I think you have several good points on the shortcomings of Xi's management. However, one idea I push back on is that unifying the Party apparatus was a small task. Coercing or convincing 90 million people to act as a single political force is no small task, and took quite a bit of brute force, political maneuvering, and risk-taking to do. 12-15 years ago, the Party was beset by corruption, non-state sector capture, and serial policy failure. Moreover, Jiang's Three Represents formulation to let in "Advanced Productive Forces" (entrepreneurs) was necessary but insufficient, and it almost seemed like the Party was evolving into a factionally dominated force that primarily supported business interests.
Xi on the other hand, has managed to unify in a very small amount of time. Especially considering that when he came in, he was considered a benign compromise candidate who would act the behest of greater cliques. The relative success of unifying the party, and the effort it took should play into an evaluation of Xi.
I think it's hard to objectively evaluate whether Xi is incompetent, because it's very likely he values different things in his vision for China. His foremost task and purpose has been to unify the Party into a political tool that laterally crosses domains into the non-state sector (firms, NGOs, civil society, academia), and vertically integrates communities of people in a way not seen since the Revolutionary era. The Party can now engage in repression in Xinjiang, manage private sector firms through informal and formal mechanisms, coopt spaces for resistance, and do all at little cost in political capital. This is a very different state from where the Party was prior to Xi.
In response to your question on whether Xi steps down, I think two scenarios are possible.
1. He steps down and still plays an outsized shadow role if a successor is found
2. He is president for life, and a successor comes from young cadres who have found their path under his wing.
It is hard to predict. In 2018 analysts had a pretty solid list of people who had climbed the ladder with Xi, but it is becoming somewhat hard as some of them have recently only moved laterally or been investigated by the CCDI (such as the head of the CCDI). Something that may help is the effectiveness to which the Party performs "Common Prosperity" policies, which are likely now a marker for regime loyalty and competence intertwined. This will determine who gets moved up, down, and across at the upcoming Plenum.
Sources (I recommend reading the intro, then Naughton, Leutert and Eaton, Norris, and Kennedy's Conclusion)
How do you reckon this? I want to recognize that this may be largely true thus far, but my general instincts tell me that there are always limits - even those who seem to defy political gravity for longer-than-normal, typically still run up against certain walls.
>>2. He is president for life, and a successor comes from young cadres who have found their path under his wing.
I think the West underestimates this at its peril. The hypernationalism Xi has unleashed is going to be VERY hard to get back under control, and will probably have some very terrible results in the next 2-3 decades. No matter who his successor is or what kind of leader they are, they'll absolutely have to deal with a strong-if-not-dominant hypernationalist movement. Even if Xi ultimately backs off and doesn't invade Taiwan, we'll all be incredibly lucky if his successor manages to see it as a liability and not a national embarrassment that must be answered, in blood if necessary - killing Xi's white whale for him.
I agree that those barriers exist, and they always will. A famous historian of the Chinese Communist Party once remarked that the CCP is a "state within a state." I think unification with low costs is evidenced by how many of his own close connections have found positions in the Politburo, or in "priming" positions for the Politburo (provincial or Party leadership roles that usually result in promotion upwards into the Politburo). If Xi had expended more political capital, it is likely his connections would have been shot down in the factional cross-fire.
I agree that Xi has played a role in letting the toothpaste out of the tube when it comes to nationalism, so much so that Red Vs (social brigades of nationalist Chinese netizens) are becoming more effective at censoring than actual censors lol. However, invading Taiwan would be drastic shift in the combined strategy of coercion and cooptation hat I think Xi and his successors largely agree with. The recent activity over the ADIZ is seems to me more like a follow up to the co-optational mechanisms that China has been employing. I also think its important to remember that nationalists in China get suppressed sometimes as well. And, while China's citizens may not remember the bloody nose the PLA got in Vietnam, the PLA's senior leadership does. There is a high threshold for justifying the use of military force among the veterans of these wars who are still embedded in the officer corps. Finally, the PLA's strategic documentation recognizes the asymmetrical information advantage they have in contrast to the US, NATO, Russia, and other powers.
While I agree with recognizing a bit more Xi's political prowess, 90 million is an aggrandizing number to cite, as much of the bureaucracy for controlling most party members has been well established. Xi being a compromise candidate also means that he could defect from one of the factions and join the other, in this case probably the faction that promises to fulfill his ambitions to become the greatest leader in Chinese history, taking advantage of his naivety. In other words, the change of direction need not be Xi's own idea, and the unification need not be Xi's own doing. This can be found in analogy how Trump is manipulated by people surrounding him.
If anything, eliminating term limit and cutting successor prospect may be a big mistake, as that sets Xi up to take all the blame and disgrace in case of failure. In contrast, Deng exerted much influence while he was behind the scenes, most infamously leading up to the Tian'anmen massacre, blurring the focus of blame with layers of bureaucracy.
This would be correct insofar as possible alternative causes to Xi's hypothetical competence/political ruthlessness.
- However, Xi was writing early on in his Party career about the party being outmoded by other sectors of society. He was famous for berating local cadres for not believing in socialist doctrine, or being overtly performative in their duties. Though he came in as a compromise candidate, his promise to the Party was to revitalize it in the face of possible extinction. This was primarily his idea insofar as his early writings reflect this priority as well. Moreover, the cliques setup by Jiang and Hu were also aware of the possibility that the Party would be outmoded, but did not have the political capital to unify the Party on their own and/or benefitted from the current state of affairs. If anything, Xi is not naive. He may be somewhat vacuous as a philosopher, hyperconservative in his social outlook, but definitively not naive.
This is a man who took out the only other leaders who could ever have rivalled him within two years of gaining power (Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang). He also systematically undermined organizations that were power bases for earlier leaders, such as the Communist Youth League, and propped up those that had fallen into the lower halls of power, such as the United Front. This created a new set of power bases completely oriented around Xi.
Finally, looking at the Politburo Standing Committee (people closest to Xi), only one person seems to be the type to advise Xi, Wang Huning. All others look to Xi for policy direction and posture. Finally, Xi hasn't totally surrounded himself with sycophants. the PBSC famously contains Li Keqiang, a remnant of the privatization days. Li was clearly hired for competence, not loyalty.
Your final point, however, I do find agreeable. Undercutting his early rivals and replacing leadership with his own networks may spell doom because now it all comes down to him. The question I have is, do autocrats have any other choice? Is it just catch-22 between having a competent successor and getting something done?
OTOH he managed to become dictator for life in a system that had mandatory retirement ages, so I don't know how confident to be about his incompetence. Competence has a lot of dimensions for a dictator.
Maybe we should say, ok, autocracy selects for competence in a certain mix of skills-- and "ruthlessness" happens to be a much bigger component of that than "policy wonkishness." Democracy, for its part, probably selects for charm too much and wonkishness too little, but at least leading a population into a great famine tends to take the sparkle off.
Are there any patches we could add to parliamentary or presidential democracies to select for better policy wonks, while maintaining representation?
The problem with deselecting for charm in favor of "wonkishness" which I'm assuming as a freedonian means a kind of technocratic, policy competence is that charm is also knowing what voters "want" to which that is primarily what democracy aims to deliver to begin with.
