China’s Xi Jinping Seeks Safety in Numbers—Or Else Chinese president’s ‘Long March of today’ aims to stamp on dissent and step up his authority By Chun Han Wong
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-seeks-safety-in-numbersor-else-1477218068
BEIJING—Ahead of a top-level Communist Party conclave, Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending an unmistakable signal about what he expects from the tens of millions in the party’s ranks: total loyalty.
Culminating a weekslong state-media blitz hailing the sacrifice of Communist forces that trekked thousands of miles in the mid-1930s to find a haven to continue their revolution, Mr. Xi on Friday called for an equal display of commitment. “In our Long March of today, we must strengthen the party’s leadership, persist with strict party discipline,” he said in a speech carried on national television and emblazoned across the web.
His rallying cry was also a warning. As China’s ruling party braces for a year of intense political jostling ahead of a major leadership shuffle, its leader will brook no dissent within party ranks.
When more than 300 top party officials gather Monday for a four-day policy meeting themed on discipline, Mr. Xi’s own clout will also come in for a test. The Central Committee’s closed-door plenum comes after an anticorruption drive that has punished more than a million officials over nearly four years, and ahead of a party congress due late 2017 that will be his chance to install his allies in top posts.
The plenum “marks the start of a critical year” for the party, as it grapples with uncertainties in leadership transition and pushback against Mr. Xi’s domineering style, said Matthias Stepan, a specialist in Chinese domestic politics at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.
Already, more than a dozen provincial party chiefs have been replaced in the past six months, with some succeeded by up-and-coming officials seen as being close to Mr. Xi. Speculation has also grown within party ranks over whether Mr. Xi may break from existing retirement norms to keep his anticorruption chief, Wang Qishan, in office.
Such a move, analysts say, may destabilize a party already wary of Mr. Xi’s stature as China’s most dominant leader in decades. Discord at the party’s highest levels spilled into the open this summer, when Mr. Xi and China’s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Keqiang, disagreed over economic policies, creating confusion among officials as they grappled with a slowing economy.
Mr. Xi has cashiered generals and is putting the politically powerful military through its most thoroughgoing reorganization in a half-century. Restructuring is also being pushed onto large state-owned industries, some of which have resisted, leading to a reminder from Mr. Xi this month that they must obey the party.
Since becoming party leader in late 2012, Mr. Xi has concentrated more power in his hands than his recent predecessors, upending the consensus-driven, collective leadership that has prevailed in recent decades. While doubling down on anticorruption efforts, the president has empowered the party’s discipline-inspection agency to target officials who show signs of political deviance or resistance to the central leadership, stifling intraparty dissent.
This month, a party-run magazine said Mr. Xi should be hailed as the “core” of the party leadership, arguing that a strongman leader is critical to China’s rise as a great power. A documentary series on the anticorruption campaign that aired nationally this past week cheered Mr. Xi for having a down-to-earth work style, in contrast with the debauchery of former top officials convicted of graft.
Mr. Xi is “casting about for tools to shake up the system. Loosening the leash of the party disciplinary apparatus and giving it greater leeway to strike fear into the hearts of officials, might be one choice,” said Carl Minzner, a law professor at Fordham University in New York who studies the Chinese legal system. “In a country with a history like China’s, the risk is: once one starts down that path, you never know where it might end.”
Mr. Xi’s dominance has unsettled some party members, who fear a return to the dictatorial leadership that marred Mao Zedong’s tumultuous final years. In a rare instance of open criticism, a prominent retired real-estate tycoon took to social media early this year to question Mr. Xi’s demands for media loyalty. Though his criticisms were swiftly censored and his party membership suspended, several party members publicly defended the tycoon’s right to speak out.
State media meanwhile concede that Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaign, while popular, also paralyzed some local bureaucracies, as officials delay decisions for fear of being implicated in corruption probes.
Mr. Xi has characterized his campaign as an existential fight against the rampant graft and bureaucratic atrophy that has undercut party legitimacy. These efforts, alongside his sloganeering for a “China Dream” of restored national greatness, gained urgency in the past year as China’s economic slowdown sapped confidence in Mr. Xi’s economic stewardship. CONTINUE AT SITE
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