An Era Just Ended in China
By Yuen Yuen Ang
Credit...Thomas Peter/ReutersForty-four years ago, Deng Xiaoping kicked off the period of “reform and opening up” that transformed China from a poor, autarkic nation into an emerging global power.
President Xi Jinping officially ended that era last week.
He emerged from the Chinese Communist Party’s congress in Beijing with unchallenged authority and plans for China that revolve around his obsession with control and security — even if that means harming the economy.
It’s a momentous change in outlook.
Deng Xiaoping’s strategy for China’s spectacular economic achievements had two main components.
The first was a collective leadership arrangement within the Communist Party.
Deng rejected Western-style democracy, but China’s tumultuous decades under Mao Zedong had taught him that one-man rule is dangerous.
He and the party introduced partial checks and balances into politics at the highest level, including term limits.
The second component was a single-minded pursuit of economic growth that, Deng famously declared, would be China’s “hard principle.”
Officials throughout China dove headlong into promoting growth at all costs — bringing prosperity but also corruption, inequality and heavy industrial pollution.
Last week in Beijing, Mr. Xi dismantled those foundations.
He ensured that he would remain paramount leader of China for a third term — if not for life — and packed the party’s leadership with loyalists while heavily prioritizing national security over the pursuit of economic growth.
In his speech to the party congress at the Great Hall of the People on Oct. 16, he mentioned “security” significantly more often than “economy,” a major break with precedent.
He went further, declaring unambiguously, “National security is the bedrock of national rejuvenation, and social stability is a prerequisite for building a strong and prosperous China.”
In Chinese politics, small changes in wording can herald big shifts in ideology and policy.
If there were any remaining doubts about Mr. Xi’s intentions, he dispelled them by vowing that China would stick to its zero-Covid policy, “without wavering.”
His government’s approach to the pandemic, a public health policy in name, is in reality the most powerful security tool devised by the Communist Party, restricting access to the country and controlling who can go where, underpinned by tracking apps that citizens and visitors must have on their smartphones.
For observers long accustomed to Deng’s growth-first ethos, Mr. Xi’s policy choice is mind-boggling.
The Covid controls are angering citizens, crippling China’s economy, decimating domestic consumption, disrupting manufacturing and logistics, and repelling foreign and local investors alike.
Why is the most powerful Chinese leader in decades so obsessed with security and domestic control that he would sacrifice the economy?
The answer lies in an array of domestic and foreign challenges, some worsened by Mr. Xi’s own policy choices.
Politically, he probably fears the proverbial knife in the back after making enemies through a decade-long anti-corruption campaign in which thousands of officials — possibly including potential political rivals — were punished and is doubling down on repression out of his instinct for self-preservation.
On the economic front, he faces smoldering crises, including an economy that is slowing sharply, a property sector meltdown and record-breaking youth unemployment.
These problems have been exacerbated by the Covid controls and by Mr. Xi’s “common prosperity” campaign — a strategy for narrowing inequality and addressing monopolistic behavior by big tech firms and other private companies, which was punctuated by an abrupt and sweeping regulatory crackdown last year that has alarmed investors.
The market backlash was intense: Within months, more than a trillion dollars in value at many of China’s most innovative companies evaporated.
On foreign policy, Mr. Xi has projected an ambition to challenge American primacy.
The Trump administration’s chaotic handling of the pandemic prompted Mr. Xi to boast that “the East is rising and the West is declining.”
But his triumphalism was premature.
China is far from an even match with the United States in economic, military or technological power.
And while American democracy is in crisis, the United States remains strong, a true superpower and a free country able to criticize and renew itself.
Mr. Xi criticizes the West for seeking to contain China, but his hubris and aggressive approach helped bring about this threat.
To be sure, Mr. Xi does not intend to completely abandon the capitalist success that rejuvenated China and brought global respect and influence.
And to his credit, he has confronted serious problems that his predecessors swept under the rug, particularly corruption and economic inequality.
His vision of a powerful China, respected on the global stage, is warranted given his country’s size and economic clout.
But addressing China’s myriad problems will require measured steps that Mr. Xi seems disinclined to take.
Putting out fires in China’s economy must begin with relaxing Covid restrictions and importing more effective vaccines, something that his government has prevented.
These won’t be miracle cures, but they are necessary first steps that will go a long way toward alleviating stress on China’s people and reassuring investors that his leadership team has not lost all sense.
Mr. Xi has plunged China into a vicious cycle: A hubristic and authoritarian leader, unaccountable to society and unchallenged even by his own advisers, makes poor policy choices, which add to his problems, exacerbating his fears of a revolt and leading to more repression.
The consequences of his decision to emphasize security over economic vibrancy will be global.
China is the world’s second-largest economy and the biggest trading partner of dozens of countries.
A prolonged economic slowdown in China will increase the risk of a global recession, with many countries sharing the pain.
In the long run, there may be winners as China’s waning competitiveness hastens a shift in global supply chains to other emerging economies.
But if China turns inward, it will lose. Chinese tech companies are already expanding overseas to compensate for a restrictive home environment.
China’s great capitalist revolution under Deng and his successors is now history.
So is Mr. Xi’s first 10 years in office, when there was at least a minimal layer of checks on his power from moderate, non-loyalist officials.
China under Mao and the former Soviet Union proved that absolute dictatorships fail miserably at making nations prosperous and strong.
They bring only impoverishment and false security.
Mr. Xi is likely to relearn those lessons in the coming years.
Ms. Ang is the author of “China’s Gilded Age.”
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