n the middle of November, China’s 20th Party Congress met to chart the next five years of the country’s direction. An event full of pomp and circumstance, and political theater, it was a closely watched event. Its lengthy speeches and precision were meant to convey unity and focus, and show a smooth continuation of the preceding 10-years of the rule of President Xi Jinping to his third five-year term—a term that required an amendment of the Chinese Communist Party’s constitution. The Party Congress also marked the visible solidification of Xi’s rule with the very public removal of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, from the Congress and Xi’s aggressive rhetoric toward Taiwan.
The machinations of the Chinese Communist Party and China itself are complex and opaque to the West. Both by political design, and by linguistic and stylistic consequence, the pronouncements of Beijing often leave the West attempting to divine what is both said and left unsaid. In the absence of necessary clarity and as a function of the party’s own projection of unity, the West often reverts to short-hands and heuristics that don’t capture the complexity and nuance of China—a country of 1.3 billion people and innumerable regional and political variations. For the West, China appears to be a monolithic actor with every part of the state and party pulling in the same direction.
Author Frank Dikötter offers one of the most insightful and nuanced looks at the complex rise of China since the Second World War in his book “China After Mao” (a copy of which was kindly provided by Bloomsbury for review). In it, Dikötter presents a fascinating and rich picture of the inner turmoil behind China’s political and economic rise, offering a far more complex understanding of the emergence of the world’s second largest economy.
Dikötter manages to make a detailed history of China’s economic and political growth surprisingly readable and fluid. In lesser hands, this could have easily become a jumble of personalities, committees, facts and figures, and staid proclamations, but in Dikötter’s it is engrossing and riveting. This perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given the fact that he is the author of the “People’s Trilogy,” an award-winning series of books that looked at the impact of communism on the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens from the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party through to the Cultural Revolution.
During the Cold War there was and to some degree remains an art and science of “Kremlinology”—divining who is in or out of favor, or who has the party secretary’s ear. This analytical practice was largely relegated to the practitioners and students of Russian politics, with the results occasionally making its way into the broader public consciousness of Moscow’s activities. Today, there is a modern analogue to this Cold War art in divining what who is doing what to whom and when in Chinese politics. Here again, however, there is the popular perception of China as a monolithic party and state, having marched in lock-step from poverty through to the towering heights of the global economy. Dikötter shows that China’s rise was anything but smooth, anything but preordained, and anything but unified. Dikötter presents a China that is anything but monolithic, operated solely by gray-haired party apparatchiks. In so doing he presents a far more interesting and complex China than the vast majority of the world see or assume.
All politics is indeed local, and it is just as true in China as it is in Des Moines or Liverpool. The Party’s edicts were, and indeed are, not always executed as intended or even at all. Throughout China’s rise, as Dikötter shows, provinces and cities competed with one another often undermining the macroeconomic efforts of Beijing.
Too often the focus of the West is on these macro-level strategic trends and dynamics to the exclusion of the inner complexities of China. This is, of course, not restricted to China alone. The United States in particular tends to personalize national behaviors focusing only on the president or premier, ignoring what’s happening at the sub-national level. Washington too often takes politics at face value.
Perhaps most damning for the Western liberal consensus, Dikötter puts a definitive nail in the coffin of the strategic assumptions about China’s rise. It is clear that China had no intention of joining the democratic world, despite the fevered dreams of the West’s industrialists, corporate leaders, politicians, and others. It was the great geopolitical self-deception of the 20century—the assumption that if China’s economy joined the free market, democratic values would surely follow. That assumption that, as China’s economy opened, so too would the space for free speech, free press, and other freedoms so cherished and taken for granted in the democratic world. These assumptions characterized so much of the West’s actions towards Beijing, informing its efforts to get China to join the World Trade Organization, the often counter-productive actions taken by corporations in the United States to gain access to China’s markets, and policies towards the region designed to not antagonize Beijing out of fear of economic retaliation.
Particularly in recent years as China’s rise created frictions within the international system, this strategic assumption has gradually ebbed—not completely, but it is certainly a far cry from the level of esteem in which it was once held. Beijing’s true intentions, both domestically and internationally, are increasingly being understood through China’s own words and behaviors—not internationalist political philosophy.
It is disappointing that the book ends somewhat abruptly in 2012, attempting to summarize the events of the last decade in a breezily written epilogue. Coming to power in November of that year, Xi Jinping firmly placed his mark not just on the Chinese Communist Party, but China itself and the world more broadly. From centralizing his power and having “Xi Jinping Thought” elevated alongside that of Mao and Deng to the One Belt, One Road Initiative, Xi is truly becoming China’s “Great Helmsman” for the 21 century. Yet, China under Xi has also encountered some of the most significant challenges in the country’s modern history, and could well face as turbulent times ahead as at any point since the founding of the party in 1947. Indeed, arguably under Xi, long-standing assumptions about China, about doing business with China, and Beijing’s own social contract with its population that exchanges economic prosperity with political obedience have all become strained.
