Dictators do not like others grading their performance. Any sort of assessment of such leaders’ successes or failures, even by their close colleagues and advisers, is a big step towards undermining them. Permitting criticism, let alone encouraging it, is out of the question.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China’s most powerful boss since Mao Zedong, must feel particularly strongly about this. In 2022, Xi will seek the endorsement of the CPC’s 20th Congress for his plan to remain in power for a third term, thereby abolishing the two-term limit established by Deng Xiaoping and adhered to ever since.
MORE FROM THIS SECTION See All
Premium Premium Advancing the trade cure for global crises like covid
Premium Premium West Asia’s backwater blues
Premium Premium China bets on finding common prosperity
Premium Premium Recovering stronger together
That arrangement was in part an attempt to prevent any return to Mao-like dictatorship, and it succeeded in collectivizing the CPC’s leadership. But one only has to look at the personality cult established by Xi and penetrate the meaning of “Xi Jinping thought", which has now been incorporated into the Party’s constitution, to understand the current Chinese president’s intentions.
First, Xi’s all-embracing philosophy asserts that the CPC is the inheritor of all that is best in Chinese history and culture. Second, there is a strong element of grievance-infused nationalism. Third, and probably most important, is the instruction to party and country that they should never forget that Xi is in charge of everything from the moment people rise in the morning until they switch off the bedside light at night. And even then, Xi is watching them and watching over them.
But even if Xi does not want others to scrutinize his record, his closest advisers must see that he may have squandered the years of peak power China had gained because of its economic strength and the problems faced by West since the 2008 global financial crisis. “Post-peak" China’s existential problems will now become ever more apparent. The country is not looking so unquestionably like the new and worryingly successful power that it has been. In some ways, that makes it potentially even more troublesome and threatening for the rest of the world.
The most dramatic recent manifestation of China sliding past a tipping point has been the crisis at the property developer Evergrande. The Evergrande debacle goes well beyond a huge market failure, and brings together two of the three big existential perils confronting the Chinese government.
The first is excessive indebtedness—not least in the real estate sector. Today, China requires twice as much borrowing to produce every measure of growth as it did 10 years ago.
China’s second major problem is demographic: spiralling debt and falling productivity have been accompanied by a dramatic decline in the size of the working-age population. The economically active population is projected to shrink by 194 million by 2050.
TRENDING STORIES See All
Premium Gold set for biggest annual fall in 6 years, down ？900 ...
Premium Delhi govt shuts two markets for violation of Covid norms
Premium Booster dose: When and how will beneficiaries be notifi ...
Premium Maharashtra schools will not be shut as of now, says he ...
Xi’s response to these growing economic problems has been to double down on his commitment to increase control over China’s more productive private sector and to favour state-owned enterprises. This policy is driven by his fear of ceding control to successful big tech firms, and seeing the rewards of private-sector achievement exacerbate the inequalities that constitute a third Achilles heel of Chinese communism.
But the Gini coefficient, which measures wealth and income inequality, shows that China is now more unequal than many Western developed countries, and is approaching US levels of economic disparity. Forcing a few billionaires to hand over some of their fortunes to the state or to state-directed projects will not change much.
In addition to high indebtedness, unfavourable demographics and widening inequality, China is confronting huge resource and environmental challenges. It imports more crude oil than any other country and faces problems of food security. Meanwhile, climate change is taking its toll, in particular leading to a water shortage in northern China. The country has only 7% of the world’s fresh water, but 18% of its population, and there is a complete mismatch between where people live and where water is found.
China’s contribution to global reductions in carbon dioxide emissions is likely to be a further drag on economic growth, which in any event will probably flatline as a result of the debt and demographic problems. Xi may seek to retain political control through even more surveillance and intimidation as the population feels a growing economic pinch.
It should also be clear that Xi’s regime has overplayed its geopolitical hand. Obsessed with the idea that the US and its liberal democratic allies were in terminal decline, Xi bragged that China was seeking “a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position". Through its “wolf warrior" diplomacy, China would supposedly boss the Indo-Pacific region and show the world a model of successful totalitarianism.
But China’s neighbours—from India to Japan, South Korea to Singapore, and Australia to Vietnam—have become increasingly willing to resist Xi’s muscle-flexing. Moreover, the US has begun with some success to build cooperative partnerships with others. The aim is not to create a bamboo curtain around China as part of a second Cold War. Rather, liberal democracies want to constrain China’s bad behaviour, make it pay for its bullying breaches of international agreements, and work with it when this serves the global interest—provided that China keeps its word.
The objective truth is that China’s aggressive diplomacy has failed. Now China will have to change tack. The danger is that Xi, whom some think is a risk-taker, may become even more aggressive. So, instead of securing the Chinese public’s tacit political agreement through economic growth, he would seek their support at a time of greater hardship by whipping up nationalist fervour—particularly over Taiwan.
An alarming number of experts now regard a Chinese attack on Taiwan as a real possibility. In many respects, these are more perilous times for all of us. Liberal democracies must discreetly but firmly make it clear to Xi that they have red lines that China must not cross, and that one of them lies in the waters of the Taiwan Strait. ？2021/PROJECT SYNDICATE ( www.project-syndicate.org)
Chris Patten is the last British Governor of Hong Kong and chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Subscribe to Mint Newsletters
* Enter a valid email
* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.
Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!!