On April 15, the People’s Daily published a front-page article entitled “Playing a good first move and fighting a good initiative – an overview of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important remarks on preventing and resolving major risks”. The 13,000-word article quotes Xi Jinping’s many speeches since 2012, saying again that “we should be prepared to deal with changes in the external environment for a longer period of time, and constantly enhance our awareness of the struggle” and “we should prepare for the worst and make the most adequate preparations. “.
The article tries to exonerate Xi Jinping. A series of blunders by the CCP’s top brass over the past year or so have plunged the CCP into internal and external difficulties, especially the recent attacks on all sides that have led to further international isolation. Perhaps questions are swirling within the CCP, or perhaps Xi’s team itself feels a thousand fingers, and Xi’s think-tankers have had to piece together this long-winded argument in an attempt to justify, explain, excuse, and apparently not want to make changes.
Insisting that the general situation has remained stable
According to the article, “since the 18th National Congress, in the face of the treacherous international situation and the complex and sensitive surrounding environment”, the Party Central Committee, with Xi Jinping at its core, “insists on bottom-line thinking, enhances the awareness of worries, improves the ability to prevent and control, and strives to prevent and resolve major risks, so as to maintain sustainable and healthy economic development and social stability. The Party Central Committee “adheres to the bottom-line thinking, enhances the sense of worry, improves the ability of prevention and control, makes efforts to prevent and resolve major risks, and maintains sustained healthy economic development and social stability.
The Chinese Communist regime is now in a highly unstable situation, both internally and externally, and this should be clear to both the Party and the general public. Compared with eight or nine years ago, the CCP regime has been deteriorating, and its decline has accelerated in the past year, and this year it has even lost the brakes, repeatedly running down the road of doom.
The article quotes Xi Jinping’s speech on January 11 this year at a special seminar for leading cadres at the provincial and ministerial levels, saying, “With the changes in the main contradictions in our society and the profound adjustment in the international power contrast, we must enhance our sense of worry, adhere to bottom-line thinking, and be ready to deal with a more complex and difficult situation”, ” we must both dare to struggle and be good at it”.
This passage profoundly reflects that Xi Jinping refuses to acknowledge the fact that the CCP regime is rapidly going downhill, but still believes that there is an opportunity for global hegemony and does not hesitate to risk a fight. The CCP’s foreign engagement over the past three months or so has indeed reflected such a mindset.
The article also quotes Xi Jinping at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee on Oct. 26, 2020, as saying, “Play a good first move, fight a good initiative battle, and effectively prevent and resolve all kinds of risk challenges.”
The Chinese Communist Party may have taken the concealment of the epidemic as a “preemptive move” and the use of the epidemic for hegemony as a “proactive battle,” which quickly became extremely passive. After the new U.S. administration took office, the Chinese Communist Party continued to act with such a mindset and again pressed aggressively, losing a good opportunity to improve relations with the U.S., and becoming fully engaged with Western countries. What people see is not the “profound insight, scientific decision-making ability and superb mastery of strategists” as boasted in the party media articles, but a continuous miscalculation and a lack of progress and retreat.
Blocking the questioning of the party
Now, Xi’s think-tankers may be feeling bad. The article quoted Xi Jinping as saying at a Feb. 2, 2015, seminar for major leading cadres at the provincial and ministerial levels that “the Party Central Committee is the ‘marshal’ sitting in the middle tent, with rooks and horses and artillery each showing their strengths and the big picture of a chess game clearly defined,” and that if “the emergence of fragmentation, a scattered situation, not only the goals we set can not be achieved, and will certainly have disastrous consequences.”
The party media cited Xi Jinping’s words from five years ago, more like a concern about the current “fragmented and scattered” situation in the party, and warned of “catastrophic consequences”. In fact, the CCP is already facing “catastrophic consequences” today, and there is nothing it can do about it, which is why it had to publish a long article defending the central government and Xi Jinping.
The article quotes Xi Jinping’s instructions on political and legal work in January 2017, saying, “In the struggle in the ideological field, we have no room for compromise or concessions and must achieve total victory.” The article also describes how the Internet has become the main battleground for the struggle for public opinion, “As I have said many times, without cyber security there is no national security; if you cannot pass the Internet hurdle, you cannot pass the hurdle of long-term governance.”
Recently, the CCP has forcibly shut down various military-themed self-published media on the mainland and banned people from discussing the affairs of the CCP’s military, which should be directly related to this. The article extensively repeats Xi Jinping’s speeches on risks, challenges, and stability over the years, trying to prove that risks have always existed, but it quotes Xi Jinping’s words at a symposium of experts in the economic and social fields on August 24, 2020, saying, “In the coming period, we will face an external environment with more headwinds and headwinds, and must be prepared to deal with a series of new risks and challenges .”