How China will seek to manage these trends and how the 21Century “Great Helmsman” navigates these turbulent waters is unclear. Despite Xi’s aggressive efforts to centralized power, removing those who oppose him and his policies (often under the guise of crackdowns on corruption) he has not yet been truly tested on the international stage. True enough, relations with the United States have become far more fractious than in previous years—the arrival of President Donald Trump and a separate, but accompanying increased hawkishness towards Beijing, one that was helped by China’s own behaviors. Reflecting on post-COVID-19 diplomacy and developments, Dikötter writes, “Against all odds, the regime had succeeded in alienating not just one of its greatest supporters, but also the one power that had created the very conditions on which it had depended for its survival.”
There is also the risk, as Hal Brands and Michael Beckley write in “The Danger Zone,” that systemic issues such as the state’s intervention in the economy, demographic challenges, and environmental degradation could lead to a China that is “peaking” and at risk of declining, thereby increasing the possibility of conflict with the West.
At the same time, one wonders if, like that of the American president, the ability of the general secretary to affect policy change in the 21century isn’t more circumscribed than is assumed. True, Xi has far more ability to assert his will and that of the party than his Western counterparts, but the vagaries and complexities of the international economy, information age, and the attendant speed of change may stress the ability of China’s leaders to respond. Indeed, Dikötter astutely notes “The challenge lying ahead for the Communist Party was how to address an entire range of longstanding structural issues of its own making without giving up its monopoly over power and its control over the means of production.”
The political and economic pressures China faces will most certainly manifest themselves within the Chinese Communist Party itself and at the provincial and municipal level. As Dikötter shows, it is the case that the interactions amongst the party, the bureaucrats, business, and more that often have the greatest impact on Beijing’s ability to act. Indeed, there is very little to suggest that this dynamic will change—it certainly did not across China’s tumultuous history from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution, and onto Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalization. The partisan political color may change, but partisan politics remains the same. While the West may assume Xi’s premiership is unlikely to experience any challenges, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence—we just may not be looking hard enough or asking the right questions.
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Getting China Wrong, Getting China Right
Beijing, China. Photo by Markus Winkler via Unsplash.
November 12, 2022
The West often reverts to short-hands and heuristics that don’t capture the complexity and nuance of China. However, in the book, “China After Mao,” author Frank Dikötter offers a far more insightful and nuanced look at the complex rise of China since the Second World War, writes Joshua Huminski.
I
n the middle of November, China’s 20th Party Congress met to chart the next five years of the country’s direction. An event full of pomp and circumstance, and political theater, it was a closely watched event. Its lengthy speeches and precision were meant to convey unity and focus, and show a smooth continuation of the preceding 10-years of the rule of President Xi Jinping to his third five-year term—a term that required an amendment of the Chinese Communist Party’s constitution. The Party Congress also marked the visible solidification of Xi’s rule with the very public removal of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, from the Congress and Xi’s aggressive rhetoric toward Taiwan.
The machinations of the Chinese Communist Party and China itself are complex and opaque to the West. Both by political design, and by linguistic and stylistic consequence, the pronouncements of Beijing often leave the West attempting to divine what is both said and left unsaid. In the absence of necessary clarity and as a function of the party’s own projection of unity, the West often reverts to short-hands and heuristics that don’t capture the complexity and nuance of China—a country of 1.3 billion people and innumerable regional and political variations. For the West, China appears to be a monolithic actor with every part of the state and party pulling in the same direction.
Author Frank Dikötter offers one of the most insightful and nuanced looks at the complex rise of China since the Second World War in his book “China After Mao” (a copy of which was kindly provided by Bloomsbury for review). In it, Dikötter presents a fascinating and rich picture of the inner turmoil behind China’s political and economic rise, offering a far more complex understanding of the emergence of the world’s second largest economy.
Dikötter manages to make a detailed history of China’s economic and political growth surprisingly readable and fluid. In lesser hands, this could have easily become a jumble of personalities, committees, facts and figures, and staid proclamations, but in Dikötter’s it is engrossing and riveting. This perhaps shouldn’t be surprising given the fact that he is the author of the “People’s Trilogy,” an award-winning series of books that looked at the impact of communism on the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens from the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party through to the Cultural Revolution.
During the Cold War there was and to some degree remains an art and science of “Kremlinology”—divining who is in or out of favor, or who has the party secretary’s ear. This analytical practice was largely relegated to the practitioners and students of Russian politics, with the results occasionally making its way into the broader public consciousness of Moscow’s activities. Today, there is a modern analogue to this Cold War art in divining what who is doing what to whom and when in Chinese politics. Here again, however, there is the popular perception of China as a monolithic party and state, having marched in lock-step from poverty through to the towering heights of the global economy. Dikötter shows that China’s rise was anything but smooth, anything but preordained, and anything but unified. Dikötter presents a China that is anything but monolithic, operated solely by gray-haired party apparatchiks. In so doing he presents a far more interesting and complex China than the vast majority of the world see or assume.
