On May 28, 2020, Xi Jinping attended a meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and supported the passage of a “Hong Kong version of the National Security Law.
Tribune India published an opinion piece by Yogesh Gupta, formerly India’s ambassador to Denmark, analyzing Xi Jinping’s purges of more than a million people since becoming general secretary of the CCP, including the ongoing purges of Jack Ma and Alibaba Group, largely due to a lack of security.
On March 11, 2018, the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) of the CCP amended the constitution, including removing the limit on the re-election of state presidents and vice presidents, which was finally passed unanimously and published for implementation on the same day.
On December 26, 2020, a meeting of the Communist Party’s National People’s Congress approved several amendments to the relevant national defense law, approving Xi Jinping’s proposal to transfer the power to set national defense policy from the State Council to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission under his leadership.
In the article, Gupta said the move means that the CCP military will now be under the command of Xi Jinping himself alone, and no longer under the command of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Xi has been dubbed by opponents as the “all-powerful president” because of his role as a decision-maker in almost every area – political, economic, military, diplomatic, Internet, environmental and other matters.
Earlier, Xi removed term limits on his ability to govern as the CCP’s top leader, giving him unrestricted power and making himself the “core” of the CCP, with his ideas enshrined in the party constitution as they were by Mao Zedong. Many observers believe that under Xi Jinping’s rule, China has shifted from a one-party system to a one-man system.
Recent news from Beijing of an “anti-trust” action against Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group, the cancellation of his Ant Group’s largest IPO because Ma did not like Xi’s policies, and the recent arrest of more than 50 opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong for allegedly violating the “Hong Kong version of the National Security Law,” further reinforce Xi’s authoritarian posture.
Why has Xi slowed the pace of China’s market reforms while reinforcing all his power? Why does Xi Jinping not feel safe, even after locking millions of Uighurs in Xinjiang’s “concentration camps”?
Orville Schell, former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, is a former member of the U.S. Senate. Professor Orville Schell and other sinologists argue that the CCP itself still does not feel safe enough as a political party, and this is especially true of CCP leaders such as Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. This is because CCP leaders are aware of the party’s “historical responsibility” and the many wrongs it has committed against the Chinese people and foreigners.
Chinese astrophysicist and dissident Fang Lizhi wrote in 1990 that the CCP’s aim was to force Chinese society to “forget its true history” and that totalitarian rule was necessary to ensure that the Chinese did not know the true nature of the party.
For example, during the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, some 60 million Chinese died. At the time, Mao used the practice of his bizarre ideas about collectivization to liquidate opponents and critics. Similarly, in 1989, Deng Xiaoping ordered the army to shoot at pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, killing thousands of people.
Similarly, Xi Jinping is even less secure because, unlike Mao and Deng, he has no grassroots support among the masses, in the Party or in the military, and he needs to consolidate his power institutionally. Since Xi came to power in 2012, some 1.5 million people have been sentenced, imprisoned or removed from office, or even died, many for political reasons, without a fair trial.
With his “anti-corruption” campaign and other purges, Xi Jinping has made so many political enemies that he can never be sure when, where and how they will conspire against him. Just as political enemies within the Communist Party have turned against Mao in the past (Mao survived an assassination attempt). Xi Jinping must therefore be constantly on guard to eliminate any opposition.
With the concentration of core power in one person, the potential for CCP policy mistakes and misjudgments increases. It is clear that the misguided decisions made by the Beijing authorities in January 2020 in response to the Wuhan pneumonia (Covid-19) outbreak brought untold disaster to the world.
History shows that the abandonment of collective decision-making and the concentration of all power in one person ultimately leads to increased internal power struggles. Similarly, political leaders who seek lifelong power to rule bring untold misery to themselves and others, and often leave a shameful end in their wake.
As in the former Soviet Union, political change in China will occur domestically and will be determined by its own people.
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