You can't just assume the best government is one that delivers the most objective success when what constitutes objective success is itself in contention. Having a leader that objectively delivers the most on safety and economic growth might also for example, inadvertently clamp down on personal freedoms or upward mobility or even the sense that you live in a society at all that you belong to. I can think of a number of policies that would achieve this and I despise all of them, personally.
The most agreeable thing is a balance of success, safety, security, and selection of your own personal "goods" in the society/nation you belong to, which is going to be a compromise, which involves understanding and selling the this "good for most" dream to said most, and that requires, of course, charisma.
I think that Xi's success was mainly a consolidation waiting to happen.
His predecessors created the strong growth that he benefited from through adherence to what was relatively a pluralistic system within the CCP. Power was traded back and forth between traditionalists and liberals every 10 years like clockwork for 3-5 cycles depending on how you looked at it.
IMO, as a "princeling", Xi had less appetite for the established political norms. And as corruption had taken root due to the existing system's acquiescences to capitalism, that provided the perfect vehicle for him to consolidate with his inaugural crackdown during the mid 2010s. Under a less rigid system, a crackdown might have been politically feasible sooner, but as events actually unfolded, it had to wait until someone like Xi came along: a thorough insider who was trusted by dominant cliques to not upset the balance, but wasn't afraid to go after some big targets in the process -- especially in light of the leeway that the cliques' trust gave him.
The unification (of the party) which made him dictator-for-life was seen as a resolution to the growing crisis of corruption and factionalism that China was experiencing in the 2000s.
In some ways, it's not too dissimilar from Joe Biden's story: an insider that both sides trust just enough to let him do some big things (like the bipartisan infrastructure bill) without upsetting the balance. The difference is that Biden isn't being allowed to actually reform the political system; only to be a caretaker while both sides prepare for the REAL crisis when Trump is expected to retry his coup in 2024-5.
By all accounts the fall of the USSR and the CPSU profoundly shook the then-young Xi Jinping. He took office two decades later determined to avoid that fate for his own Communist dictatorship. But it would appear he incorrectly misattributed the late-stage Soviet Union's rapid decline to excessive influence of the West (and associated decadence) when instead the real problem for that now-defunct state was the economy (general weakness and inefficiency greatly intensified by the 1980s oil glut).
So, it would appear Xi has now set about doing everything in his power to undermine his country's economic strength. Because markets are free(ish). Or a CIA plot. Or something. Sounds bad.
(And yes, he's simultaneously succeeding in making the PRC brand about as toxic as the Love Canal.) Double win!
A quick quibble on terms: my Chinese university students are quick to downplay China’s accomplishments when it’s time to classify the PRC as developing or developed, favoring the former for at least the coming 30-50 years (!). I personally think the terms better fit the 20th C., now obscuring more than they reveal about a country and think “middle income country” should at least be added (whose “trap” Xi undoubtedly wants to avoid) as a third, more apt option. But my main point in the 1/3 vs 1/2 of per-capita income comparison is that comparisons to the very richest developed countries are not appropriate—to be a developed country, China only needs to catch up to the poorest developed countries like Poland, Slovenia, etc. And it’s almost there. I put it to my students whether the terms are still useful by asking if int’l power & high-tech industry don’t matter at all compared to per-capita income—would any of them say that Poland is more powerful and advanced than China? Spoiler: No, they do not.
Thanks for the update. There’s still a gap, no doubt, about $6k gross by two quick searches: $10,500 for China & $16,656 for Poland in 2020 (so says Google via the WB). Why Poland’s PPP in 2021 is over twice as high (and increases the gap to $17k) might be an interesting story for another day. Kinda makes me want to move to Poland, lol, especially since I thought PPP measures almost always favored China & Asian countries in general where you can still eat in a restaurant for $1.
My point is that the term “developing country” doesn’t mean poor, weak, nor especially pre-industrial anymore. The BRICs are changing the game and what it means to be powerful or successful in the world relative to developed, or indeed, wealthy countries. Yeah, by per-capita income there’s no doubt (and my students tried to use the urbanization rates, too, by which China is on par w/ Czechia & other relatively rural developed countries) China’s still an -ing rather than an -ed, but maybe other factors are more important in the 21st C.
It’s quite amusing to see proud nationalists vehemently claim their country is poor & weak, in any case. Xi’s claims to have “eliminated extreme poverty” last year also make an interesting comparison w/ the U.S., where millions of course are still stuck in it. Language & culture aside, I don’t know many who’d trade their living standards in China to live in Poland, but maybe that’s nat’lism again.
Putin hasn't left the office yet, and with every day it seems more and more probably that he will leave Russia in pretty bad condition.
Everything said about Xi can be applied to Putin: economy is slowing down (average GDP-growth 2014-2020 is 0.9%), neighbors are alienated, outside image is that of a cartoon villain.
Putin has been even worse than Xi. When Xi leaves/dies the Party infrastructure will probably still be in place to install capable leadership and a stable transition. Everyone in Russia is terrified of what happens when Putin dies - he has done no real institution building, just weakened the institutions that had existed.
China had a golden opportunity to become the preeminent superpower during 2016-20. Trump was blowing up international relationships that had been decades in the making. It was a pretty low bar for China to position itself as the more reasonable hegemon at that time. Instead we got a serious of blunders by Xi that gave America enough breathing room to pull back from the brink.
Can you expand a bit on Putin’s job as a leader? It appears as though Russia is still just an oligarchical oil state that’s progressively alienated itself from the western world to its detriment. Has Putin done anything well in terms of diversifying the Russian economy?
Not generally, no. He has failed at that. But politically he stabilized a country that looked to be on the verge of disintegration, managed an oil-based economy through an epic oil price crash (of the size that brought down the USSR!) with relatively little pain, and increased Russia's international influence (though I'm not particularly happy about that). I can write about Putin, but basically he strikes me as incredibly competent. I sometimes wonder if Russia will break up when he dies.
Arguably Putin was competent 2000-2010, but has been incredibly incompetent since then. Arguments against Putin being all that competent. 1) he has managed to alienate most of the Ukrainian population, a country that Russia really needs as a friendly ally and did that primary for the benefit of his domestic audience 2) he has weakened Russia's political institutions, insuring that there will be a disastrous transition-succession struggle when he dies 3) Has done very little to diversify the Russian economy away from dig-and-deliver 4) Has raised Russia's profile as a "pest" but not really clear how Russia's demonstrable excellence at creating chaos in other countries really benefits Russia long term other than to allow Russians to feel good about themselves for being a great power 5) Brain and talent drain out of Russia continues to be significant, Russia has not managed to transform itself into an exciting place to work/live for anyone interested in innovation or research 6) Made Russia increasingly dependent on China, a dangerous game if China decides to pursue more aggressive geographic expansion.
