The Chinese Communist Party will hold its 20th Party Congress next year. By that time, Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the CPC, will have completed 10 years in office. Much attention is being paid to Xi’s next move. Will he make a power transition like his predecessor Hu Jintao, or will he break with convention and remain in charge of the party?
There have been at least two recent studies on Xi’s succession that have attracted a lot of attention. One is a report co-authored by Jude Blanchette, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Richard McGregor, a fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia, titled (After Xi: Future Scenarios for Leadership Succession in Post-Xi Jinping Era); and a new book by Roger Garside, a former British diplomat in China, China Coup: The Great Leap Forward to Freedom. China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom” by Roger Garside, a former British diplomat in China, and “Regime Change in China is not only possible, it is imperative” by Garside in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. it is imperative”).
The study by the U.S. and Australian researchers suggests four possibilities for the end of the Xi era.
The first possibility: the customary orderly handover at the Communist Party Congress in 2022. The report says, “Under existing rules Xi Jinping surrenders his power as general secretary to one of the Politburo Standing Committee members. He would then have complied with at least two post-Mao-era rules, leaving office after two five-year terms as general secretary and retiring at age 68, which has been in place since 2002.”
The second possibility: Xi Jinping retires by the next term, or the next term after that, the 21st Congress in 2027, or the 22nd Congress in 2032. The report quotes Xi’s own words, “The evaluation of whether a country’s political system is democratic and effective depends mainly on whether there can be an orderly turnover of the country’s leadership in accordance with the law,” the report said, adding that if Xi is sincere, perhaps he just wants to postpone his retirement. The report says that the entire existing Politburo Standing Committee is past retirement age by 2027, so any possible successor would almost certainly have to be named to the top leadership at the 20th National Congress in 2022 and would have to be under the age of 63.
A third possibility: a challenge to him by the top CCP elite, or even a coup d’état. The report says, “The plot to overthrow Xi and his government is not the product of a fevered imagination, but something that has been widely stated by senior Chinese officials, including Xi himself.” In an internal speech in 2016, Xi spoke of a “political conspiracy” aimed at “undermining and splitting the party.”
“Barring a generalized crisis in China, the chances of a high-level anti-Xi coup at this time are very small,” the report said. “It is true that Xi has a large number of enemies within the party. But it is also true that organizing against Xi faces almost insurmountable obstacles.”
A fourth possibility: Xi’s unexpected death or incapacitation. The report argues that if this happens to Xi Jinping, it creates a power vacuum that would trigger infighting in the Politburo. The report argues that Xi’s incapacitation would be even more dangerous than the consequences of his death.
Gestede’s ‘China Coup’ Tells High-Level Anti-Xi Story
Based on his observations of the Communist Party’s current situation, Geist’s book, “China Coup,” tells the fictional story of Vice President Wang Qishan, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Wang Yang, who “orchestrated a coup to overthrow Xi Jinping and then initiated a democratic transition.
“The main part of the book explains why they did it, how they did it, and why they succeeded in doing it.” Gestede told Voice of America.
The gist of his lengthy article in Canada’s Ring Post is that the United States and its allies have a role to play in helping Chinese leaders who want to establish a free democracy in China, Gestede said. He argued that most dictators are not overthrown by mass revolts, but by actions taken by the top elite. He sees this happening in China, where the Communist Party is in crisis because the United States has teamed up with its allies against China, and China’s reformists see and seize the opportunity.
I think (regime change) is imminent because the regime we see in China today is a totalitarian regime, not an authoritarian regime as many international pundits and commentators have described it, it is a totalitarian regime that is on track to become the most powerful and largest economy in the world,” Gestede said. Its goal of world leadership in artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies, combined with totalitarian politics, will create a nightmare for our future. So not only must we defend ourselves, but we must work with the Chinese people who disapprove of Xi Jinping leading China down this path and take action before it’s too late.”
Li Anyou: Not impossible, but 100 percent impossible
But Columbia University political science professor An-You Lai believes that the scenario suggested by Gestede is unlikely to happen. “I would say it’s very unlikely, and I would go further and say it’s 100 percent unlikely.”