All politics is indeed local, and it is just as true in China as it is in Des Moines or Liverpool. The Party’s edicts were, and indeed are, not always executed as intended or even at all. Throughout China’s rise, as Dikötter shows, provinces and cities competed with one another often undermining the macroeconomic efforts of Beijing.
Too often the focus of the West is on these macro-level strategic trends and dynamics to the exclusion of the inner complexities of China. This is, of course, not restricted to China alone. The United States in particular tends to personalize national behaviors focusing only on the president or premier, ignoring what’s happening at the sub-national level. Washington too often takes politics at face value.
Perhaps most damning for the Western liberal consensus, Dikötter puts a definitive nail in the coffin of the strategic assumptions about China’s rise. It is clear that China had no intention of joining the democratic world, despite the fevered dreams of the West’s industrialists, corporate leaders, politicians, and others. It was the great geopolitical self-deception of the 20century—the assumption that if China’s economy joined the free market, democratic values would surely follow. That assumption that, as China’s economy opened, so too would the space for free speech, free press, and other freedoms so cherished and taken for granted in the democratic world. These assumptions characterized so much of the West’s actions towards Beijing, informing its efforts to get China to join the World Trade Organization, the often counter-productive actions taken by corporations in the United States to gain access to China’s markets, and policies towards the region designed to not antagonize Beijing out of fear of economic retaliation.
Particularly in recent years as China’s rise created frictions within the international system, this strategic assumption has gradually ebbed—not completely, but it is certainly a far cry from the level of esteem in which it was once held. Beijing’s true intentions, both domestically and internationally, are increasingly being understood through China’s own words and behaviors—not internationalist political philosophy.
It is disappointing that the book ends somewhat abruptly in 2012, attempting to summarize the events of the last decade in a breezily written epilogue. Coming to power in November of that year, Xi Jinping firmly placed his mark not just on the Chinese Communist Party, but China itself and the world more broadly. From centralizing his power and having “Xi Jinping Thought” elevated alongside that of Mao and Deng to the One Belt, One Road Initiative, Xi is truly becoming China’s “Great Helmsman” for the 21 century. Yet, China under Xi has also encountered some of the most significant challenges in the country’s modern history, and could well face as turbulent times ahead as at any point since the founding of the party in 1947. Indeed, arguably under Xi, long-standing assumptions about China, about doing business with China, and Beijing’s own social contract with its population that exchanges economic prosperity with political obedience have all become strained.
How China will seek to manage these trends and how the 21Century “Great Helmsman” navigates these turbulent waters is unclear. Despite Xi’s aggressive efforts to centralized power, removing those who oppose him and his policies (often under the guise of crackdowns on corruption) he has not yet been truly tested on the international stage. True enough, relations with the United States have become far more fractious than in previous years—the arrival of President Donald Trump and a separate, but accompanying increased hawkishness towards Beijing, one that was helped by China’s own behaviors. Reflecting on post-COVID-19 diplomacy and developments, Dikötter writes, “Against all odds, the regime had succeeded in alienating not just one of its greatest supporters, but also the one power that had created the very conditions on which it had depended for its survival.”
There is also the risk, as Hal Brands and Michael Beckley write in “The Danger Zone,” that systemic issues such as the state’s intervention in the economy, demographic challenges, and environmental degradation could lead to a China that is “peaking” and at risk of declining, thereby increasing the possibility of conflict with the West.
At the same time, one wonders if, like that of the American president, the ability of the general secretary to affect policy change in the 21century isn’t more circumscribed than is assumed. True, Xi has far more ability to assert his will and that of the party than his Western counterparts, but the vagaries and complexities of the international economy, information age, and the attendant speed of change may stress the ability of China’s leaders to respond. Indeed, Dikötter astutely notes “The challenge lying ahead for the Communist Party was how to address an entire range of longstanding structural issues of its own making without giving up its monopoly over power and its control over the means of production.”
The political and economic pressures China faces will most certainly manifest themselves within the Chinese Communist Party itself and at the provincial and municipal level. As Dikötter shows, it is the case that the interactions amongst the party, the bureaucrats, business, and more that often have the greatest impact on Beijing’s ability to act. Indeed, there is very little to suggest that this dynamic will change—it certainly did not across China’s tumultuous history from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution, and onto Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalization. The partisan political color may change, but partisan politics remains the same. While the West may assume Xi’s premiership is unlikely to experience any challenges, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence—we just may not be looking hard enough or asking the right questions.
