So, it has been nearly two months now since Xi Jinping was "elected" for a third term as China's dictator president, and stacked the Politburo Standing Committee with his faithful toadies. He seems to be the bad habit China can't break, a term which will seem more than a little ironic by the end of this article. If anything surprises me (and that's a big if) it's the roster of the aforementioned toadies.
Frankly, at the time of this event I was going to write an article with some biographical information on this Rogues Gallery, but as it has already been done everything from BBC to Twitter it would seem a bit superfluous. There's little more left to say on the subject other than to gather up what has already been said on the subject (synopsis: China is sliding into something between the Mao and Qing eras), and when it comes to rounding up China-related news and putting it in one place where the meat and potatoes can be easily picked out, I think @bossel already does it well enough that there's no need to reinvent a wheel that he's already got both hands on.
I will take a minute to point out that three of those who rose to the PSC, rose there from the so-called "Standing Committee to Fight the Novel Coronavirus". Which three?
Cai Qi, the former head of "National Security" whose only notable feature is having once had a Western social media footprint.
Wang Huning, a man whose principle purpose in the party is to come up with catchy slogans, and by "catchy" I mean "they contain a number so the population of China can remember them."
Ding Xuexiang, a man who has never led anything and who ingratiates himself with his superiors by memorizing every word they say and quoting it later as if it was inspiring.
Of course, two other notables who were on both the Coronavirus committee and the previous Politburo Standing Committee have disappeared from the roster. Li Keqiang, the hapless scapegoat of Xi Jinping's last term (who is famous for being too honest with the West, both by admitting China's GDP figures were crap (*Reuters) and by creating the "Keqiang Index" (Sinolytics Radar) to measure China's ACTUAL economic performance), is notably absent, as is Wang Yi, the former Foreign Minister who established the mindset, if not the name, of "Wolf Warrior Diplomacy" when he lambasted a Canadian reporter, on Canadian soil, for daring to ask questions China didn't like. The latter, though I was surprised to see him on his way out given that his mindset and rhetoric so perfectly match that of Xi Jinping, will not be missed.
The only two returning members of the previous PSC are Zhao Leji, a rather unremarkable political figure who rose from Qinghai (that's "Inner Tibet") and is the head of the country's top (ahem) "anti-corruption" organization, and the above-mentioned Wang Huning, who is notable for being the only individual to sit on the current AND former Politburo Standing Committee as well as the Coronavirus Committee, all three. I recommend keeping an eye out for this guy. He doesn't seem like the type who likes to wield power in his own right but he's managed to be a major player in the Zhang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping administrations without getting purged by Xi for having served under one of two of his rivals. That's no small feat, given the infighting.
What we can gather from this is that Xi prioritizes groveling over skill, censorship and repression of dissidents over trade, and foreign propaganda over actual diplomacy, but then again anyone who has been in China for more than ten days in the past ten years knew this. If they've read a bit of China's literature then they know this is nothing that Xi brought to the table and has in fact been China's M.O. since Qin Shihuang created China in 221 B.C, but I digress.
"Enough About What We Already Know, Patriam!"
So, now that it is clear Xi Jinping has not only gotten his third term but purged every rival faction capable of nurturing a possible replacement for him, Western commentators have been speculating "what does this mean for China's future?"
Well the answer is, "a return to the past," and I really can't understand why anyone is surprised. If anyone is paying attention, everything anyone needs to know about Xi Jinping is written right into his own name.
习 (Xí) - "Habit"
近 (jìn) - "Near / Close"
平 (píng) - "Flat"
First off, Xi's own surname means "habit." With this in mind, are we surprised to see that under Xi, China is reverting to its ages-old archetypal habits of repression and aggression? And his given names, 近平, taken together mean "nearly flat." They are also a Chinese slang term roughly comparable to the English idiom "on its last legs." Ergo, we should not be surprised that he has nearly destroyed China's economy after two generations of meteoric growth. So, these Western investors who are assuring us that China will return to its Deng-Xiaoping-Era M.O. of opening up for trade "any day now" should take note. China's 'habits' (opening up) are 'nearly flat' (practically ended), and they admit this every time they print their leader's own name: Xi (habit) Jin Ping (nearly flat).
But of course I'm being partially facetious here. After all, he didn't choose his name. His parents did. But then again, in Chinese culture, everyone gets a "here is why your mother and I gave you this name" chat at some point, and it is worth examining how seriously Xi took this, especially in light of the pun his parents seemed to be making when they named him.
You see, it is common among Chinese speakers to make a form of puns by using a word in place of another that has the same vowel and consonant but a different tone. Look up "river crab" on any Chinese social media and you'll see what I mean. And it should be noted, the Chinese word for "West," 西, is also pronounced "xi," just in a different tone.
Ergo, if you change the tone of Xi Jinping's surname, you get 西近平, which loosely translates as "The West is Nearly Flat."