One interesting way of viewing Putin is through his interest in Judo. He is very effective at redirecting opposing force to his advantage. He redirected EU sanctions into Russian counter sanctions on imported food. Back in the 90s Russia imported a stunning percentage of its food from Europe. Now Russia has become the world’s largest wheat exporter, with hundreds of millions in the developing world calorically dependent on its wheat, and Russia has greatly increased its own cheese, fruit, wine etc production as a substitute for European imports. Another example is hypersonic missiles, which originated as a hedge against America’s continued efforts toward middle defense and in Russian eyes first strike capability. Now the Russian response, hypersonic missiles, could very conceivably help it actually win a short, sharp conventional war against the USA. Generally Putin plays to Russia’s existing strengths and develops them further. Arguably the worlds most advanced civilian nuclear power industry, using Russian anti-trust law to create one of the world’s only half passable alternatives to google/Facebook/YouTube/Uber (yandex, VK)
Always look for Mike Duncan's "Entropy of Victory" - whatever conflict a coalition puts to rest to achieve a common goal, will eventually be the source of its collapse.
Accordingly, Putin's alliance between thuggish secularist oligarchs and the orthodox church seems to be the putative main fault line here. The oligarchs don't particularly care about the church's regressive social politics, and the church can't be happy about the oligarchs crushing everyday Russians' ability to lead traditional family lives.
However, what's key here is to observe that EoV doesn't inherently dictate that the two factions will immediately turn on each other in mechanistic fashion.
Once Putin dies, there'll be an interim leader - whoever the immediate successor is under their [admittedly "mostly-honored-in-the-breach"] constitution. However long there is until the next election will determine how long that leader has to try to consolidate power using the state apparatus Putin has assembled. If there's a leader in the intelligence services who's particularly ambitious, they'll have a decent shot at temporarily securing power, though it might backfire on them - Putin was always an outlier among KBG alums in terms of his savvy at electoral politics. Medvedev may attempt a comeback as well, ushering Putin's United Russia into a new marriage between oligarchs and liberals, and ceding the church's support to Navalny, with the main electoral fight being over who gets to claim the mantle of nationalism. Regardless, the entire next election will basically hinge on how well the establishment is able to hold Alexei Navalny at bay - whether through outright assassination, propaganda suppression, or -- gasp -- honest retail politics!! (lol)
Basically, though, Russia won't have much of a constitutional crisis per se; it's just that the major institutions of state will be temporarily up for grabs - media, parliament, the security services, the oligarchs, the church, nationalism.
The only chance for a real "breakup" is if the various federally autonomous regions like Siberia seize the opportunity to demand *more* autonomy; however, absent Putin sucking up all the political oxygen in the room, they're just as likely to see if they can finally gain a foothold in Russia's core institutions. They're equally liable to join the church's or the oligarchs' side: the hinterlands are of course plenty traditional, but they may see the real route to power being with the oligarchs. They may even end up being the kingmaker faction; they won't have any formal party, so any coalition-formation negotiations will occur before/during the election as their leading candidates and/or incumbents for the Duma declare for either side.
Stumbled on this and laughed a fair bit how the Putin comparison aged like fine milk - as have more than a few of the comments. Dictators, man! Can't take 'em anywhere!
The zero-Covid assessment went in the other direction though, not only was the analysis accurate, it's looking worse in that regard than anyone might have guessed.
Xi has long been ridiculed among Chinese speaking social media users as an "elementary schooler", because he had to drop out of elementary school during the Cultural Revolution. His public image is meticulously managed, but still a number of incidents presented where he read his script wrong (after which apparently all his scripts had middle school difficulty Chinese characters marked with their pronunciations), and boasted of things out of human possibility (walking 5km carrying 100kg of grains), which have become memes about his incompetence. The few official video clips showing him visiting homes and businesses only adds to the evidences with his irrelevant questions and confusion at the responses. I would not be surprised if behind the scenes he is as self-aggrandizing and as incompetent as Trump.
The politics and economy of Zhongguo are more than Byzantine as your excellent teaching essay shows. Xiexie - China's problems remain intractable - a dysfunctional, extremely corrupt party state, a declining population without any desire to make more Chinese, a dysfunctional gender imbalance, a subtle rebellion among the young (smart idea, Xi to limit video games) who do not want to work as their parents did, an economy without a social net, thus leading to huge personal investment in housing, saving for retirement (opps! did that bubble just pop?). Internationally, Xi misread the world and particularly the US during Trump's fiasco rule. Biden is made of stronger stuff. In spite of the growth of the PLA, the combined militaries of those opposed to China make Xi's saber-rattling more dangerous for China than ever. If I were Xi, knowing that China has poor nuke sub detection and destroying capabilities, I would lie awake at night dreaming of US, British and French SSBMs swimming in the seas Xi claims. IMO, the dynastic rules of Chinese history apply to Xi, the new emperor. The mandate of Heaven (天降大任) has always been "easy come and easy go". All Chinese dynasties ultimately succumb to externalities, interpreted by the Chinese as the withdrawal of Heaven's mandate. Thank you, Peter H. Dohan, MD
Russia's per capita GDP in purchasing power parity has grown from US$ 6,800 to almost US$ 29,000 since 2000. Also, since 2000, Russia went from impotently watching as the West intervened in Serbia or expanded Nato almost to its borders to having renewed armed forces punching waaaaay above its economic weight in the international scenario, to the point of actually conquering land as if it was 1900 with the West now watching impotently.
If the last 20 years have not been good for Russia, I can only imagine what you think 20 good years look like.
But we don't live in 1900 anymore. There is a reason most countries no longer see conquering land as a worthwhile endeavor. In economic terms it is almost always a disaster. Russia occupying Crimea has been a complete disaster for Russia, other than for people who enjoy coloring in maps. It is a massive drain on the Russian purse (not to mention the economic damage to the Crimeans themselves) and has turned even friendly Ukrainians into vicious enemies of Russia. When Crimea was part of Ukraine it played a very useful role as a pro-Russian territory in Russia's most important neighbor, and provided voters that allowed Russia some control over Ukrainian politics. That is over. Putin turned an advantageous geopolitical position in Crimea and Donbass into what will be long running open sores - and did that mostly to placate a domestic audience he was scared of losing due to his previous incompetence at managing the economy.
Per capita PPP went from $ 3,000 to almost $ 17,000 - in other words, Russia did well enough even in comparison with China. In any case, I don't think it is relevant to evaluate if the past 20 years have or have not been good for Russia. If we use China as benchmark, nobody has ever had any good 20 years - last two decades were simply miraculous for the Chinese.
Miraculous if you don't understand that they were simply implementing technology that had alread been developed by the west many decades and centuries ago. It would be utterly shameful for them NOT to have a better 20 years than the west considering that the west were developing all of this industry from scratch. It should be profoundly embarassing for such nationalistic people so proud of their country that it took them this long to industrialize when they didn't even have to invent anything to do so.
Playing devil's advocate - a large part of the argument for incompetence is economic performance under his rule. However, he has just recently put forward his "Xi economic doctrine" - not all GDP growth is good. In particular growth of sectors that increase consumption of positional goods is bad.
Viewed from this perspective, a lot of Xi's work is investment in physical capacity increases which cannot be positional.
* Early 2010s, China drove massive reductions of cost in solar and li-ion batteries, allowing them to capture an emerging pillar of world manufacturing.
* Mid 2010s, China drove real world deployment of AI via the CCPs population management goals (remember in 2015 the big concern was AI researchers in US returning to China like Andrew Ng). This has paid off as desired in the form of the first consumer tech brand from China to become popular abroad (Tiktok). AND they drove logistics changes via apps, creating the first major markets for mobility, delivery, and domestic fulfillment via apps. Their pop. density created huge advantages here.
