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The Chinese authorities are going to abolish the limit on the number of terms in power of the President of the People's Republic of China that has existed since 1982. This opens the way for current Chairman Xi Jinping to virtually unlimited rule, since the other two key posts (head of the party and head of the army) even now have no time limits. Supporters of the current head of China say that the ten years required by law would not be enough to carry out the reforms he has begun; opponents say that the country is embarking on a dangerous path that could lead to dictatorship.
On Sunday morning, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua published news that actually announced the beginning of new era. According to the agency, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CPC Central Committee) proposed removing from the country’s constitution the phrase that the chairman and deputy chairman of the PRC “can hold office for no more than two consecutive terms.” The agency later published a document from the event where the decision was made. It, judging by the dating, took place on January 26. The agency did not say why the publication took place only a month later. Most likely, this decision will be discussed again at the third plenum of the CPC Central Committee (February 26–28) and finally confirmed at the annual session of the National People's Congress on March 5.
The announcement effectively opens the way for the unlimited rule of current Chinese President Xi Jinping. Let us recall that the leader of the PRC usually occupies three highest positions: chairman of the PRC (analogous to the president in other countries), Secretary General Communist Party of China (the main post giving most powers) and the head of the Central Military Council, which governs the army. Formal legal restrictions in terms of terms, they exist only for the post of Chairman of the People's Republic of China, which at the same time is the “weakest” of all three. Its main purpose is to give the holder the status of head of state, so that if he travels to other countries, he will be given the appropriate welcome.
The leader of the PRC can hold two other key posts for more than two terms of five years, although this would be a gross violation of the established practice of changing political generations. According to this practice, Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, must leave his post as secretary general in 2022, handing over power to a young successor whose candidacy will be agreed upon by all interest groups. In March 2023, at the first session of the National People's Congress after the congress, he must also leave the post of Chairman of the People's Republic of China, handing it over to the new Secretary General.
The elimination of term limits for the post of chairman is an important symbolic step that leaves no doubt about the Secretary General’s intentions to remain in power at least until 2027 (he will then be 74 years old).
“It is noteworthy that in the first explanations of the reasons for this step there is no detailed argumentation. It is only written that “at the decisive moment one should follow the will of the Central Committee,” a senior researcher at the Center for Research drew Kommersant’s attention East Asia and SCO MGIMO Igor Denisov.- It is emphasized that we're talking about about "partial changes", although in fact " new period socialism with Chinese characteristics" (this is how Xi Jinping calls the period of his rule.- “Kommersant”) also means a fundamentally new configuration of power. Its contours are not entirely clear, but, most likely, it will be built not on formal institutions, but on the principles of “political ethics”, where the main thing will be loyalty to the “core of the system” (the title given to Xi Jinping by the CPC Central Committee.- “Kommersant”), that is, the leader."
Experts have been telling Kommersant for the past three years that the Secretary General of the CPC will somehow want to stand out from his predecessors. The key point here was the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China held in October 2017, at which “Xi Jinping’s ideas on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era” were included in the CPC charter as the new leader’s ideological contribution to the foundation of the Chinese state. The alarming assumptions of experts did not come true then: Xi Jinping did not break written or unwritten rules and break the order of elite renewal that had developed in the 1980s.
The only deviation from practice was the absence of a young (50–55 years old) politician in the new composition of the country’s governing permanent committee of the Politburo, who would have replaced Xi Jinping in 2022 as part of the rotation of the country’s leaders that takes place every ten years. However, this could have been done for many different reasons. There was still hope that the Secretary General would not break the order of the change of power. After all, it was established by the architect of Chinese reforms, Deng Xiaoping, in order to avoid gerontocracy, which he rightfully considered the cause of the paralysis and collapse of the USSR.
“Now it is finally becoming clear what Xi Jinping had in mind when he proclaimed a “new era” at the 19th Congress of the CPC,” Ivan Zuenko, a researcher at the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Institute of Atomic Energy, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted in a conversation with Kommersant. “New era.” - this is a general rejection of political practices associated with the rule of Deng Xiaoping. Abandoning "Deng Xiaoping's China" and returning to "Mao Zedong's China". Refusal from the system of collective leadership, from changing generations of leaders once a decade, from the inadmissibility of the return of the cult of personality.”
According to Ivan Zuenko, after the current decision of the CPC Central Committee, there is no doubt that the abandonment of term limits means not just the desire of the Secretary General to remain in power for five years more than previously assumed, but “a transition to a system of lifelong rule.”
