Australian sinologist Geremie R. Barmé wrote that “autocrats and patriarchs share a fateful dilemma”: once in power, “the countdown to their demise is on.”
Mao Zedong’s long descent into ill health and madness brought China to the brink of civil war. Deng Xiaoping emerged peacefully, although the decade before his death was marked by political upheaval, including the Tiananmen Square protests. Today, Xi Jinping’s “death watch” began.
Of course, the big difference is that today China is at the center of everything.
As it continues, Xi’s “death watch” will become a global spectacle, moving markets, affecting investment flows and shaping defense priorities. China’s internal risks are now global risks.
Xi’s physical condition is one thing. At 73, he is visibly slowing down; he looked fragile walking down the stairs of his plane at Andrews Air Force Base when he arrived for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump last month, shaking the hand of his wife, Peng Liyuan, to ask for her support. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese officials made a highly unusual request for Xi to have a “waiting room” at the White House where he could take breaks between meetings, and his talks with Trump were surprisingly brief.
But the mounting pressures within the Chinese system are largely invisible: leadership policies, including the health of the leader, are as much of a black box today as they were during the Deng era. But we can assume that from now on, everything that happens behind the high red walls of Beijing’s ruling complex will be linked, in one way or another, to the thorny question of how post-Xi China will be governed.
Political transitions are the midnight hour for all autocratic regimes. But Xi’s dilemma is particularly acute: If he now appoints a successor to continue his policies and protect his legacy, he risks sparking a political knife fight years before he is ready to relinquish power.
However, if we wait too long, it creates a dangerous policy vacuum.
Either way, Xi will have to choose a relative unknown – all the current members of the Politburo Standing Committee are too old to step into his shoes – raising a host of troubling questions. Would a designated successor, catapulted to the top, be strong enough to ensure the loyalty of a powerful army? Could he maintain the cohesion of the Party?
Or could Xi himself attack the chosen one? One of Mao’s designated successors, Liu Shaoqi, died of diabetes and pneumonia in solitary confinement, lying in his own filth. Deng had two successors before settling on Jiang Zemin.
Xi has become paranoid of those around him, his ruthless purges targeting some of his oldest and most trusted comrades. This does not bode well for a potential second-in-command.
China now faces a period of prolonged political uncertainty. Carl Minzner, an American legal scholar and senior fellow in China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted a “long twilight” with a slowing economy, rising social discontent and state “network management” – surveillance techniques used to maintain control over Xinjiang and other restive border areas.
A succession struggle is unlikely to stay within China’s borders, Brown University professor Tyler Jost and Yale University’s Daniel Mattingly argued in Foreign Affairs last year, noting that Xi’s primary goal is unification with Taiwan and that “if he hears the succession countdown, he might become more willing to bet on war.”
I bet the end of the Xi era will look a lot less like that of Deng, whose death made virtually no waves – by which time he had ceded power and put in place a system to ensure smooth transfers of leadership – and more like that of Mao, a drama that involved a bloodless coup d’état (the arrest of the so-called “Gang of Four” led by Mao’s widow), the intervention of the People’s Liberation Army and mock trials.
We had a taste of this kind of unrest when Xi took power in 2012. A carefully crafted transfer of power was upended by the arrest of Xi’s main Politburo rival, and wild Internet rumors spoke of a military coup, tanks in the streets of China’s capital and gunfire near the leadership compound.
Xi has returned China to the era of one-man rule. But having reached the pinnacle of power – next year he will likely secure a fourth five-year term – Xi must now consider the consequences for his country. As Deng himself warned, “building the destiny of a nation on the reputation of one or two people is very unhealthy and very dangerous.
Gn world