* Late 2010s, China attempted to drive semiconductor manufacturing. They were succeeding (as shown by organic adoption of Huawei 5G pre-trade wars). I suspect if the US/world had taken a laissez faire approach to this as they did with the prior 20 years, China would have already succeeded in shipping the best in class chips for some specific use cases, and on the path to overtaking TSMC, Intel, etc. for general purpose computing. The rules of the game changed in a way that no one really predicted in 2016 and this has set them back (maybe permanently?).
Looking at the targets of the common prosperity campaign, nearly all fit into either
(1) positional goods where a monopolist captures higher profits without improving service levels overall. Think loyalty programs that get people to spend more money to board a plane first.
(2) 0 marginal cost goods that can be monopolistically priced. Think in-app purchases in video games, crypto currencies, etc.
(3) platform providers that monopolize access to the platform. Think things that would be regulated utilities in the pre-internet world like logistics access (Alibaba), communications providers (Wechat), etc.
I agree we could view a lot of the unforced errors in real estate as incompetence, but let's also consider the forced successes elsewhere.
Again, a not strong commentary on Asia (in line with past commentary on Japan etc).
First of all, there is a powerful assumption at work on the author's part: that world "approval" matters to China - particularly the US and European elite's wokenesss.
Secondly, there is a failure to look at the big picture. Xi has reined in the areas of the Chinese economy which threaten to turbocharge inequality. Somehow the notion that Xi / the Chinese government under Xi cares about inequality is ignored - and furthermore unlike American wokeness - the Chinese government has actually walked the walk vs. just talking the talk.
Chinese tech titans, real estate moguls, financiers etc have been brought to heel unlike their American and European counterparts.
China isn't perfect by any means, but flawed criticisms of it only reinforce just how clueless the West is about how China really operates.
>>First of all, there is a powerful assumption at work on the author's part: that world "approval" matters to China - particularly the US and European elite's wokenesss.
That's hilarious, because Noah's chart included China's mostly-un-woke neighbors, not just US and EU.
Please crawl back into your hole, troll. Grownups are talking, and don't need you farting around like a child about American social politics.
>First of all, there is a powerful assumption at work on the author's part: that world "approval" matters to China - particularly the US and European elite's wokenesss.
First of all, are India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, The Philippines and Taiwan the woke west? None of them are western countries, and they're all neighbors to China.
Secondly, it matters enormously, and its loss has had profound economic implications for China. Does the belt and road initiative "matter to china"? How could it not? It's practically Xi's centerpiece policy, and backlash against China is a major contributor to the iniatie largely being a failure. It has also lead to trade wars and other policies that economically restrict China's international growth.
And China is making a hell of a lot of angry noises about these countries' negative view of China, so unless this is some 4D chess or something, yes, it matters to them, we know it matters to them because they literally tell us themselves that it matters to them.
Also, do you realize how completely silly you sound saying that that China doesn't care about wokeness? China's propaganda machine has been going full bore, non-stop 24/7 proclamations about how the west is being "racist" against China, which is a hell of a lot more woke than being opposed to concentration camps is.
>Secondly, there is a failure to look at the big picture. Xi has reined in the areas of the Chinese economy which threaten to turbocharge inequality. Somehow the notion that Xi / the Chinese government under Xi cares about inequality is ignored - and furthermore unlike American wokeness - the Chinese government has actually walked the walk vs. just talking the talk.
This is a common talking point, but there's no basis to this. The BIGGEST inequalities in China are urban vs rural. The CCP are doing nothing to close these inequalities and are if anything outright hostile to rural populations. They are trying tolimit urban inequality because urban populations are the source of their power. But this is a very narrow, opportunistic focus on inequality (and it's not even clear its working!).
>Chinese tech titans, real estate moguls, financiers etc have been brought to heel unlike their American and European counterparts.
Okay, great. But it remains to be seen if this bringing to hell will give rise to healthier economic growth. There's no sign of this yet, and the things that Xi has tried to implement e.g. belt and road, semiconductors etc have failed.
Saddling countries with unpayable debts for problematic infrastructure projects has been a standard colonial technique for centuries. Belt and Road might well have been planned to have plenty of problematic projects, precisely to get leverage over the local states. In several cases, China has ended up with indefinite control over major infrastructural assets, like Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. Generally the projects are run by Chinese management, giving the host countries no control over the asset they need to pay back the debts, which gives China the ability to effectively force defaults if it chooses, by mismanaging the assets.
Zero COVID is absolutely the way to go until the population is fully vaccinated, which is only a few more months for China. Recovery from lockdown-induced slowdown is very fast with some stimulus the CCP can easily do, but they can't un-die people and there's no good treatments for long COVID as of yet.
A flip side of this is - what has Xi done that *does* indicate good leadership? I can't think of anything economically or politically clever they've done in the past few years. The recent blizzard of edicts in particular seems poorly thought out - it's probably true that China is overbuilding subways at the moment, but imposing a blanket ban is ridiculous. Put in an oversight board, or impose financial and service standards. It would be easy to do this much better - but they haven't.
My interpretation of recent Chinese actions is that they are terrified of any dissent. That would explain the need to crush Hong Kong, the brutality in Xinjiang, shutting down tutoring, limiting online gaming (a major social network), etc. In combination with the fact that the Chinese have generally been pretty willing to accept CCP rule as long as it delivers good economic growth, I'm wondering if perhaps they've realized they *can't* continue the economic boom much longer and have concluded they have to go back to intense repression to maintain power.
>>A flip side of this is - what has Xi done that *does* indicate good leadership? I can't think of anything economically or politically clever they've done in the past few years.
Some of the other commenters have indicated something you appear to have missed: He unified what had been a factionalized, pluralistic party, using anti-corruption and hypernationalism to consolidate power over the system. It may not be "good" from all perspectives, but it's certainly "clever" and deft.
The "good" outcome (from Xi and China's perspective) is that it could successfully galvanize an internal consensus that can then keep the lid on domestic politics with victories in foreign (or domestic-periphery) adventurism. No need for more Tianenmens when you have a whole generation of wumao happily carrying out censorship for you.
The "bad" outcome is that China blunders into some war and then loses catastrophically, making itself a pariah on an historical level to rival Japan and Germany. The crisis probably also takes down the CCP.
Great article, particularly all the cites. But a badly missed opportunity to use the phrase "Xi who must be obeyed" as a section header.
I think you have several good points on the shortcomings of Xi's management. However, one idea I push back on is that unifying the Party apparatus was a small task. Coercing or convincing 90 million people to act as a single political force is no small task, and took quite a bit of brute force, political maneuvering, and risk-taking to do. 12-15 years ago, the Party was beset by corruption, non-state sector capture, and serial policy failure. Moreover, Jiang's Three Represents formulation to let in "Advanced Productive Forces" (entrepreneurs) was necessary but insufficient, and it almost seemed like the Party was evolving into a factionally dominated force that primarily supported business interests.
Xi on the other hand, has managed to unify in a very small amount of time. Especially considering that when he came in, he was considered a benign compromise candidate who would act the behest of greater cliques. The relative success of unifying the party, and the effort it took should play into an evaluation of Xi.
