Xi Jinping on Thursday published an open letter to the Chinese people. While repetitive, the letter illuminates Xi’s overriding fear that the Chinese people will one day rise up and demand political freedom.
The title is, “The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Originally published in the party’s preeminent political journal, Qiushi, the letter was circulated in all major media outlets. This reflects Xi’s desire that his words be disseminated as widely as possible.
It is noteworthy that it contains a passing call for the military to focus on “rejuvenation … by science and technology” and that training exercises “pay more attention to focusing on actual combat.”
But Xi’s overriding focus is on the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership to China’s existence. Xi writes that “the most essential characteristic” of Chinese socialism “is to adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China.” From Xi’s perspective, this leadership starts with him and ends up with his small inner circle within the Standing Committee. Under Xi, the Central Committee and Politburo are little more than recruitment pools to see who can rise in Xi’s favor and assignment.
Xi doesn’t simply want the Chinese people to view the party leadership as beneficial. He wants his people to see his leadership as intrinsic to their nation’s existence. As he puts it, “It must be clearly understood that the greatest national condition of China is the leadership of the Communist Party of China … The leadership of the party is the fundamental guarantee for doing a good job in the party and the country.”
There is much repetition of this theme, with “leadership” appearing 93 separate times in the text. But in a darker line that will provoke knowing nods in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, Xi warns that “Anyone who denies the leadership of the Communist Party of China and our socialist system under any pretext is wrong.” He writes that such a viewpoint is “unacceptable and fundamentally violate[s] the constitution.”
Think on those words and the crystallized import they hold for America’s 21st-century showdown with China. The U.S. Constitution is centered around the protection of individual rights as the foundation of our national politics. The Chinese constitution is centered around absolute allegiance to an unelected leadership.
Yet even as Xi implicitly warns that disloyalty will meet bloody repression, he is clearly concerned that disloyalty might be a growing trend in the years ahead. “We must adhere to the supremacy of national interests,” Xi says, “take the people’s security as the purpose, and take political security as the foundation.” He continues, warning that if “fragmentation in China” occurs, “not only will the goals we have determined not be achieved, but they will also have disastrous consequences.”
“Political security as the foundation” of the national interest. Here we see the ideological rationale for Xi’s increasing authoritarianism against Hongkongers and the Uighur people of Xinjiang. Xi is threatened by what he perceives as the threats of faith and freedom outside communist orthodoxy that these Chinese represent. The aggressive subjugation of these peoples is thus justified as a defense of the constitution. After all, if these freedoms are allowed to exist, other freedoms in other Chinese might also flourish. The absolutism is clear. Contrary to Xi’s claims that the party serves the people, what we see here is the belief in the unitary party as an end in itself. The people have no utility except as servants to the party.
Think carefully about the contrast between Xi’s regime and democracy. In political ideology and impulse, Xi’s China is far closer to the Oceania of George Orwell’s1984 than many realize.