Ideologue

Winning a third term is not the only norm Xi Jinping busted over the weekend. He also defied the norm of picking the best and the brightest to the highest echelons of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

As a result, China does not only get a strongman at the top. The most populous country also gets an ideologue with proven capacity to defy his own people in pursuit of ideologically-defined goals.

In the labyrinthine corridors of power that is Chinese politics, one does not get to the top except by quashing rivals and overriding factions. In the decade he served as China’s president, Xi proved to be a master of the game. His paramount leadership is now uncontested as he begins his third 5-year term at the helm.

No one has acquired as much power in China since Mao Zedong was chairman of the CPC. Mao, uncontested by any group within the ruling clique, singularly made crucial policy decisions. Many of those decisions were badly conceived and resulted in economic calamities that killed tens of millions of Chinese.

When, in the autumn of his rule, Mao could no longer get the party to support his most whimsical programs, the paramount leader unleashed his fanatical Red Guards on the CPC itself. Key party leaders were purged. It took many years to tame the crazy genie of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and restore party control.

Among the party leaders purged during this period of anarchy was the father of Xi Jinping. Xi himself was sent off to seven years of hard labor in the countryside. He was shaped by this brutal episode in Chinese history.

Perhaps Xi wants to achieve the uncontested rule of Mao. But he is also wary of the CPC losing control of things. This is the reason he has been so obsessive in crushing dissent and keeping all affairs under strict party command.

Deng Xiaoping was one of the senior CPC leaders purged from power during the Cultural Revolution. He was sent to hard labor cleaning pig sties in the countryside. When he rose to power after the chaos inflicted by the Red Guards, Deng set down norms to safeguard the party’s rule. After Deng, the country’s president would serve only two terms. The party was committed to pragmatism, elevating technocrats up the party ladder.

Xi has defied both norms. He maneuvered to alter China’s constitution, scrapping the two-term limit on the presidency. He is basically set up to be president-for-life.

In the last national party congress, Xi stuffed the central committee, the politburo and the powerful standing committee with loyalists. They may not be the most able. But they are certainly the most loyal.

These loyalists are not likely to disagree with Xi on anything. They all saw how former Chinese president Hu Jintao, sitting right next to Xi on the dais, was physically removed from his seat. The former president was no threat to Xi. Given his stature, however, he could become a rallying point for dissenting opinion within the ruling party. Now he is literally and figuratively removed from the scene.

Observers have been closely reading the new party elite installed not by negotiations between party factions but on the say so of Xi. The sitting premier Li Keqiang has been retired from all party posts. Members of the Communist Youth League faction associated with Hu Jintao – Liu He, Yi Gang and Guo Shuking – have been removed from the Central Committee. The three are seen as generally more market-friendly in their policy disposition.

The appointments to the powerful 7-man Standing Committee of the Politburo are even more telling. They include the party bosses of Shanghai and Guangdong who have no experience in national policymaking. Also elevated to this powerful group is a person who served as Xi’s chief of staff for years but who has never held any party or government post of significance.

All these suggest that the years of meritocracy that delivered huge economic gains for China are likely on the wane. Loyalty is now better rewarded than competence. Xi Jinping has built an echo chamber around himself.

It is particularly noteworthy that no possible successor appears to be being groomed in the CPC leadership. The control freak that he is, Xi understands that designating an heir apparent or putting in place a succession plan creates a rallying point for those who might disagree with him. He would rather not risk that.

But without a succession plan or any mechanism for genuine policy debate, Xi’s method of strongman rule is ultimately self-defeating. Should any doubt be raised about Xi’s health, the market will collapse. Should he suddenly become incapacitated, the stage will be set for vigorous factional struggle.

Two decades of reformist presidents brought China great economic success. They brought the most competent men to positions of leadership and ensured succession plans that guaranteed continuity. All that was replaced with the cronyism of Xi Jinping’s rule.

Over the past decade with Xi at the top, China spent more on modernizing its military than on improving its productivity. While the National Party Congress was in session the past week, the release of the latest economic figures was postponed. This never happened before.

The rest of the world has reason to be anxious about recent developments in China. There are no guardrails for Xi Jinping rule.

He could do a Putin and decide to invade Taiwan and there is no inner party process to stop him.