I think it's hard to objectively evaluate whether Xi is incompetent, because it's very likely he values different things in his vision for China. His foremost task and purpose has been to unify the Party into a political tool that laterally crosses domains into the non-state sector (firms, NGOs, civil society, academia), and vertically integrates communities of people in a way not seen since the Revolutionary era. The Party can now engage in repression in Xinjiang, manage private sector firms through informal and formal mechanisms, coopt spaces for resistance, and do all at little cost in political capital. This is a very different state from where the Party was prior to Xi.
In response to your question on whether Xi steps down, I think two scenarios are possible.
1. He steps down and still plays an outsized shadow role if a successor is found
2. He is president for life, and a successor comes from young cadres who have found their path under his wing.
It is hard to predict. In 2018 analysts had a pretty solid list of people who had climbed the ladder with Xi, but it is becoming somewhat hard as some of them have recently only moved laterally or been investigated by the CCDI (such as the head of the CCDI). Something that may help is the effectiveness to which the Party performs "Common Prosperity" policies, which are likely now a marker for regime loyalty and competence intertwined. This will determine who gets moved up, down, and across at the upcoming Plenum.
Sources (I recommend reading the intro, then Naughton, Leutert and Eaton, Norris, and Kennedy's Conclusion)
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/211007_Kennedy_Chinese_State_Capitalism.pdf?34C5XDb775Ws8W6TZ6oMGPlWhIY8Z.rf
>>and do all at little cost in political capital.
How do you reckon this? I want to recognize that this may be largely true thus far, but my general instincts tell me that there are always limits - even those who seem to defy political gravity for longer-than-normal, typically still run up against certain walls.
>>2. He is president for life, and a successor comes from young cadres who have found their path under his wing.
I think the West underestimates this at its peril. The hypernationalism Xi has unleashed is going to be VERY hard to get back under control, and will probably have some very terrible results in the next 2-3 decades. No matter who his successor is or what kind of leader they are, they'll absolutely have to deal with a strong-if-not-dominant hypernationalist movement. Even if Xi ultimately backs off and doesn't invade Taiwan, we'll all be incredibly lucky if his successor manages to see it as a liability and not a national embarrassment that must be answered, in blood if necessary - killing Xi's white whale for him.
I agree that those barriers exist, and they always will. A famous historian of the Chinese Communist Party once remarked that the CCP is a "state within a state." I think unification with low costs is evidenced by how many of his own close connections have found positions in the Politburo, or in "priming" positions for the Politburo (provincial or Party leadership roles that usually result in promotion upwards into the Politburo). If Xi had expended more political capital, it is likely his connections would have been shot down in the factional cross-fire.
I agree that Xi has played a role in letting the toothpaste out of the tube when it comes to nationalism, so much so that Red Vs (social brigades of nationalist Chinese netizens) are becoming more effective at censoring than actual censors lol. However, invading Taiwan would be drastic shift in the combined strategy of coercion and cooptation hat I think Xi and his successors largely agree with. The recent activity over the ADIZ is seems to me more like a follow up to the co-optational mechanisms that China has been employing. I also think its important to remember that nationalists in China get suppressed sometimes as well. And, while China's citizens may not remember the bloody nose the PLA got in Vietnam, the PLA's senior leadership does. There is a high threshold for justifying the use of military force among the veterans of these wars who are still embedded in the officer corps. Finally, the PLA's strategic documentation recognizes the asymmetrical information advantage they have in contrast to the US, NATO, Russia, and other powers.
While I agree with recognizing a bit more Xi's political prowess, 90 million is an aggrandizing number to cite, as much of the bureaucracy for controlling most party members has been well established. Xi being a compromise candidate also means that he could defect from one of the factions and join the other, in this case probably the faction that promises to fulfill his ambitions to become the greatest leader in Chinese history, taking advantage of his naivety. In other words, the change of direction need not be Xi's own idea, and the unification need not be Xi's own doing. This can be found in analogy how Trump is manipulated by people surrounding him.
If anything, eliminating term limit and cutting successor prospect may be a big mistake, as that sets Xi up to take all the blame and disgrace in case of failure. In contrast, Deng exerted much influence while he was behind the scenes, most infamously leading up to the Tian'anmen massacre, blurring the focus of blame with layers of bureaucracy.
This would be correct insofar as possible alternative causes to Xi's hypothetical competence/political ruthlessness.
- However, Xi was writing early on in his Party career about the party being outmoded by other sectors of society. He was famous for berating local cadres for not believing in socialist doctrine, or being overtly performative in their duties. Though he came in as a compromise candidate, his promise to the Party was to revitalize it in the face of possible extinction. This was primarily his idea insofar as his early writings reflect this priority as well. Moreover, the cliques setup by Jiang and Hu were also aware of the possibility that the Party would be outmoded, but did not have the political capital to unify the Party on their own and/or benefitted from the current state of affairs. If anything, Xi is not naive. He may be somewhat vacuous as a philosopher, hyperconservative in his social outlook, but definitively not naive.
This is a man who took out the only other leaders who could ever have rivalled him within two years of gaining power (Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang). He also systematically undermined organizations that were power bases for earlier leaders, such as the Communist Youth League, and propped up those that had fallen into the lower halls of power, such as the United Front. This created a new set of power bases completely oriented around Xi.
Finally, looking at the Politburo Standing Committee (people closest to Xi), only one person seems to be the type to advise Xi, Wang Huning. All others look to Xi for policy direction and posture. Finally, Xi hasn't totally surrounded himself with sycophants. the PBSC famously contains Li Keqiang, a remnant of the privatization days. Li was clearly hired for competence, not loyalty.
Your final point, however, I do find agreeable. Undercutting his early rivals and replacing leadership with his own networks may spell doom because now it all comes down to him. The question I have is, do autocrats have any other choice? Is it just catch-22 between having a competent successor and getting something done?
Paywalled, but Cai Xia's "insider take" on Xi's competence seems in line with yours:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-12-04/chinese-communist-party-failed
OTOH he managed to become dictator for life in a system that had mandatory retirement ages, so I don't know how confident to be about his incompetence. Competence has a lot of dimensions for a dictator.
Maybe we should say, ok, autocracy selects for competence in a certain mix of skills-- and "ruthlessness" happens to be a much bigger component of that than "policy wonkishness." Democracy, for its part, probably selects for charm too much and wonkishness too little, but at least leading a population into a great famine tends to take the sparkle off.
Are there any patches we could add to parliamentary or presidential democracies to select for better policy wonks, while maintaining representation?
The problem with deselecting for charm in favor of "wonkishness" which I'm assuming as a freedonian means a kind of technocratic, policy competence is that charm is also knowing what voters "want" to which that is primarily what democracy aims to deliver to begin with.
You can't just assume the best government is one that delivers the most objective success when what constitutes objective success is itself in contention. Having a leader that objectively delivers the most on safety and economic growth might also for example, inadvertently clamp down on personal freedoms or upward mobility or even the sense that you live in a society at all that you belong to. I can think of a number of policies that would achieve this and I despise all of them, personally.
The most agreeable thing is a balance of success, safety, security, and selection of your own personal "goods" in the society/nation you belong to, which is going to be a compromise, which involves understanding and selling the this "good for most" dream to said most, and that requires, of course, charisma.
