black boxes and links
that connection is worrisome
One of the issues separating the People’s Liberation Army from the U.S. military is its approach to loyalty. As noted several times, any U.S. military personnel (and civilian employees), enlisted and officers, take a mandated oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. One actually raises her or his right hand to repeat the words an official reads, allowing the individual to consider the words before agreeing (or potentially refusing) to abide by the commitment. When one receives a promotion in one of the uniformed services, it is overwhelmingly common to repeat the oath as part of the ritual.
The essential portion is that one is agreeing to abide by, thus protect, the legal constraints and mandates of our form of government as laid out in that meticulously written piece of negotiation and compromise leading to a government in 1787.
Contemporary China, post-1949, exists under an increasingly harsh, centralised government seated in Beijing but extending across the vast country under Chinese Communist Party local officials carrying out the Party’s will. (I do acknowledge the ‘mountains are high and the emperor far away’ so local officials definitely craft things a bit to their personal liking which gets them into trouble much of the time with powerful leaders like Xi Jinping). China’s is an avowed Marxist-Leninist regime meaning that the decision-making within that party resides in the hands of the senior party members in various ever-narrowing representative bodies that culminate with the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the entire decision-making system looking a lot like a steep pyramid with the Standing Committee and its head—the General Secretary’’—on top.
China has a gussied up constitution which is far more elaborate than ours. It has a Politburo, a Standing Committee of the Politburo, a Premier, a General Secretary of the Party, and a myriad of Leading Groups which specialise on topics ranging from internal security to Taiwan to energy to water to anything that might be relevant to the country, This list barely scratches the surface of the titles available to Party members with potential decision-making authority.
China also has a raft of political offices such as the President of the People’s Republic and an associated chain of state offices recognisable to those of us in democratic systems. The problem is that these offices, whether at the Guangdong provincial level or at the Vice President of the entire national government level, have only figurehead power since the fear and the rewards do not reside in constitutionally-mandated government positions.
The fiction, by every piece of evidence available, is that anyone beyond those seven Party men (funny how that part hasn’t changed even when the number of members has increased or fallen) controls the apparatus governing the lives of over a billion people.
Similarly, the People’s Liberation Army actually, according to the formal organisational chart, is an office under the power of the civilian Ministry of Defense. The Ministry, however, has no real power because it’s a mirror image of western political structures but not empowered to make decisions or challenge them. That power resides within an opaque Party structure and in a line under the Central Military Commission chaired by—you guessed it—Xi Jinping.
The evidence, however, points to the concentration of genuine power in the hands of that General Secretary, especially since Xi Jinping assumed the position in mid-November 2012. Xi is the fifth General Secretary to serve for an extended period, though he has yet to reach Mao’s quarter century plus in the role. He is ‘triple hatted’ as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, President of the PRC, and General Secretary of the Party with the latter key.
One of the reasons for this significant difference from democratic practices is China’s cultural heritage of quanxi, or the pivotal role of relationships rather than laws. Put another way, relationships substitute for laws in China regardless of the form of government. This means that those associated with Xi not only have his confidence but have some sort of ties that may be murky if not entirely hidden to the naked eye. The links might be familial, business, a combination of the two or some other relatively ironclad connection one is highly unlikely to break. The power of quanxi thus becomes its own form of check and balance is some different ways than we anticipate in the west but is destroys transparency.
An excellent, personal account of this appears in Desmond Shum’s, Red Roulette. Shum’s memoire acknowledged he and his former (long disappeared, as well) wife became ludicrously wealthy through their ties with the wife of former Fourth Generation Premier Wen Jiabao’s. It’s an engrossing tale which I have no personal way to judge as entirely fictional or entirely truthful but it sounds true to form. The opaque Chinese decision-making, because of personal ties, prevents anyone from knowing the accuracy precisely but the book has received relatively positive acclaim in its two years on the street.
Shum’s account of how his wife was protected, advanced, and enriched financially by Mrs. Wen’s power is clear. When Wen and his family were not longer in the senior most ranks of the Party following Xi Jinping’s assumption of the General Secretary position, Shum’s former wife fell from grace rapidly and completely as those delicious ties from earlier decades became immediate and insurmountable liabilities. Shum’s former wife had not been seen for five years at the time of the book’s publication. Shum’s wife might have stood trial, then faced death for her corruption but she could well be incarcerated or ‘internally exiled’ as thousands, if not millions, have been in the CCP era. While Xi aggressively pursued corruption, other regimes also selectively seek out their opponents.
Quanxi thus is a legacy of China’s long history of relationships and their importance in a society striving to prevent luan or chaos yet they also become illustrative of why China’s leaders advocate rule by law rather than rule of law.
