China’s great leap backward

This month should have marked the end of Xi Jinping’s time as leader of the Chinese Communist party. The twice-a-decade party congress is being staged in Beijing. It is a grand event at which a new General Secretary is meant to be either nominated (five years in advance) or given power.

But Xi has changed all that. He has sidelined all opposition and is now settling down to his 11th year in office – fully intent on ruling for life. The world’s second-largest economy will therefore this weekend be reconfirmed as an outright dictatorship.

Ten years ago there was a fatal car crash in Beijing involving a Ferrari driven by the son of Ling Jihua, chief of staff to the then president Hu Jintao. Ling Jr and two female companions were found in the wreckage, all of them reportedly naked. Young Ling died and the women were injured. The question was asked how the 23-year-old, whose parents both worked for the CCP, could afford such a car. Xi, who was by then Hu’s successor-in--waiting, used the accident to spearhead an ‘anti-corruption’ drive which turned into a ruthless purge.

Before Xi’s leadership, the CCP had operated under certain limits that were imposed after the carnage of Mao’s dictatorship. Leaders were not allowed to become too powerful and were constrained by ten-year limits. There would be other power-brokers, including Bo Xilai, one of Xi’s main targets, who had developed a new model of governing in Chongqing. Factions included the ‘Shanghai Clique’ of Jiang Zemin, who led China in the 1990s, and the ‘tuanpai’, Communist Youth League, a faction of Hu Jintao, which dominated the 2000s.

At first, Xi looked set to be another Hu or Jiang – lining his allies’ pockets when he was in power while preparing to move over when the time came. But a communist system with no proper checks and balances is wide open to manipulation – there was always the possibility that dictatorial power might return. Xi’s ‘anti-corruption’ drive purged, cowed or sidelined anyone who might have opposed him. In this way, the one-party state became a one-man regime.

China is now living with the consequences of Xi’s mistakes and paranoia. The zero-Covid policy has trapped 1.4 billion people in a series of stop-start lockdowns. The borders have been closed to most foreigners since the Wuhan lockdown. Many foreign investors and other westerners who lived there pre-lockdown have fled. If the economy grows at all this year, it will be at the slowest rate in 30 years. China is shutting up shop, as Xi’s insularity replaces the more global--minded approach of his predecessors.

This has huge implications. The last four decades – during which China opened up and power changed hands – saw the country transformed from a poor backwater to one that seemed destined to overtake America as the world’s largest economic force. The number of Chinese living in absolute poverty fell from 88 per cent to under 0.5 per cent. Cities were transformed. Universities flourished. It was still a repressive one-party state: dissidents like Liu Xiaobo were persecuted, and with the beginnings of social media came an increase in censorship. But Hu’s promise of a ‘peaceful rise’ – the idea that China could reach superpower status without antagonising the world – seemed plausible.

Xi has replaced this approach with a ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ which has badly backfired. America regards China as a threat. Chinese tech firms are routinely barred by western governments due to Beijing’s attempts to use them as weapons of influence. The Belt and Road Initiative – Xi’s bid for global dominion by sponsoring infrastructure projects in 150 countries – is imploding. Most of the foreign governments which banked Xi’s $1 trillion in loans are in financial distress. Xi has an empire of debt, not influence.

Perhaps most seriously of all, Xi has failed to defuse China’s population time bomb. He abolished the one-child policy, wrongly thinking that the state could expand family sizes by diktat. But far too many Chinese are living in an inverted-pyramid family structure, in which one grown-up child supports two elderly parents. China’s working-age population is in fast decline. That means it is unlikely to overtake the US economy, as was once predicted.

Gone are the days when China’s General--Secretary governed as the ‘first among equals’ with the others on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee. It is strange to consider that senior Communists once had veto power over their leader. Ahead of the big party congress, even banks have been warned not to discuss anything political in research notes – such as, for instance, the chances of a Lehman-style collapse among China’s mortgage lenders.

Instead of debating China’s future, the CCP has resurrected the apparatus of the Mao-era personality cult. Chinese state media now refer to Xi not as President but ‘the People’s Leader’. A new 16-part TV series, The Navigator, offers to tell viewers how ‘Xi Jinping’s rich experience, big picture view and broad-mindedness have quickly distilled into great wisdom and knowledge’. Echoes of Mao’s self-portrait as the ‘Great Helmsman’ are chillingly obvious.

Few inside China dare to point out that the Mao experiment failed. For the CCP to try to repeat even a part of it now represents a calamitous leap backwards – for China and the world.