I think that Xi's success was mainly a consolidation waiting to happen.
His predecessors created the strong growth that he benefited from through adherence to what was relatively a pluralistic system within the CCP. Power was traded back and forth between traditionalists and liberals every 10 years like clockwork for 3-5 cycles depending on how you looked at it.
IMO, as a "princeling", Xi had less appetite for the established political norms. And as corruption had taken root due to the existing system's acquiescences to capitalism, that provided the perfect vehicle for him to consolidate with his inaugural crackdown during the mid 2010s. Under a less rigid system, a crackdown might have been politically feasible sooner, but as events actually unfolded, it had to wait until someone like Xi came along: a thorough insider who was trusted by dominant cliques to not upset the balance, but wasn't afraid to go after some big targets in the process -- especially in light of the leeway that the cliques' trust gave him.
The unification (of the party) which made him dictator-for-life was seen as a resolution to the growing crisis of corruption and factionalism that China was experiencing in the 2000s.
In some ways, it's not too dissimilar from Joe Biden's story: an insider that both sides trust just enough to let him do some big things (like the bipartisan infrastructure bill) without upsetting the balance. The difference is that Biden isn't being allowed to actually reform the political system; only to be a caretaker while both sides prepare for the REAL crisis when Trump is expected to retry his coup in 2024-5.
No, he's not very competent. At all.
By all accounts the fall of the USSR and the CPSU profoundly shook the then-young Xi Jinping. He took office two decades later determined to avoid that fate for his own Communist dictatorship. But it would appear he incorrectly misattributed the late-stage Soviet Union's rapid decline to excessive influence of the West (and associated decadence) when instead the real problem for that now-defunct state was the economy (general weakness and inefficiency greatly intensified by the 1980s oil glut).
So, it would appear Xi has now set about doing everything in his power to undermine his country's economic strength. Because markets are free(ish). Or a CIA plot. Or something. Sounds bad.
(And yes, he's simultaneously succeeding in making the PRC brand about as toxic as the Love Canal.) Double win!
A quick quibble on terms: my Chinese university students are quick to downplay China’s accomplishments when it’s time to classify the PRC as developing or developed, favoring the former for at least the coming 30-50 years (!). I personally think the terms better fit the 20th C., now obscuring more than they reveal about a country and think “middle income country” should at least be added (whose “trap” Xi undoubtedly wants to avoid) as a third, more apt option. But my main point in the 1/3 vs 1/2 of per-capita income comparison is that comparisons to the very richest developed countries are not appropriate—to be a developed country, China only needs to catch up to the poorest developed countries like Poland, Slovenia, etc. And it’s almost there. I put it to my students whether the terms are still useful by asking if int’l power & high-tech industry don’t matter at all compared to per-capita income—would any of them say that Poland is more powerful and advanced than China? Spoiler: No, they do not.
Thanks for the update. There’s still a gap, no doubt, about $6k gross by two quick searches: $10,500 for China & $16,656 for Poland in 2020 (so says Google via the WB). Why Poland’s PPP in 2021 is over twice as high (and increases the gap to $17k) might be an interesting story for another day. Kinda makes me want to move to Poland, lol, especially since I thought PPP measures almost always favored China & Asian countries in general where you can still eat in a restaurant for $1.
My point is that the term “developing country” doesn’t mean poor, weak, nor especially pre-industrial anymore. The BRICs are changing the game and what it means to be powerful or successful in the world relative to developed, or indeed, wealthy countries. Yeah, by per-capita income there’s no doubt (and my students tried to use the urbanization rates, too, by which China is on par w/ Czechia & other relatively rural developed countries) China’s still an -ing rather than an -ed, but maybe other factors are more important in the 21st C.
It’s quite amusing to see proud nationalists vehemently claim their country is poor & weak, in any case. Xi’s claims to have “eliminated extreme poverty” last year also make an interesting comparison w/ the U.S., where millions of course are still stuck in it. Language & culture aside, I don’t know many who’d trade their living standards in China to live in Poland, but maybe that’s nat’lism again.
Putin hasn't left the office yet, and with every day it seems more and more probably that he will leave Russia in pretty bad condition.
Everything said about Xi can be applied to Putin: economy is slowing down (average GDP-growth 2014-2020 is 0.9%), neighbors are alienated, outside image is that of a cartoon villain.
Putin has been even worse than Xi. When Xi leaves/dies the Party infrastructure will probably still be in place to install capable leadership and a stable transition. Everyone in Russia is terrified of what happens when Putin dies - he has done no real institution building, just weakened the institutions that had existed.
China had a golden opportunity to become the preeminent superpower during 2016-20. Trump was blowing up international relationships that had been decades in the making. It was a pretty low bar for China to position itself as the more reasonable hegemon at that time. Instead we got a serious of blunders by Xi that gave America enough breathing room to pull back from the brink.
Relatedly, Policy Tensor has a theoretically grounded comparison of how secure various world leaders are in their posts, including Xi: https://policytensor.substack.com/p/who-has-the-highest-survival-probability. Summary verdict: Xi's more secure than Modi, but less secure than Putin.
Heh. Before invading another country.
Can you expand a bit on Putin’s job as a leader? It appears as though Russia is still just an oligarchical oil state that’s progressively alienated itself from the western world to its detriment. Has Putin done anything well in terms of diversifying the Russian economy?
Not generally, no. He has failed at that. But politically he stabilized a country that looked to be on the verge of disintegration, managed an oil-based economy through an epic oil price crash (of the size that brought down the USSR!) with relatively little pain, and increased Russia's international influence (though I'm not particularly happy about that). I can write about Putin, but basically he strikes me as incredibly competent. I sometimes wonder if Russia will break up when he dies.
In my opinion Putin is as Machiavellian as they get. His assymetric political endeavors have been triumphant in aquiring leverage geopolitically.
Despite being an economy suppressed by corruption and oligarchs, he's nevertheless made Russia very geopolitically relevant.
Arguably Putin was competent 2000-2010, but has been incredibly incompetent since then. Arguments against Putin being all that competent. 1) he has managed to alienate most of the Ukrainian population, a country that Russia really needs as a friendly ally and did that primary for the benefit of his domestic audience 2) he has weakened Russia's political institutions, insuring that there will be a disastrous transition-succession struggle when he dies 3) Has done very little to diversify the Russian economy away from dig-and-deliver 4) Has raised Russia's profile as a "pest" but not really clear how Russia's demonstrable excellence at creating chaos in other countries really benefits Russia long term other than to allow Russians to feel good about themselves for being a great power 5) Brain and talent drain out of Russia continues to be significant, Russia has not managed to transform itself into an exciting place to work/live for anyone interested in innovation or research 6) Made Russia increasingly dependent on China, a dangerous game if China decides to pursue more aggressive geographic expansion.
Putin's long term legacy will be mostly negative.
Interesting to read all these comments on Putin from before the Ukraine war. It seems that only Hannes Jandl got it dead-on.