All of this make two newsworthy events on the mainland over the summer rather startling. First was the downfall of Qin Gang, the Foreign Minister who simply disappeared several weeks ago. Qin was considered a ‘wolf diplomat’, definitely ‘in-your-face’ when addressing U.S. and the world. Qin was aggressive, undoubtedly with Xi’s support because the latter hand picked him for the position and the top-down nature of both China’s culture and leadership, expecially under Xi’s feared campaign to reign in any potentially autonomous actors in the Party, simply discourages risk-taking. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign of the past 11 years has every evidence of hitting corrupt officials but not necessarily preventing his cadres from perpetuating their own illicit activities of various forms.
We don’t know nor are we every likely to know to any satisfactory degree what Qin’s sin was. It could have been the alleged fathering of a child because Xi has indeed been preachy about morals. But that sounds too much like U.S. morality-projecting to me. Second families and multiple mistresses are as common as floods of the Yangzi in the country’s culture. Indeed, reading a biography of Chiang Kai-shek, the remembered stoic on Taiwan, brings to mind his multiple marriages, mistresses, and allegedly unacknowledged grandchildren by Chiang Ching-kuo. Of course Xi may have discovered the centrality of a single wife and children of that nuclear family but I put no faith in that quaint argument.
It could be that Qin fell foul to corruption issues. It could be that he crossed a quanxi connection that Xi found too valuable so he sacrificed Qin. With relationships, whether known and less known, it’s easy to see why Xi could have had a tough choice. It could be that Qin genuinely is ill. There are so many reasons, most of which I haven’t even touched here, that Wang Yi, the silkier diplomat who preceded him is back in the seat.
But, Qin was absolutely Xi’s guy so it does raise tantalising questions about whether something else is going on behind the opaque curtains.
Similarly, Xi implemented one of the most harsh displays of his anti-corruption cudgel against corrupt PLA officials beginning in 2013. Dozens of well-known PLA senior officials stopped dying their hair jet black as they appeared before Party courts to profess their failure. The Party always claims to believe in self-confession but rarely does it in the volume we have seen recently.
By doing that, Xi also opened the door to substantial reform of hte PLA as he sought to create a ‘world class’ military because he eliminated opposition. The reforms began in late 2015 and carved out not only different geographic organising structures for the country’s forces but also reconfigured the forces themselves. The PLA’s desire to compete with U.S. forces is no secret. Repeated modeling of so many American military approaches (as much of this reform did) is no surprise.
As in the American military where any president, with a functioning Senate’s advises and confirms, replaces leaders periodically, Xi hand picked the leadership of the PLA to his liking. That should neither surprise nor bother anyone as it is how a senior position in any government works. Period.
It was last week’s news that Xi Jinping already removed the leaders of the rocket force that is interesting. It is probable that the Party or merely Xi himself decided the missile force generals were disloyal but that is a broad categorisation. It is extremely unlikely that disloyalty could lead to disregarding a direct order. Instead, they could be corrupt, they could be attempting to create their own networks, they could be doing a lot of things but for the second time in weeks, Xi’s judgement appears less unchallengable. We simply have no transparency.
This all occurs less than a year of Xi’s personal COVID campaign ending suddenly. That public reversal followed weeks of surprising public protests, heretofore unknown in the Xi era, when comparing him to Winnie the Pooh with his increasingly rotund frame could result in immediate censorship. Occurring at a time of youth unemployment, frustration with the economic rebound slower than anticipated, and Biden’s on-going strengthening of partnerships surrounding Beijing, this probably mars Xi’s rock solid image as the unquestioned General Secretary needed to push aggravation within the Party cadres.
Will they act that on that? That is likely far away but because Xi so effectively shut down already murky decision-making processes and choices, we simply don’t know anything for sure. We just don’t know much by design.
So what should outsiders, especially those of us worrying about either the ambitions of China or its internal strength, take from this? We likely see a China with as many problems domestically as any nation with 1.3 billion folks, disastrous heat and water problems, demographic tensions on gender, inequality of distribution, and long-term support for an aging population among a long list of problems.
Loyalty towards the Party per se is not likely one of the immediate dangers to the CCP. However, China’s history is replete with regimes seen as unable to meet the needs of its people. It often appears as a drip drip drip drip drip. That is a bad thing for any leader.
Could Xi use foreign policy choices to solidfy support? Of course but is that a guarantee he will do so? No way to know..
Black boxes are more common in Marxist-Leninist regimes than in democracies whether parliamentary, republican, or something else. It certainly ought not to comfort us, however, that China’s current mantra is rule by law is actually allowing rule by relationship. That indeed could be a problem.FIN
Chris Buckley, ‘Xi Rebuilt the Military to his Liking, Now a Shake-up Threatens His Image’, NewYorkTimes.com, 7 August 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/world/asia/china-nuclear-military-xi.html
Desmond Shum, Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China (New York: Scribners, 2021)