It can be seen that the CCP will only start to feel the “adverse wind and water” in 2020. The article quotes Xi Jinping as saying at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee on October 26, 2020, “The key to preventing and resolving all kinds of risks and hazards and actively responding to the challenges posed by changes in the external environment is to do our own work.”
After the Chinese Communist Party was deeply concerned about the “adverse wind and water” in 2020, it actually had no good strategy for the external world and was forced to propose an internal cycle. The article reads that “the key to doing China’s business well lies in the Party” and again quotes Xi Jinping as saying, “Since the 18th Party Congress …… has cleared the serious hidden problems that existed within the Party… …but that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels.”
According to the interpretation of the Chinese Communist Party media, the mistakes of the top of the Communist Party have led to “headwinds and headwinds”, and the Communist Party has difficulty coping externally, and can only purge dissidents internally, not allowing the voices of doubt, not to mention stepping down in the internal struggle, but first to keep the power position. The real risk that the CCP is concerned about is not external at all, but internal.
Signs of another escalation of internal strife
The article quoted Xi Jinping as saying at the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection on Jan. 22 this year that “political and economic problems are intertwined, threatening the political security of the party and the state” and that “a slight slackening could wipe out previous achievements, and there is no choice in fighting corruption, we must know the difficulties and move forward “.
On April 12, Wang Qishan’s old ministry, Dong Hong, was expelled from the party and a case was opened for review, with the announcement that he was “disloyal and dishonest” to the central government. This should be a continuation of the so-called anti-corruption campaign, as the CCP is at its wit’s end, and the infighting around the power struggle is apparently intensifying.
The article also said that in the face of the sudden epidemic, Xi Jinping “personally commanded and deployed, and the Party Central Committee took the overall picture and made decisive decisions,” citing Xi’s words at a meeting on epidemic prevention and control on February 23, 2020, “In this response to the epidemic, China has revealed its own problems in major epidemic prevention and control institutional mechanisms, public health emergency management systems and other aspects of the obvious shortcomings, to sum up the experience, learn from the lessons”, “to make up the shortcomings, plug the loopholes, strong weaknesses”, “really solve the problem in the bud, before the disaster “.
In February, WHO chief expert Embarek told the media after leaving China that the CPC showed 174 cases found in and around Wuhan in December 2019, which were likely only the severe cases noted by Chinese doctors, meaning the disease may have infected more than 1,000 people in Wuhan by December of that year. He added that “about 15 percent of the infected population ended up as severe cases, while the vast majority were mild cases,” and he was concerned that the CCP virus had likely spread in China well before mid-December.
It’s not as if the medical system didn’t raise the alarm, but whistle blowers, including Li Wenliang, were quickly silenced, and the inference that the CCP was trying to pin the blame for the outbreak on an inadequate medical system was completely untenable. But the CCP media has long characterized this and, of course, needs to boast that the CCP top brass saved the day and won the battle against the epidemic.
However, Xi’s think-tankers themselves could not believe such a claim, and of course, they were afraid of being questioned, so they were forced to write an article to put the blame. The article also said that the party “was born with the brand of struggle and has been struggling to survive. The article quoted Xi Jinping as saying at the democratic life meeting of the Politburo on Dec. 26-27, 2016, that “we should dare to struggle and be good at it” and “dare to face each other tit-for-tat, not to bow down in the face of difficulties and not to retreat in the face of challenges.”
The article cites Xi Jinping’s previous speeches on struggle. It seems that the CCP’s internal struggle will only intensify in the face of internal and external dilemmas; the CCP will also have to continue its philosophy of struggle externally.
Preparing for Continued Confrontation with the United States
On April 15, Xinhua reported that the magazine Seeking Truth would publish Xi Jinping’s “Speech at the 95th Anniversary Conference of the Founding of the Communist Party of China”. Xinhua moved Xi’s speech from five years ago to the top big headline, and what it really wanted to say was that “the strategy of national development is correct” and today, “we are closer to” the goal “than at any time in history,” and “more confident and more ready than at any time in history We are more confident and capable of achieving this goal than at any other time in history.”
This is a clear indication that the CCP’s goal of competing with the United States for hegemony will not change. On the same day, Xinhua also previewed that Xi would attend a climate video summit of Chinese, French and German leaders on April 16. The U.S. climate envoy, John Kerry, has already arrived in China, but the Chinese Foreign Ministry has not said a word. The top echelon of the Communist Party has left the U.S. aside and turned to Europe again instead, and Li Keqiang has just come out to soften up the U.S., which is apparently going to fizzle out again.
Xi Jinping has been invisible for days, and his team should have been figuring out how to unwind. The signs today are that the top brass will never admit they are wrong in the fierce infighting, and will continue to be wrong even if they are. I am afraid the pattern of confrontation between China and the U.S. will be difficult to shift. The CCP is once again sharpening its knives, and I wonder if the White House is also ready for it.
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