One interesting way of viewing Putin is through his interest in Judo. He is very effective at redirecting opposing force to his advantage. He redirected EU sanctions into Russian counter sanctions on imported food. Back in the 90s Russia imported a stunning percentage of its food from Europe. Now Russia has become the world’s largest wheat exporter, with hundreds of millions in the developing world calorically dependent on its wheat, and Russia has greatly increased its own cheese, fruit, wine etc production as a substitute for European imports. Another example is hypersonic missiles, which originated as a hedge against America’s continued efforts toward middle defense and in Russian eyes first strike capability. Now the Russian response, hypersonic missiles, could very conceivably help it actually win a short, sharp conventional war against the USA. Generally Putin plays to Russia’s existing strengths and develops them further. Arguably the worlds most advanced civilian nuclear power industry, using Russian anti-trust law to create one of the world’s only half passable alternatives to google/Facebook/YouTube/Uber (yandex, VK)
Agreed; he generally fails most when he's not playing to Russia's advantages, but rather stepping outside of its core competencies.
Always look for Mike Duncan's "Entropy of Victory" - whatever conflict a coalition puts to rest to achieve a common goal, will eventually be the source of its collapse.
Accordingly, Putin's alliance between thuggish secularist oligarchs and the orthodox church seems to be the putative main fault line here. The oligarchs don't particularly care about the church's regressive social politics, and the church can't be happy about the oligarchs crushing everyday Russians' ability to lead traditional family lives.
However, what's key here is to observe that EoV doesn't inherently dictate that the two factions will immediately turn on each other in mechanistic fashion.
Once Putin dies, there'll be an interim leader - whoever the immediate successor is under their [admittedly "mostly-honored-in-the-breach"] constitution. However long there is until the next election will determine how long that leader has to try to consolidate power using the state apparatus Putin has assembled. If there's a leader in the intelligence services who's particularly ambitious, they'll have a decent shot at temporarily securing power, though it might backfire on them - Putin was always an outlier among KBG alums in terms of his savvy at electoral politics. Medvedev may attempt a comeback as well, ushering Putin's United Russia into a new marriage between oligarchs and liberals, and ceding the church's support to Navalny, with the main electoral fight being over who gets to claim the mantle of nationalism. Regardless, the entire next election will basically hinge on how well the establishment is able to hold Alexei Navalny at bay - whether through outright assassination, propaganda suppression, or -- gasp -- honest retail politics!! (lol)
Basically, though, Russia won't have much of a constitutional crisis per se; it's just that the major institutions of state will be temporarily up for grabs - media, parliament, the security services, the oligarchs, the church, nationalism.
The only chance for a real "breakup" is if the various federally autonomous regions like Siberia seize the opportunity to demand *more* autonomy; however, absent Putin sucking up all the political oxygen in the room, they're just as likely to see if they can finally gain a foothold in Russia's core institutions. They're equally liable to join the church's or the oligarchs' side: the hinterlands are of course plenty traditional, but they may see the real route to power being with the oligarchs. They may even end up being the kingmaker faction; they won't have any formal party, so any coalition-formation negotiations will occur before/during the election as their leading candidates and/or incumbents for the Duma declare for either side.
That's the best I can figure, at least.
Stumbled on this and laughed a fair bit how the Putin comparison aged like fine milk - as have more than a few of the comments. Dictators, man! Can't take 'em anywhere!
The zero-Covid assessment went in the other direction though, not only was the analysis accurate, it's looking worse in that regard than anyone might have guessed.
Xi has long been ridiculed among Chinese speaking social media users as an "elementary schooler", because he had to drop out of elementary school during the Cultural Revolution. His public image is meticulously managed, but still a number of incidents presented where he read his script wrong (after which apparently all his scripts had middle school difficulty Chinese characters marked with their pronunciations), and boasted of things out of human possibility (walking 5km carrying 100kg of grains), which have become memes about his incompetence. The few official video clips showing him visiting homes and businesses only adds to the evidences with his irrelevant questions and confusion at the responses. I would not be surprised if behind the scenes he is as self-aggrandizing and as incompetent as Trump.
Yes, someone who knows China better than I has held the opinion that Xi is quite stupid for a while.
Xi does seem like a Chinese Trump.
The politics and economy of Zhongguo are more than Byzantine as your excellent teaching essay shows. Xiexie - China's problems remain intractable - a dysfunctional, extremely corrupt party state, a declining population without any desire to make more Chinese, a dysfunctional gender imbalance, a subtle rebellion among the young (smart idea, Xi to limit video games) who do not want to work as their parents did, an economy without a social net, thus leading to huge personal investment in housing, saving for retirement (opps! did that bubble just pop?). Internationally, Xi misread the world and particularly the US during Trump's fiasco rule. Biden is made of stronger stuff. In spite of the growth of the PLA, the combined militaries of those opposed to China make Xi's saber-rattling more dangerous for China than ever. If I were Xi, knowing that China has poor nuke sub detection and destroying capabilities, I would lie awake at night dreaming of US, British and French SSBMs swimming in the seas Xi claims. IMO, the dynastic rules of Chinese history apply to Xi, the new emperor. The mandate of Heaven (天降大任) has always been "easy come and easy go". All Chinese dynasties ultimately succumb to externalities, interpreted by the Chinese as the withdrawal of Heaven's mandate. Thank you, Peter H. Dohan, MD
Idk why you think Putin is a good example of a hyper-effective authoritarian.
Like Xi, he's very good at consolidating state power and eliminating domestic rivals - to survive and thrive in those systems you must be.
But the past 20 years have not been good for Russia.
Russia's per capita GDP in purchasing power parity has grown from US$ 6,800 to almost US$ 29,000 since 2000. Also, since 2000, Russia went from impotently watching as the West intervened in Serbia or expanded Nato almost to its borders to having renewed armed forces punching waaaaay above its economic weight in the international scenario, to the point of actually conquering land as if it was 1900 with the West now watching impotently.
If the last 20 years have not been good for Russia, I can only imagine what you think 20 good years look like.
Russian fertility is in the toilet and the people are miserable. Even before the war with Ukraine, Russia's future looked bleak.
But we don't live in 1900 anymore. There is a reason most countries no longer see conquering land as a worthwhile endeavor. In economic terms it is almost always a disaster. Russia occupying Crimea has been a complete disaster for Russia, other than for people who enjoy coloring in maps. It is a massive drain on the Russian purse (not to mention the economic damage to the Crimeans themselves) and has turned even friendly Ukrainians into vicious enemies of Russia. When Crimea was part of Ukraine it played a very useful role as a pro-Russian territory in Russia's most important neighbor, and provided voters that allowed Russia some control over Ukrainian politics. That is over. Putin turned an advantageous geopolitical position in Crimea and Donbass into what will be long running open sores - and did that mostly to placate a domestic audience he was scared of losing due to his previous incompetence at managing the economy.
How does that compare to China?
Per capita PPP went from $ 3,000 to almost $ 17,000 - in other words, Russia did well enough even in comparison with China. In any case, I don't think it is relevant to evaluate if the past 20 years have or have not been good for Russia. If we use China as benchmark, nobody has ever had any good 20 years - last two decades were simply miraculous for the Chinese.
Miraculous if you don't understand that they were simply implementing technology that had alread been developed by the west many decades and centuries ago. It would be utterly shameful for them NOT to have a better 20 years than the west considering that the west were developing all of this industry from scratch. It should be profoundly embarassing for such nationalistic people so proud of their country that it took them this long to industrialize when they didn't even have to invent anything to do so.