Andrey Karneev, deputy director of ISAA MSU, agrees with him. “Those dissatisfied with the current Chinese leader have been talking for a long time about the fact that there is a creeping “dedenxiaopinization” in China. But usually they were immediately objected that this was not true: Xi Jinping repeatedly spoke flatteringly about Deng Xiaoping, he told Kommersant. “Now this is becoming more and more obvious. The current Secretary General believes that without his rule, China will face a catastrophe and its prevention is much more important than formal and informal restrictions.”
Having come to power in 2012, the current Secretary General really launched a large-scale reform program that continues to this day. The key ones are the reform of the army, the economy, the fight against the debts of state-owned companies and local governments, strengthening the authority of the Communist Party and the anti-corruption campaign, which has become business card Xi Jinping. Kommersant’s interlocutor in Chinese government agencies said that “the situation forces the secretary general” to resort to such measures. “The situation is very dangerous, all the gains of past years can be nullified if decisive measures are not taken,” he believes. “The main problems are now concentrated within the party itself, and its reform is the most pressing and urgent task.”
Xi Jinping has indeed more than once pointed out that he considers his key task to be “ensuring the leadership of the party over all affairs of the country”: this is the first point of the program of “socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era.” To do this, believes Vasily Kashin, leading researcher at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is necessary to stop the confrontation between clans and cliques, which is characteristic of China. “The concentration of power in the hands of the leader eliminates the prerequisites for factional struggle in the Communist Party,” he told Kommersant. “Xi Jinping does not intend to play complex combinations at all, just as Deng Xiaoping did, who ruled the country from the post of chairman of the Central Military Council (Deng Xiaoping never held the other two most important posts in the country, nevertheless being the de facto leader of the state.- “Kommersant”). Deng was forced to constantly put up with factional struggle, even despite his enormous authority.”
By the 19th Congress, Xi Jinping had actually practically stopped the clan struggle in the country with a series of hard landings of representatives of all major groups in the Chinese elite. Among them were prominent members of the “Shanghai clique” of General Secretary Jiang Zemin, which once promoted Xi Jinping to power, and members of the “Komsomol group” of his predecessor Hu Jintao, and members of other influential clans. The current Politburo consists almost entirely of technocrats who have no ambitions of their own, whose main task is to clearly and efficiently formalize and implement the ideas of the Secretary General.
In this situation, extending the deadline seems quite logical, says Alexander Gabuev, director of the Asia program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “The main question is whether this hyperconcentration of power will result in the necessary reforms or will lead to a cycle of gaining powers without much result,” he shared his thoughts with Kommersant. “Now Xi Jinping has no excuses for why the necessary economic, social and other reforms are not being carried out. Power is centralized to the extreme, loyal personnel were installed in key positions during the 19th Congress, opponents were dispersed during the anti-corruption campaign. In fact, the first five years were a preparatory stage, and Xi Jinping’s ten-year term begins now.”
Mikhail Korostikov
Deputies of the National People's Congress (NPC), the highest legislative body, approved the abolition of restrictions on holding the position of chairman of the PRC. Before today these posts could not be held for more than two consecutive terms. Now Secretary General Xi Jinping will be able to remain in office beyond 2023, when his second term comes to an end. Life recalls details from the biography of the current Chinese leader.
Most Russians know only two things about today's China: a lot of people live there and, it seems, they are still building communism, but with a capitalist face. Few will remember the name of the Chinese president, on whose position, meanwhile, both world politics and the world economy today depend.
However, the Chinese themselves know little about their leader.
“Silent Xi” - that’s what they called him five years ago, when Xi Jinping first took the helm of China. They also said that it is almost impossible to piss off the Chinese Secretary General - no matter what happens, an impenetrable polite smile will always play on his face, embodying all the condescension of the mighty thousand-year-old China towards the outside world.
Victim of the Great Leap Forward
Xi Jinping was born on June 1, 1953 in Beijing in the family of a prominent party leader, Xi Zhongxun, one of the prominent leaders of the Chinese Red Army. In the 30s, Xi Sr. (in China, the first part of the name is the family surname, the second is the name of the person himself) was engaged in the creation of a partisan underground in Shanxi province, then fought with the Japanese and became famous as the commander-in-chief of all the northwestern provinces of China.
After the war, Xi Zhongxun, whom Mao himself called “a leader of the people,” became head of the propaganda department of the Party Central Committee. The peak of his career came in 1959, when at the Eighth Party Congress he was elected to the Politburo and appointed deputy chairman of the State Council of the People's Republic of China - that is, he became the second person in the country after the Great Helmsman Mao himself.
