In my most recent China Watch video for Newsbud, I have some
fun with the ostentatious handwringing and concern trolling the West concerning
the CCP proposal to abolish term limits for the presidency of the PRC.
Here’s the trailer!
The video offers my unique take on U.S. presidential term
limits, one that I think is surprising and revealing. That’s a teaser, folks. Go to Newsbud.com to subscribe and take a
look.
In interest of time and in consideration of the
general-interest audience, Newsbud edited out the inside-baseball slice of my
video that discussed the real issue behind the presidency dustup: Xi Jinping’s
move to affirm a succession protocol for party General Secretary that could
give him three or more terms, instead of the two terms that have been customary
for the last couple decades.
Here’s the script for the bit that pretty much got dropped:
Long story short, the
primary significance of the proposed abolition of term limits for presidency of
the PRC is that it essentially confirms that Xi Jinping is going to go for at
least one additional term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
And where it counts, inside the Chinese
Communist Party, there are no term limits.
Not really.
The reported rule of
thumb for membership in the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of
collective leadership in the Party and the pool from which party general
secretaries are selected, was “seven up/eight down.” It meant that cadres 67
years and under could advance to the Standing Committee and have a shot at
becoming general secretary; those 68 and older should retire. This rule was supposedly instituted by party
secretary Jiang Zemin in 2002.
Actually, the rule was
a rather special interpretation of the principle of generational renewal of the
CCP leadership cadre ever ten years instituted by Deng Xiaoping because, to put
it bluntly, Jiang Zemin wanted to screw a political rival, Li Ruihuan, who
happened to be 68 years old.
Xi Jinping will turn
68 on June 15, 2021—a year before his second term as party secretary ends—so
it’s understandable his people have been debunking the seven up/eight down rule
to the press for some time.
Folklore, I tell you!
More to the point,
perhaps, for China every CCP general secretary before Xi Jinping had been
selected or prepositioned by Deng Xiaoping.
That includes Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping’s predecessor, who finished up as
general secretary in 2012—fifteen years after Deng Xiaoping died.
Given the historical context of CCP succession strategies
and China’s new situation in the world, I would guess that Xi Jinping has had
some success in selling the idea inside the Party that he’s tweaking the system
to reflect current realities, not overturning an iron-clad norm.
The flurry of leaks and criticism of the PRC presidential
term limits move is, I expect, a surrogate for dismay that Xi Jinping views his
tenure as General Secretary as open-ended and that his view is apparently
prevailing inside the CCP.
Carping about presidential term limits in the public sphere
might reflect more of a “go for broke” attitude by opponents who feel that the
intra-Party debate isn’t going their way.
What the heck? If Xi is going to lock in the job Party Secretary for the
next decade, there’s nothing to be gained by staying silent and little lost by
speaking up now.
So anti-Xi Jinping voices are now more willing to blab and
turn Western journos largely shut out of news about CCP internal matters into
instant experts on the precariousness of Xi’s rule.
If the domestic and international hubbub forces Xi to climb
down on term limits revision, he will have certainly suffered a major setback.
But I think the odds are against it.
For what it’s worth, I regard critics of Xi Jinping’s
ambitions for prolonging his stint as Party Secretary fall into a few
categories:
People inside and outside the party who don’t like Xi’s plan
to manage the PRC through an increasingly activist, pro-active, and intrusive
CCP;
People inside the party who prefer the collectivist
leadership model (and the ability of cadres to make political and financial hay
by leveraging their loyalties without worrying overmuch about threats to their
political power and economic interests) to a powerful, if not Mao-like General
Secretary;
People who have no big problem with big-leader rule but
prefer it wouldn’t be implemented by Xi Jinping. I guess there are some dead enders who hope
that Bo Xilai will get sprung from prison and lead the CCP to glory, but don’t
know if there’s anybody else out there.
My thesis is that Xi Jinping’s case for a powerful CCP
bossman unhampered by term limits may be self-serving but it also has enough
merit for the party as a whole to acquiesce.
There’s a miasma of crisis, corruption, and drift
surrounding the PRC and the CCP, and Xi Jinping’s long war to renovate the CCP
as an instrument of effective technocratic rule in an era of significant national challenge might be seen to deserve another decade to
succeed (or fail so utterly that the approach will be discredited).
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