thought is the quintessence of Chinese culture and soul” and whose presence at the “heart” of the party “is of decisive importance ... in promoting the historical process of the great renewal of the Chinese nation” (AFP translation).
We have known in the past the “Mao Zedong Thought” or the “theory” of Deng Xiaoping, we must now learn the “Thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era of Xi”. In Chinese: 习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想 - Xi Jin Ping Xin Shi Dai Zhong Guo Te Se She Hui Zhu Yi Si Xiang -, and in abbreviated form: ’XJPXSDZGTSSHZYSX’. Good luck! As Long Ling notes [9], whether or not Xi surpassed his predecessors in the quality of his theory, he certainly surpassed them in the number of characters needed to describe it.
• At the 19th CCP Congress (2017), Xi modified the overall governance of the country, previously shared between the party, the government and regional administrations, and the army. Although the party, at the heart of the state, retained a monopoly on political control, this system ensured flexibility in the management of day-to-day affairs in a continent-size country and allowed citizens to appeal to several authorities.
According to Xi, the party had to become the sole channel of governance in China, “down to the remotest village”. The army and the secret service have been purged in favor of those closest to him. He wants to avoid the formation of local or regional autonomous powers in in a country with pronounced regionalisms, even if it means sending a leader who does not speak Cantonese to Guangzhou [10].
The dictatorship of a clique: Xi is not a new Mao
Xi Jinping’s project is to replace the one-party dictatorship with the one-clique dictatorship. The will to control is more than the orientation in the background of all his decisions. The term clique can therefore be used to refer to Xi’s leadership, which is made up of loyalists, of liegemen.
Personal power, cult of personality... The analogy is tempting: Xi would be the new Mao. He is in fact something else. Both do not belong to the same historical period: the long revolutionary wave initiated in 1917 for Mao, the long counter-revolutionary wave initiated in the 1980s for Xi. Mao Zedong gained pre-eminence in the CCP in the heat of the social and military struggles of the Chinese revolution. Xi Jinping is an appachick who took advantage of internal rivalries within the CCP to become the supreme leader. As for the leadership team assembled in 1935 by Mao, it was not made up of liegemen, far from it. Then, there was no “Maoist faction” powerful enough to impose itself. Mao succeeded in rallying around him leaders with a history and base of their own - and in so doing, he became and was recognized as the first among them.
The reason such a regrouping of key cadres occurred was that it addressed a central issue: to break the subordination of the CCP to Moscow - a subordination that had led to disaster in 1927 and the following years. The Communist International had become the channel of subordination of its national sections, and the cult of Stalin was its ideological cement. Within the CCP, the Wang Ming faction was Moscow’s agent. At the origin of what became the cult of Mao Zedong’s personality, there was the will to oppose a Chinese authority of thought and action to the Soviet “big brother”. This also served him, of course, to settle scores and carry out purges when he wished. Nevertheless, the leadership of the CCP (political and military) was composed of strong personalities, and without taking this into account, we can understand nothing of the forms that the crisis of the Maoist regime took, and then of the ability that Deng Xiaoping showed to take over after the fall of the Gang of Four and the death of Mao.
At the risk of being long, I will repeat here a presentation I made in 2008 [11] of the members of the Maoist leadership. It probably needs to be updated, but it allows us to measure the distance that separates the world of the Chinese revolution from that of Xi Jinping. These biographies also show that the fighting history of the cadres does not preclude their bureaucratization, once victory has been achieved; but this question goes beyond the scope of this article.
Chen Yi (1901-1972). Born in Sichuan, son of a magistrate. He arrived in France in 1919 and worked as a stevedore, dishwasher and then as a worker at Michelin. In 1921, he joined the Socialist Youth, before being expelled from the country. Back in China, he joined the CCP in 1923 and, in 1925, worked in the political department of the Huangpu (Wangpoha) Military Academy, under the direction of Zhou Enlai. He took part in the Nanchang insurrection (1927), then commanded with Zhu De the rearguard of the army of He Long and Ye Ting, before joining the bases of Jinggangshan. He supported Mao in the factional struggles of the 1930s, but did not take part in the Long March, organizing until 1937 the resistance in the areas evacuated by the bulk of the Communist forces. In 1938, he commanded the 4th New Army which established a regional base in Central China. He became a member of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1945 (and of the Political Bureau in 1956). During the 1945-1949 civil war, he led one of the main units of the People’s Liberation Army and became mayor of the Shanghai metropolitan area. He is one of the ten Marshals. Close to Zhou Enlai, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1958. He was violently attacked during the Cultural Revolution (1967), probably ill, and faded away before his death. He was rehabilitated in 1972.
