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Centenary Propaganda and Chinese Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics

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Centenary Propaganda and Chinese Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics ISSUE BRIEF 07.19.21 Reflections on the July 1, 2021, Centenary of the Chinese Communist Party Part One: Centenary Propaganda and Chinese Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics Steven W. Lewis, Ph.D., C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow, China Studies Program “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” —Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 1 Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese greatest leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, Communist Party (CCP), President of the originator of the Chinese Marxism known People’s Republic of China, and Chairman as Maoism. Unlike his predecessors at the of the Central Military Commission, is 80th and 90th anniversaries of the founding indisputably just such a “world-historic of the CCP, who gave their addresses in the personage.” To see how powerful he is, nearby gigantic Great Hall of the People, on one need only look at China’s main state July 1, Xi took full advantage of the COVID newspapers in recent years to see days precautions requiring large gatherings to be when the entire front page was covered held outdoors to hold his centenary speech with stories about what Xi Jinping thinks looking down from atop the Gate of Heavenly about this issue or that policy, or watch state Peace, wearing the same grey Sun Yatsen suit television news to see report after report that Mao was wearing in the giant portrait about Xi Jinping’s speeches and travels hanging just below him. He looked out across Xi is widely believed throughout China. Xi is widely believed to be tens of thousands of cheering party members to be China’s new China’s new leader for life, having eliminated in the giant square below to the enormous leader for life, or marginalized his rivals at the top of the Mausoleum of Mao in the distance. Observing party, so much so that he has no obvious all of this outsized pageantry and brutalist having eliminated or successors, and he has already paved the symbolism must make learned Chinese marginalized his rivals way to become general secretary for at Marxists wonder, however—following Marx’s at the top of the party, least a third five-year term at the National famous invocation of Hegel’s notion of the so much so that he has Congress of the Chinese Communist Party role of historic personages—is Xi Jinping the in November 2022. Xi has directed state tragedy, or is Xi Jinping the farce? no obvious successors. propaganda to refer to him as the ideological Marx famously wrote The Eighteenth “Core Leader” of the Chinese Communist Brumaire in 1852 to explain how what Party, thereby creating the perception that he appeared to start with great promise should be viewed as the legitimate ideological as a socialist revolution in 1848—with successor of the People’s Republic of China’s workers in Paris rising up to overthrow a RICE UNIVERSITY’S BAKER INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY // ISSUE BRIEF // 07.19.21 corrupt and dysfunctional republic—was Xi Jinping’s rise to power in many in the end to become tragically and ways actually does resemble that of Louis unexpectedly a successful coup d’etat by Bonaparte, for Xi is Chinese Communist the ne’er-do-well nephew of Napoleon Party political royalty. His father, Xi Bonaparte: “The constitution, the National Zhongxun, was one of the party elders that Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue Chairman Mao relied upon to enforce a new and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, central national order in China’s Northwest the thunder from the platform, the sheet provinces and regions, working as a lightning of the daily press, the entire political commissar controlling the People’s literature, the political names and the Liberation Army there, and then directing intellectual reputations, the civil law and the new central government’s propaganda the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and education organs. He also oversaw the and the second Sunday in May, 1852—all growth of its policy research institutions as a have vanished like a phantasmagoria before vice-premier in the 1960s. Xi Zhongxun was the spell of a man whom even his enemies one of the few party elders who survived the do not make out to be a sorcerer.” Louis decade-long tragedy of the Great Proletarian Bonaparte outlasted the protesting masses, Cultural Revolution, the death of Chairman the constitutionalists, the republicans, and Mao in 1976, and the fall of the ultra-leftist other powerful forces to eventually make Gang of Four two years later. He also worked himself Emperor Napoleon III of France’s with Deng Xiaoping to open up China to the Second Empire. He may indeed have not global economy and introduce the “market been a sorcerer, but