And yes, Jinnie the Pooh does firmly believe that, and China's foreign policy under him has reflected this. That could be dismissed with an eyeroll as merely a phonetic coincidence, but let us go a step further.
From the beginning of Xi's reign, the worshipful sycophantic cult court of priests supporters who surround Xi Jinping have been working diligently to elevate him to a Messianic status somewhere between the way Tibetans view the Dalai Lama and the way Christians view Jesus of Nazareth. It would not be even a slight exaggeration to say he is aggressively portrayed by Chinese state-owned media as a god(1) (Gan, Martel). As such, his official dogma, which bears the incredibly original and creative name of "Xi Jinping Thought (习近平思想)," has been enshrined into everything from the education system (BBC Staff) to the country's own Constitution (Xinhua Staff). State Mouthpiece People's Daily has had some rather ham-fisted examples.
"Xi Jinping Thought is the fundamental guideline of national political and social life."
"All cadres must take the diligent study of Xi Jinping Thought as the core focus of their development."
Now then, let's have a bit of a thought exercise here. What would happen if you read these statements, with the tone of the character "Xi" slightly off so that it became 西 (West) instead of 习 (habit)? Well, this turns 习近平思想 (Xi Jinping thought) into 西近平思想 (the ideology that the West is 'nearly flat').
"The-ideology-that-the-West-is-nearly-dead is the fundamental guideline of national political and social life."
"All cadres must take the diligent study of The-ideology-that-the-West-is-nearly-dead as the core focus of their development."
Every, single, citizen, of China, bar none, zero exceptions, is inundated with this every day. They read it in their textbooks (as early as kindergarten), their newspapers, they hear it in their music, they hear it on the news, they see it in mass text messages on their phones from Public Authorities. They're arrested if they question it.
And yes, they believe it.
So no, China is not going to "open up" again any time soon.
No, "Wolf Warrior diplomacy" is not just a phase China is going through.
No, detente is not possible and is not going to be possible.
No, even mutual co-existence with China is not possible and is not going to be possible.
China's entire national identity is predicated upon the notion that the world consists of China and barbarians, nothing else. Their culture is built upon ages old myths of a Heaven-mandated right to global ascendancy.
And now, their entire foreign and domestic policy is built upon the doctrine that the dawn of this long awaited Chinese global hegemony, the "中华民族伟达复兴," is close at hand; that the enemy China has gnashed their teeth at and hated and envied for nearly two centuries, that nebulously-defined phantom bogeyman, "The West," is dying.
And they just gave an unprecedented third term to a dictator whose very name carries that belief in it.
No, ladies and gentlemen. China is not your friend. China is not going to be your friend. Even if those protesters you are cheering for actually did tear down the Communist Party (which isn't likely), China still wouldn't be your friend. If the Party falls, the population who created it as an expression of their jingoistic desires will create something in its place that is no less aggressive. China and civilization cannot both exist. One must destroy the other. Belligerence, deception, genocide, and ethnonarcissism are the habits upon which their entire national identity is built.
It's really time for the West to get that through their heads.
(1) I'm saying "a god," with a lower case g, though it might be noted that Chinese tradition viewed the Emperor as God, singular and capitalized, so it would not surprise me a bit if Xinhua started to try and ascribe deity status to this dictator.
Works Cited
BBC Staff. "China schools: 'Xi Jinping Thought' introduced into curriculum." BBC World News. 25 Aug 2021. Web. 19 Dec 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58301575
Gan, Nectar. "Want to escape poverty? Replace pictures of Jesus with Xi Jinping, Christian villagers urged." South China Morning Post. 14 Nov, 2017. Web. 19 Dec, 2022. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2119699/praise-xi-jinping-not-jesus-escape-poverty-christian
Martel, Frances. "China Urges Rural Christians to Replace Jesus Images with Xi Jinping." Breitbart. 14 Nov 2017. Web. 19 Dec, 2022. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/11/14/china-urges-christian-peasants-replace-jesus-images-xi-jinping/
Reuters Staff. "China's GDP is "man-made," unreliable: top leader." Reuters. 6 Dec, 2010. Web. 26 Oct, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206
Sinolytics Radar. "The Keqiang index as an alternative to GDP." Table China. 15 June, 2022. Web. 26 Oct, 2022. https://table.media/china/en/sinolytics-radar-en/the-keqiang-index-as-an-alternative-to-gdp/
Song, Wanyuan & Wong, Tessa. "Politburo Standing Committee: Who are the men who rule China now?." BBC. 25 Oct, 2022. Web. 25 Oct, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63339821
Xinhua Staff. "Xi Jinping thought proposed to be included in Constitution." Xinhua. 25 Feb, 2018. Web. 19 Dec, 2022. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-02/25/c_136999028.htm