“For two reasons,” Rianyou explained. “The first is that in fact the elite power class within the Communist Party and the military support Xi Jinping, and he has been very successful.” Lai Anyou said. “Most of the people in the Politburo are Xi’s old friends, high school classmates, people from Fujian, Shanghai and Zhejiang, and they are his people.”
Second, Lai Anyou said, “If someone doesn’t like Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang wants to call Wang Yang, or Zhang San wants to call Li Si and say I want to talk to you in private, Xi Jinping’s people are tapping the phone, Xi Jinping’s people are watching these people, Xi Jinping’s people are watching everyone. You want to have a secret meeting, you want to say something Xi Jinping doesn’t want you to say, it’s impossible.”
Li Anyou believes Xi will remain in power until his death. “Of course there could be an accident, but he’s only 68, or he gets sick, or there’s an accident where he falls down the stairs and breaks his neck, or there’s an accident that makes him unable to continue in power, or if he decides, having done too much work, I’m done with my job and decides to let someone else take over.”
Kong Jierong: Xi Jinping will lose power if he is not wise to Taiwan
Kong Jierong, a retired professor of law at New York University School of Law and a leading U.S. expert on China law, also believes that the greatest danger to Xi’s power is not in a challenge or coup by the top elite. He believes that the real potential threat to his power could be his desperate foreign policy.
“If Xi Jinping makes an unwise move on Taiwan, he could lose power. If he acts, it will lead to serious damage to China politically, economically and militarily. This would be very harmful to his future. So, in principle, he has a clear path ahead of him, as long as he stays alive and grows up, which means he can do another 20 years. But on the other hand, he cannot be sure of the political environment, and he has to be very careful not to get involved in a foreign policy that would upset his government, that could be economically, militarily, and diplomatically costly for China. And he also has to be careful not to let elite discontent build up over time, because every crackdown will backfire.” Kong Jierong said.
In this regard, Professor Li Anyou has a different view. He believes that Xi Jinping is actually “very careful and shrewd” in his diplomacy. In the South China Sea, “they have expanded their power in the South China Sea without triggering a war”; on Taiwan, “they have been very patient, they have been putting pressure on Taiwan, but they have not caused a war because they are very careful”; and they have pressed India, “actually triggering a war on a very large scale. “actually triggered a very small-scale conflict”; on the Diaoyu Islands, “they have increased their presence around the islands but not triggered a war,” and “so I think China’s behavior has been called slicing sausages and Taking it little by little.” Lai An You said.
Pei Minxin: Leninist system produced Stalin, Mao, Xi-type figures
As the 20th Communist Party Congress draws near, the issue of succession in the post-Xi Jinping era will draw increasing attention from the outside world. Some scholars believe that the key to this problem is that China’s political system has not yet been able to solve the succession problem of CCP leaders.
After Xi Jinping came to power, he first abolished the written constitutional limit on the term of office of the president, but the unwritten rules on succession of CCP leaders after Deng Xiaoping, such as the term of office of the party’s top leader cannot exceed two five-year terms and the seven up and eight down (retirement at age 68), are, in the words of Claremont McKenna College professor Minxin Pei, only a “superficial system “It does not have a mechanism effective enough to prevent the emergence of leaders determined to break these rules. In a conversation with Larry Diamond, director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies in March, Pei put it this way.
“When Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues set these rules in the 1980s, they had a strong incentive to prevent the re-emergence of figures like Mao, because they were all victims of Mao’s dictatorship. But they also had their own self-interests. They wanted to maintain their power, they wanted to retain their discretionary power. So they made rules about age limits, term limits, in a way that suited their purposes, but those rules would not be enforced. They know that the enforcement mechanisms in a normal political system are going to have legal intervention, constitutional review, or political intervention that can be done through internal elections. They do not have such enforcement mechanisms in place. So, to a large extent, China is in what I call a superficial institutionalization phase, where on paper it looks like a normal authoritarian system, but the rise of Xi Jinping is the test of whether those institutional mechanisms are effective. Now we know they are ineffective.”
Pei Minxin concludes, “This is how the Leninist system was set up, and in practice there are no effective checks and balances within it to prevent the rise of Stalinist, Maoist, or Xi-like figures.”
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