Echoes of Mao in Xi Jinping's strongman rule
echoes of Mao in Xi's strongman rule
WRITTEN BY AAYUSH MOHANTY
24 June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is going to be a landmark event in the history of the 21st century. While countries all over the world are fighting hard to contain or eradicate the virus, Beijing has decided to stir up trouble on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India. The timing of this incursion raises an important question, why is China suddenly so aggressive on the LAC? The answer to this question lies in China’s political business model, the party’s fight for legitimacy and the pressure applied by a genuine crisis.
The Communist Party’s mismanagement of COVID-19 has prompted sharp responses from all sections of Chinese society, including from their citizens. As the Communist Party heads to its centennial celebrations in 2021, the mishandling of this crisis combined with the beating China’s image has taken internationally, is one of many problems facing Xi Jinping’s presidency. Xi’s revamp of the political system wherein collective leadership has been replaced by a ‘one-man rule’ shares sharp similarities with Mao’s style of governance, which, as history points out, did not yield the desired results for the Chinese society. This comes as India and China were poised to celebrate 70 years of bilateral relations.
Mao and Xi: China’s system then — and now
China’s ambush tactics on India’s borders are not new. Starting with the 1962 war, the Cuban Missile crisis is often cited as cover for China’s 1962 invasion of India’s territory. However, it is the disastrous Great Leap Forward by Mao Zedong, which many analysts have concluded led to the offensive against Nehru’s India. Mao, as part of The Great Leap Forward, wanted to get rid of four pests who he considered a threat to hygiene and therefore responsible for economic backwardness. These included rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. In 1958, Mao ordered the extermination of sparrows, who he believed consumed tonnes of grain, which would in turn be better used to feed Chinese people and therefore grow the economy. By 1959, sparrows in China had been exterminated but Mao failed to take into account that sparrows consumed large numbers of insects, leading to locusts ravaging successive harvests. Between 1958 to 1961, more than 30 million Chinese people perished.
Xi Jinping’s demand for total loyalty from the government’s bureaucracy has overruled decades of collective leadership, which previously afforded some flexibility toward policies and encouraged pragmatism over rigidity.
Similar to misjudgments at the heart of the Great Leap Forward has been Beijing’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Wuhan was placed under lockdown for seven weeks after serious mismanagement by local authorities, this was later eased while the number of global cases steadily increased. The easing of this lockdown gave an impression that China was open for business and had therefore contained the pandemic. China’s state media heaped praise on Xi for his leadership and handling of the crisis. By the third week of May however reports began to surface that China had in fact placed an additional 100 million people in its Northeast provinces under lockdown, therefore hinting that a second wave was underway.
Xi’s demand for total loyalty from the government’s bureaucracy has overruled decades of collective leadership, which previously afforded some flexibility toward policies and encouraged pragmatism over rigidity. In other countries Xi’s failures would see his power diminish, however this will not usher in his removal as the Communist Party of China (CPC) ensures such mechanisms exist as to prevent a coup d'etat. The General Office of the Central Committee is tasked with monitoring all communications between its members and it is subsequently the only office with sufficient authority to remove the Chairman from power. The Committee and the Politburo are however dominated by members loyal to Xi and his faction within the party. One significant problem with strongman rule is that while decisions may be swift, they are taken by a leader who has limited time and attention and can therefore lead to disastrous consequences.
The hastiness of decision making outlined above have two things in common. Mao and Xi were in a hurry to get China’s economy back on track and on par with developed countries across the West (and Japan). Further similarities exist in that both leaders instituted a form of strongman rule ensuring little tolerance for criticism amid Party ranks and especially within the higher echelons. The process of ruling through an iron fist coupled with a party sanctioned propaganda machine dedicated to propping up Xi has lead to difficulty in overturning poor policy decisions taken by the Chairman, be they military or socio-economic.
Miscalculated economic policies and their subsequent failures on a domestic and now global level have led Xi and before him, Mao stirring up trouble on the LAC with India. The invasion then (and salami-slicing techniques today) have led to an undermining of the Panchsheel agreement and successive informal summits between President Xi and Prime Minister Modi in Wuhan and Mallapuram.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Aayush Mohanty is a Research Associate at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think tank based out of New Delhi. The views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. Image credit: Ee Shawn/Flickr.