The growing vulnerability of Xi Jinping’s strongman rule.

By Lisa Peryman for Probe International

Xia Ming is a professor of political science at the CUNY Graduate Center and in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs at College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He is the author of The Dual Developmental State (Routledge, 2000), The People’s Congresses and Governance in China (Routledge, 2008), Political Venus (Morning Bell Book House, 2012), Empire of the Red Sun (Mirror Books, 2015, in Chinese), High Peak, Flowing River: On Tibet (Tibetan Book Shop, 2019), and Explaining Power with Political Science: Misgovernment by Demagogues from China to US, 2010-2020 (Bouden House, 2021, in Chinese), and co-editor of Brainwashing in Mao’s China and Beyond (2024).

Twelve years ago, Xia Ming published a book in Hong Kong titled “Political Venus,” which examined possible pathways towards a more democratic China. In this interview with journalist Wang Yun for Radio Free Asia (Mandarin), Xia discusses China’s “closed” political elite, the real beneficiaries of China’s economic boom, the “gansterization” of the country’s lower levels of government, and an increasing independence on the margins of society where the failings of the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to govern are particularly manifest.

The following are key points from the conversation that reference a number of developments over the years to explore how far the veil has fallen to expose the growing vulnerability of Xi Jinping’s strongman rule.

• The main benefits of China’s economic development over the past 40 years have actually been monopolized by bureaucrats or oligarchs.

• When there’s an economic crisis, ordinary people suffer the most or are excluded from the economy entirely.

• Awareness of democracy and human rights has been increasing over the past 40 years, particularly among the lower echelons of Chinese society. People are becoming less dependent on the regime and are increasingly participating in “mass incidents” as collective forms of resistance.

See here for more on this: China sees ‘daily protests’ despite widespread state surveillance, controls: report — Radio Free Asia (rfa.org)

• China basically stopped publishing its own data on mass incidents in 2008, but the last time Xia Ming saw any of the data, he said there were about 140,000 mass incidents a year — protests and demonstrations every day in every province.

• There is a winner-takes-all attitude among the political elite in China, suppressing and even devouring other elite groups. The political elite has the final say in the arts, academics, and education, with Xi Jinping Thought Research Centers wielding power over entire universities.

• China now has a closed political elite — entry into the elite jobs are coming from the second generation of officials, the second generation of rich people, and the second generation of revolutionary families.

• The Chinese Communist Party is tightening control over the private sector, which enhances the state’s power through the continued extraction of assets from private enterprises.

• The Chinese Communist Party is often mythologized for its governance, but it is actually failing in many areas, especially at the lower socioeconomic levels. Despite the heavy police presence in big cities, there is still space for China’s jianghu culture, where marginalized individuals fend for themselves due to the perception of their lives being expendable.

• This underworld offers a channel for social mobility, via the collusion that exists between gang bosses and corrupt officials in local governments, who let the gangs do a lot of their dirty work for them. So, the lowest levels of government in China have been “gangsterized.” The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is still playing this political game, acting as peacemaker in the event of conflicts between local people and local governments, offering some concessions to the people, criticizing the local government, and appearing to solve the problem. This pattern continues today.

• Now that the revenue from real estate has declined, people are realizing the connection between local government actions and central government policies. Xi Jinping’s call for the party to lead across the country makes him a potential lightning rod for public dissatisfaction and makes it more challenging for the central government to evade accountability.

Xia Ming discusses “sparks” in relation to China’s white paper protests and the strong showing at that time from the educated children of the country’s urban middle class. “Sparks” refers to a journal published during China’s Great Famine by a group of university students. The journal documented the grave plight citizens faced and spoke directly to the country’s authoritarian politics. Spark did not make it to a second issue. Journalist Ian Johnson in his work to explore this forgotten act of courage illuminates the flickers of light that emerge throughout times of darkness; those who strive against every odd that would extinguish them to bear witness. Continuing that tradition in today’s China, underground historians work to recover missing pieces of their nation’s human story, the most sensitive of ground to uncover given the threat of history to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. Authoritarianism, it seems, isn’t able to curb this enduring cycle of creation. 

See here for more on this: Opinion | China Keeps Trying to Crush Them. Their Movement Keeps Growing. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

To read the interview between Xia Ming and Wang Yun in full, see the publisher’s website here: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/xia-ming-interview-04302024103608.html#:~:text=Xia%20Ming%3A%20Over%20the%20past,less%20dependent%20on%20the%20regime.