Chen Yun (1900-1995). Born in Jiangsu, near Shanghai. From a working class family, he joined the CCP in 1924. A trade union activist during the 1925-1927 revolution, he joined the Jiangxi Red Zone after the defeat, where he was in charge of social affairs. He joined the political bureau in 1934 before being sent to the USSR for two years. Back in Yan’an in 1938, he was in charge of the organization, then of economic issues. He participated in the defense of important regions in central China and Manchuria. He became Vice Premier in 1949 and was responsible for the reconstruction and development of the country. Minister of Commerce, he came into conflict with Mao on economic policies. In 1957, he was half disgraced and subjected to political attacks during the Cultural Revolution. He did not reappear in the foreground until 1978, following the reascension of Deng Xiaoping.
Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997). Originally from Sichuan, from a family of landowners, he went to France (1920-1926) where he was a worker-student and joined the League of Socialist Youth, then (in 1923) the CCP. He passed through Moscow before returning to China. Clandestine in Shanghai after the counter-revolution of 1927, he joined the Jiangxi base where he supported the Maoist faction. Following the Long March, he became a political commissar in the Army Group commanded by Lin Biao, then in the Division commanded by Liu Bocheng, with whom he remained until the 1949 victory. First one of the main leaders of Southwest China, he was appointed Vice Premier in 1952. He joined the Political Bureau in 1955, then became one of the six members of its Standing Committee when it was created in 1956. He opposed Mao from the failure of the Great Leap Forward. He was, from the beginning, one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution. However, he reappeared in 1973 and, with the support of Zhou Enlai, became a member of the Standing Committee of the PB in 1975. In 1978, he initiated the economic reforms that would ultimately pave the way for new capitalist development.
Dong Biwu (1886-1975). He was born in Hubei, from a cultured family, but without landed wealth. During the revolution of 1911, he joined the army and the Sun Yatsen’s Sworn League. He took part in the May 4th Movement in Shanghai in 1919. He became a Marxist and was one of the founding members of the CCP (1921). He joined the trade union movement, then the peasant movement in Hubei. Throughout these years, he repeatedly carried out clandestine work in the army. He had to flee after the counter-revolution of 1927 and went to Moscow (1928-1932). Back in China, he joined the Jiangxi bases where he was appointed director of the Red Army Academy. After the Long March, he directed the Party School. During the anti-Japanese resistance, he was in charge of relations with other political movements and, in 1945, took part in the (aborted) peace negotiations, travelling to the United States in this context. He joined the political bureau and chaired the committee that defined the institutions of the future People’s Republic, of which he was Vice President in 1959-1975. He held important positions in the CCP. With the image of the “Elder” that he has carried since the founding of the CCP, he is one of the few personalities to embody the continuity of the state during the Cultural Revolution. He joined the Standing Committee of the PB in 1973.
Lin Biao (1907-1971). The youngest of the ten Chinese Marshals. Originally from Hubei, from a rural petty bourgeois background. He joined the Communist Youth in 1925 (in the party in 1927). As a student activist, he entered the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy and, as a brilliant officer, took part in the Northern Expedition, then in the Nanchang Uprising. He retreated with Zhu De to the Jinggangshan maquis in 1928, where he met Mao. He commanded the vanguard of the revolutionary troops during the Long March. Wounded in 1938, he was treated in the USSR until his return to China in 1942. He was elected to the Central Committee in 1945, then commanded the Communist forces in Manchuria, establishing himself as one of the main military leaders of the party. After the victory, he no longer played a leading role until he was appointed Minister of Defense in 1959. Allied to Mao Zedong, he was the heir apparent in the wake of the Cultural Revolution (1969). However, he fell victim to the factional struggles that continued to tear the CCP leadership apart and died in 1971 under obscure circumstances.
Liu Bocheng (1892-1986). Known as the “one-eyed dragon”, one of the ten Marshals. Originally from Sichuan, son of a travelling musician. Joined the Republican Army in 1911 and lost an eye in battle. Joined the CP in 1926. Served in the nationalist armies of the Guomindang, then participated in the leadership of the Nanchang insurrection with He Long and Ye Ting. He attended the Frunze Military Academy in the USSR and joined the Jiangxi base in 1930 where he defended “professional” conceptions of military strategy against Mao, but joined the latter in 1935 during the Long March. Became, after 1937, one of the main commanders of the Red Army with Lin Biao and He Long. One of the ten Marshals of 1955. Joined the CCP Central Committee in 1945 and the Political Bureau in 1956. Perhaps because of his age and declining health (he became blind), he did not fall victim to the factional struggles of 1959-1976 and remained until 1980 one of the vice-presidents of the army. He probably remained close to Deng Xiaoping who was political commissar of the army corps he commanded in 1937.