he was, after all, a socialism” or “socialism with Chinese Bonaparte. More importantly, he was a characteristics” that returned capitalism to Bonaparte in a nation that could remember Chinese society. Xi Zhongxun became the the glorious victories of his uncle while at party and provincial leader of South China’s the same time, inexplicably, forgetting the Guangdong Province in 1978, overseeing tragedy of the epic Napoleonic defeats. The the transformation of coastal cities, such selective memory that recalled Pope Pius as Shenzhen, into special economic zones VII traveling from Rome to crown Napoleon with the help of foreign investment from Bonaparte emperor in Notre Dame, and the wealthy and transnational Cantonese then La Grande Armée—bearing the diaspora of businessmen from nearby Hong imperial standard of red, white, and blue Kong and all over the world. The elder Xi surrounding a Romanesque eagle beneath retired in the late 1980s, elbowed aside for a crown—marching through the capitals being too close to disgraced party leader Hu of the many kingdoms of the former Holy Yaobang, ousted in 1987 for not being hard Roman Empire, was somehow capable of enough on student democracy protesters. forgetting the decimating losses of French Although shunted aside, one can only troops on the road back from Moscow, imagine the exceptionally rich treasure then again at Leipzig, and then finally at chest of life experiences the elder Xi must Waterloo. In comparing himself to Mao, Xi have passed on to Xi Jinping: how to use the Jinping is hoping similarly that the Chinese party to control the military, how to create people will remember ardently the defeat a distinctly Chinese nationalistic propaganda and flight of the Kuomintang to Taiwan, the system, how to create policy research reunification of most of China’s territory institutions to serve the centralization of the from imperial days, and the ending of state, and how to work with the Chinese the “Century of Humiliation” at the hands diaspora to carve out special economic of Western powers and Japan. And Xi is zones and revive the private sector in China. also hoping that the Chinese people will Much like Louis Bonaparte, Xi Jinping somehow forget the tens of millions who was born to rule. Xi was not related to died from drought, plague, and starvation China’s great ruler, Chairman Mao, nor his in the 1960s and the political chaos and successor, Deng Xiaoping, but neither of mass violence of the Great Proletarian them had political offspring, making Xi Cultural Revolution from 1968 to 1976. Jinping the next best thing. Actually, Xi was 2 CENTENARY PROPAGANDA AND CHINESE SOCIALISM WITH XI JINPING CHARACTERISTICS the next best thing but for one person: Bo not only extended the very popular anti- Xilai. The son of a party elder even more corruption campaigns that had marked his highly ranked than Xi Jinping’s father, Bo leadership in the provinces, he made them a Xilai was also a party princeling leveraging permanent feature through the strengthening the same resume-building experiences Xi of the party’s internal police, the Central Jinping had in the 1990s and early 2000s Discipline Inspection Commission. Previous in order to rise up in the party ranks. Both party general secretaries often began their started out in central party and state organs. first terms with anti-corruption campaigns, Xi Jinping then became the successful but after a year or two of prominent arrests, leader of the wealthy Fujian Province, then would move on to the challenges of economic the wealthier Zhejiang Province, and then growth and expanding Chinese influence in even China’s wealthiest city, Shanghai. Bo international affairs. Xi Jinping, however, has Xilai led the largest city of the industrial maintained his focus on ensuring the loyalty Northeast, Dalian, then the surrounding of party members through continued anti- wealthy province, Liaoning, before working corruption and propaganda efforts. The tens more closely with then top party leader Hu of thousands of representatives (chosen Jintao before being assigned to lead China’s from China’s 90 million party members), newest and most populous city, Chongqing, who were sitting in Tiananmen Square on in Southwest China. Both Xi Jinping and July 1, 2021, for the 100th anniversary of Bo Xilai made anti-corruption campaigns the Chinese Communist Party, regularly hallmarks of their leadership, earning them participate in internal investigations, testing Much like Louis broad, local support, but Bo Xilai took a risky not only their administrative skills but their Bonaparte, Xi Jinping step further, conjuring up what had been ideological purity as well—the “Study the was born to rule. Xi was collective taboo among Chinese leaders since Great Nation” app, which teaches users about not related to China’s the death of Mao: mass political movements President Xi Jinping and the Communist great ruler, Chairman driven by a propaganda-fueled cult of Party, has replaced Mao’s Little Red Book.2 leadership.
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