Playing devil's advocate - a large part of the argument for incompetence is economic performance under his rule. However, he has just recently put forward his "Xi economic doctrine" - not all GDP growth is good. In particular growth of sectors that increase consumption of positional goods is bad.
Viewed from this perspective, a lot of Xi's work is investment in physical capacity increases which cannot be positional.
* Early 2010s, China drove massive reductions of cost in solar and li-ion batteries, allowing them to capture an emerging pillar of world manufacturing.
* Mid 2010s, China drove real world deployment of AI via the CCPs population management goals (remember in 2015 the big concern was AI researchers in US returning to China like Andrew Ng). This has paid off as desired in the form of the first consumer tech brand from China to become popular abroad (Tiktok). AND they drove logistics changes via apps, creating the first major markets for mobility, delivery, and domestic fulfillment via apps. Their pop. density created huge advantages here.
* Late 2010s, China attempted to drive semiconductor manufacturing. They were succeeding (as shown by organic adoption of Huawei 5G pre-trade wars). I suspect if the US/world had taken a laissez faire approach to this as they did with the prior 20 years, China would have already succeeded in shipping the best in class chips for some specific use cases, and on the path to overtaking TSMC, Intel, etc. for general purpose computing. The rules of the game changed in a way that no one really predicted in 2016 and this has set them back (maybe permanently?).
Looking at the targets of the common prosperity campaign, nearly all fit into either
(1) positional goods where a monopolist captures higher profits without improving service levels overall. Think loyalty programs that get people to spend more money to board a plane first.
(2) 0 marginal cost goods that can be monopolistically priced. Think in-app purchases in video games, crypto currencies, etc.
(3) platform providers that monopolize access to the platform. Think things that would be regulated utilities in the pre-internet world like logistics access (Alibaba), communications providers (Wechat), etc.
I agree we could view a lot of the unforced errors in real estate as incompetence, but let's also consider the forced successes elsewhere.
Again, a not strong commentary on Asia (in line with past commentary on Japan etc).
First of all, there is a powerful assumption at work on the author's part: that world "approval" matters to China - particularly the US and European elite's wokenesss.
Secondly, there is a failure to look at the big picture. Xi has reined in the areas of the Chinese economy which threaten to turbocharge inequality. Somehow the notion that Xi / the Chinese government under Xi cares about inequality is ignored - and furthermore unlike American wokeness - the Chinese government has actually walked the walk vs. just talking the talk.
Chinese tech titans, real estate moguls, financiers etc have been brought to heel unlike their American and European counterparts.
China isn't perfect by any means, but flawed criticisms of it only reinforce just how clueless the West is about how China really operates.
>>First of all, there is a powerful assumption at work on the author's part: that world "approval" matters to China - particularly the US and European elite's wokenesss.
That's hilarious, because Noah's chart included China's mostly-un-woke neighbors, not just US and EU.
Please crawl back into your hole, troll. Grownups are talking, and don't need you farting around like a child about American social politics.
>First of all, there is a powerful assumption at work on the author's part: that world "approval" matters to China - particularly the US and European elite's wokenesss.
First of all, are India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, The Philippines and Taiwan the woke west? None of them are western countries, and they're all neighbors to China.
Secondly, it matters enormously, and its loss has had profound economic implications for China. Does the belt and road initiative "matter to china"? How could it not? It's practically Xi's centerpiece policy, and backlash against China is a major contributor to the iniatie largely being a failure. It has also lead to trade wars and other policies that economically restrict China's international growth.
And China is making a hell of a lot of angry noises about these countries' negative view of China, so unless this is some 4D chess or something, yes, it matters to them, we know it matters to them because they literally tell us themselves that it matters to them.
Also, do you realize how completely silly you sound saying that that China doesn't care about wokeness? China's propaganda machine has been going full bore, non-stop 24/7 proclamations about how the west is being "racist" against China, which is a hell of a lot more woke than being opposed to concentration camps is.
>Secondly, there is a failure to look at the big picture. Xi has reined in the areas of the Chinese economy which threaten to turbocharge inequality. Somehow the notion that Xi / the Chinese government under Xi cares about inequality is ignored - and furthermore unlike American wokeness - the Chinese government has actually walked the walk vs. just talking the talk.
This is a common talking point, but there's no basis to this. The BIGGEST inequalities in China are urban vs rural. The CCP are doing nothing to close these inequalities and are if anything outright hostile to rural populations. They are trying tolimit urban inequality because urban populations are the source of their power. But this is a very narrow, opportunistic focus on inequality (and it's not even clear its working!).
>Chinese tech titans, real estate moguls, financiers etc have been brought to heel unlike their American and European counterparts.
Okay, great. But it remains to be seen if this bringing to hell will give rise to healthier economic growth. There's no sign of this yet, and the things that Xi has tried to implement e.g. belt and road, semiconductors etc have failed.
Saddling countries with unpayable debts for problematic infrastructure projects has been a standard colonial technique for centuries. Belt and Road might well have been planned to have plenty of problematic projects, precisely to get leverage over the local states. In several cases, China has ended up with indefinite control over major infrastructural assets, like Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. Generally the projects are run by Chinese management, giving the host countries no control over the asset they need to pay back the debts, which gives China the ability to effectively force defaults if it chooses, by mismanaging the assets.
Zero COVID is absolutely the way to go until the population is fully vaccinated, which is only a few more months for China. Recovery from lockdown-induced slowdown is very fast with some stimulus the CCP can easily do, but they can't un-die people and there's no good treatments for long COVID as of yet.
A flip side of this is - what has Xi done that *does* indicate good leadership? I can't think of anything economically or politically clever they've done in the past few years. The recent blizzard of edicts in particular seems poorly thought out - it's probably true that China is overbuilding subways at the moment, but imposing a blanket ban is ridiculous. Put in an oversight board, or impose financial and service standards. It would be easy to do this much better - but they haven't.
My interpretation of recent Chinese actions is that they are terrified of any dissent. That would explain the need to crush Hong Kong, the brutality in Xinjiang, shutting down tutoring, limiting online gaming (a major social network), etc. In combination with the fact that the Chinese have generally been pretty willing to accept CCP rule as long as it delivers good economic growth, I'm wondering if perhaps they've realized they *can't* continue the economic boom much longer and have concluded they have to go back to intense repression to maintain power.
>>A flip side of this is - what has Xi done that *does* indicate good leadership? I can't think of anything economically or politically clever they've done in the past few years.
Some of the other commenters have indicated something you appear to have missed: He unified what had been a factionalized, pluralistic party, using anti-corruption and hypernationalism to consolidate power over the system. It may not be "good" from all perspectives, but it's certainly "clever" and deft.
The "good" outcome (from Xi and China's perspective) is that it could successfully galvanize an internal consensus that can then keep the lid on domestic politics with victories in foreign (or domestic-periphery) adventurism. No need for more Tianenmens when you have a whole generation of wumao happily carrying out censorship for you.
The "bad" outcome is that China blunders into some war and then loses catastrophically, making itself a pariah on an historical level to rival Japan and Germany. The crisis probably also takes down the CCP.