Liu Shaoqi (1898-1969). Born in Hunan, son of a schoolmaster. He joined politics in 1920 and went to study in Moscow in 1921-22, where he joined the CCP. Back in China, he directed the trade union activity in the mines of Anyuan, then, from 1925, he worked for the development of trade unions in Shanghai. Elected to the Central Committee after the counter-revolution of 1927, he went underground and worked in Shanghai, Manchuria and North China. In 1932, he had to withdraw to Jiangxi and took part in the Long March, before returning to North China to resume his clandestine activities. In 1941, he became political commissar of the New Fourth Army, then joined Yan’an in 1942 as part of the “rectification movement” led by Mao. In 1945, he was the number 2 of the party. He became Vice-Chairman of the government in 1949. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, he replaced Mao as Chairman of the People’s Republic. He then worked with Deng Xiaoping. He became one of the main defendants of the Cultural Revolution in 1967, was expelled from the party in 1968 and died in prison following ill treatment. He was officially rehabilitated only in 1980.
Peng Dehuai (1898-1974). Originally from Hunan, from a rather poor peasant background with which he broke away at the age of eleven, wandering, “uprooted”, living from odd jobs. He led a peasant uprising in 1916. He joined the army, took part in a plot against the provincial governor, joined the Guomindang army of Sun Yatsen. As an officer, he joined the guerrillas and the CCP in 1928 in Jingganshan. He led one of the two main communist forces in Hunan, then opposed Mao on military policy, but joined the latter in 1935. Commander of the Red Army alongside Zhu De until 1949, then of the army corps engaged in the Korean War until 1953. One of the ten Marshals. He participated in the negotiations with the USSR. He opposed Mao during the Great Leap Forward. In disgrace, he was one of the leaders victims of the Cultural Revolution; arrested in 1966, tortured by Red Guards in 1967, he died in detention a decade later. He was rehabilitated in 1978.
Zhou Enlai (1898-1976). He was born in Jiangsu to a family of notables from Zhejiang and from a wealthy “mandarin” background. He studied in Japan, then participated in the May 4th Movement of 1919. Arrested in 1920, he spent a hundred days in detention, then went to France where he joined the communist movement (early 1921). He developed the European branch of the CCP. Upon his return to China (1924), he held important positions in the Canton region where he directed the political section of the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy of the Guomindang. In 1925 he married Deng Yinchao. One of the leaders of the Shanghai workers’ uprising in 1927, he escaped the bloody repression that followed the entry of Chiang Kai-shek’s forces into the metropolis. He participated in the Nanchang uprising. He was a member of the CCP leadership without interruption from 1927 to 1976 and embodied, beyond the fractional crises, the continuity of the party, then of the party-state. He worked with the leaders favored by Moscow and opposed Mao in Jiangxi. He joined Mao in 1935. He played an important role in the negotiations between Chinese political forces during the anti-Japanese war and in contacts with intellectual and foreign circles. Prime Minister from 1949 and in charge of Foreign Affairs (1949-1958), he also led the negotiations with Moscow after the 1949 victory. He was one of the central figures at the Bandung Conference (1955). He saved Chinese diplomacy during the Cultural Revolution, then prepared the normalization of relations with Washington (Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972). On the domestic front, he played a very important role as a “stabilizer”. He favored the return to power of Deng Xiaoping.
Zhu De (1886-1976). The first of the ten Marshals of 1955. Originally from Sichuan, from a family of ruined peasants. Sent to study at great sacrifice, he broke with his family when he chose to enter the army out of nationalism instead of using his diploma to find a good job. Second lieutenant in 1911, he participated in the Republican Revolution. After many vicissitudes, in 1922, as a 36 year old general and opium addict coming out of a detoxification treatment, he went to France, then met Zhou Enlai in Berlin. After three years of militancy in Germany, he returned to China via Moscow. Having resumed his military career, he prepared the Nanchang insurrection in 1927. In 1928, he ended up with Mao in Jinggangshang where the Fourth Red Army was created and participated in the foundation of the Jiangxi Soviet Republic. He was commander-in-chief of the army and remained so until 1954. He married Kang Keqing in 1929. Vice-president of the government from 1949 and of the People’s Republic in 1954-1959. Although he defended Peng Dehuai in 1959 and opposed Mao during the Cultural Revolution (he was denounced by the Red Guards), he did not suffer the same persecution as other leaders, probably because of his historical prestige.
***
Xi Jinping’s re-election as head of the party and the Central Military Commission, and his re-election next year as President of the People’s Republic, will not solve any of the problems facing the country and its regime - and there are many, both domestically and internationally.
Xi Jinping has benefited from a historic “window of opportunity” when the United States was unable to make its strategic shift to Asia, and the two countries, though rivals, were still cooperating in the global arena. He took full advantage of this, completing the process initiated by his predecessors, with China establishing itself as the second world power.
This window of opportunity has closed. The conditions that made China’s spectacular growth possible are, to a decisive extent at least, no longer present. We have, in fact, entered an unprecedented period. The political system in which Xi Jinping has voluntarily locked himself in makes him even more incapable than his peers in the world of understanding the nature and depth of these changes - the fact that he has broken off all collaboration with Washington on the issue of global warming speaks volumes!
There is little chance that the aftermath of the 20th CCP Congress will bring any good news.
Pierre Rousset