The vote was already known before the 20th party congress of the Chinese Communist Party had started: ruler Xi Jinping (69) was proclaimed president for the third time. In the People’s Republic nothing is left to chance, everything is choreographed down to the smallest detail. The CCP doesn’t even compromise on sunshine. In the recent past, weather engineers created a clear blue sky over Beijing.
Xi has completed the transformation of the People’s Republic from autocracy to fascism with Chinese characteristics – with far-reaching consequences for the people of China and the rest of the world. After the death of Mao, under whose rule millions died, the reformer Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) reformed the political system so that a single man was no longer able to decide the fate of all citizens of the People’s Republic.
From slightly liberal to deadly fascist
Xi has reversed this modest liberalization. Over the past ten years, he has jailed or even sentenced opponents to death. Dissidents are even tracked down outside China and forcibly returned to the People’s Republic. Even entrepreneurs, athletes or actors cannot be safe from state intervention. Anyone who appears too prominent for the ruler and thus questions the role of the eminent Xi will be summarily jailed and their social media profile blocked.
The ruler monitors society’s every move and sows germinating resentments online. Instead of taking an oath to defend the country, the soldiers of the Chinese army swear their unwavering loyalty to the party and their willingness to die for it. ‘The Chinese dream,’ the party organ The People’s Daily once summed up, ‘is the Communist Party.’ And the party is Xi Jinping. The cult of leadership he built around his person reminds today’s China of the fascist Germany of the Nazi era.
How Xi wants to dominate the world
Xi is not satisfied with China alone, he wants to dominate the whole world. He is not concerned with areas outside the Middle Kingdom, but with a global network of roads, rails and ports through which goods from all over the world must be delivered to China and exported there. The “New Silk Road” is Xi’s geopolitical masterpiece. His empire must become independent by making all countries on earth economically dependent. Xi wants to turn this economic power into political dominance: in international bodies, states indebted to Beijing are already voting to China’s taste. Whoever wants to do business with this giant should not criticize him politically. Australia and Lithuania can tell you a thing or two about it.
China has started border disputes with countries in its immediate vicinity: the western Pacific is being militarized by artificial islands, there are repeated border battles with India and Taiwan to be conquered. That China is not an imperialist state, but an inward-looking, self-contained nation is nothing but a fairy tale.
There is resistance to Xi .’s rule
Inside, Xi rules with an ideology that declares the Han Chinese the master race. On the other hand, those living in the Chinese-occupied provinces of Tibet or Xinjiang must renounce their inherited culture, language and religion. With Xi’s approval, the ugly face of the ethno-nationalism that once led Europe into a devastating world war is showing all over the People’s Republic.
The Covid pandemic relentlessly revealed who was in power: Xi had locked up Shanghai’s 26 million residents for weeks. For people living elsewhere in China, the road to freedom will also be a long one. But there is resistance to autocracy: Before the party congress, strangers unfurled banners on a Beijing highway calling for his end. The fact that pictures of the action went around the world will certainly not lessen the punishment for the authors.
China not far from an uprising
China is groaning under a multitude of crises: the housing bubble has burst, youth unemployment is higher than it has been in a long time, the economy has collapsed due to Xi’s zero-covid policy. Many people have lost their savings. The country has not been as close to an uprising as it is now since the peaceful demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that Deng Xiaoping had violently crushed. Xi will tighten the reins all the more if he is appointed ruler for life.
*Alexander Görlach is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. His new book “Red Alert: Why Beijing’s Aggressive Foreign Policy in the Western Pacific Is Leading to a Global War” was recently published.