However, Xi Zhongxun's party career was ruined by his passion for literature. Back in the early 50s, he wrote a book about a friend of his youth - the Red commander Liu Zhidan, who went down in the history of the country as the “Chinese Budyonny”. And everything would be fine, but one of the closest associates of the “red hero Liu” he named a certain Gao Gang, the former chairman of the State Planning Committee of the People's Republic of China, who - exactly two years after the publication of the ill-fated book - was declared an enemy of the people. Xi Zhongxun’s book was remembered only in 1962, when the time came for the “great purge” in the Chinese party.
However, there was another - less publicized - reason for Xi's fall. At the end of the 50s, Mao announced the beginning new strategy Great Leap Forward, calling on the Chinese to build communism at an accelerated pace: “Three years of hard work - ten thousand years of happiness!”
From the outside, this experiment resembled mass insanity: in the countryside, all peasants were forced into agricultural communes, socializing all property - from houses and livestock to personal clothing and shoes. In some places, wives were also socialized. Communes created in cities were required to produce industrial products: throughout China, hundreds of thousands of primitive blast furnaces were built in the courtyards of houses for artisanal smelting of cast iron - of course, of poor quality. As a result, the Great Leap Forward turned into an unprecedented economic catastrophe: peasants rushed to flee barracks life, a famine began in the country, which, according to some estimates, claimed the lives of 45 million people over several years.
Of course, someone had to answer for the failure of the Great Leap Forward, and Mao announced a purge of the party, when tens of thousands of party leaders were declared enemies of the people. Xi Zhongxun was among them.
Son of an enemy of the people
But Xi Zhongxun was lucky - unlike hundreds of thousands of repressed enemies of the people, he was not shot or rotted in the Laojiao camps (the Chinese equivalent of the Gulag), where political prisoners are “re-educated through labor.” No, Xi Zhongxun was lucky - he was simply removed from all posts and sent into honorable exile - the director of a tractor plant under construction in the city of Luoyang in the neighboring province of Henan.
He ended up in the “Laojiao” camp in 1967, when the Cultural Revolution began in China - a campaign to destroy Mao’s political competitors under the pretext of “the fight against internal and external revisionism.” Young “rebels” began to fight the enemies - Red Guards, yesterday’s schoolchildren and students from disadvantaged families, who, intoxicated with impunity, smashed the “revisionists”, who often became their teachers, local officials, and representatives of the clergy. The management of the plant in Luoyang also got it - Xi was beaten half to death and, dressed in jester's clothes, forced to read the “word of repentance” in the square under the threat of gallows, after which they were sent to the quarries for re-education.
Young Xi Jinping, then 13 years old, escaped the camps only by a miracle. Together with mother Qi Xin, sister Qiaoqiao and younger brother Yuanping, they fled the city to their home province of Shanxi. In the village they fell into the hands of local Red Guards.
As the son of a seasoned “counter-revolutionary,” Xi Jinping was sentenced to the most shameful and dirty work - he and his brother had to look after the pigs of the agricultural commune and live in a pigsty.
Many years later, Xi Jinping himself recalled in an interview with a Chinese magazine:
What do I remember from my youth? Just a constant feeling of hunger and cold. I also remember the daily hard work, the beatings of the guards and the constant loneliness. For almost seven years my home was a dirty pig barn. I slept on a bed made of bricks, covered with an old blanket that was infested with fleas. I drank from the same bucket with the pigs...
From rags to party riches
Everything changed in 1976, when, after the death of Mao Zedong, the reformer Deng Xiaoping came to power, who himself suffered from the terror of the Red Guards (the “rebels” grabbed his son and, after much torture, threw him out of a third-floor window, after which the young man became disabled).
Xi Jr. immediately sensed a change in political direction. And although his father was still an enemy of the people and a prisoner of labor camps, he was allowed to leave the pigsty. Moreover, as part of the campaign to rehabilitate victims political repression Xi Jr. was even accepted into the Communist Party and appointed to the post of secretary of the party organization in his “native” pig-breeding brigade. However, Xi Jr. tried not to linger on the collective farm and at the first opportunity he left for Beijing, where he entered the Faculty of Chemical Technology of Tsinghua University.
In 1978, Xi Sr. was also rehabilitated. First, he was returned to the plant in Luoyang, then Xi Zhongxun, with the patronage of Xiaoping, became the governor of Guangdong Province - this is in the very south of the country, actually on the border with Hong Kong. It was the coastal province of Guangdong that became the main experimental site for the future Chinese economic miracle.
In the 1980s, Zhongxun, elected to the secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, became one of the pioneers of the policy of economic liberalization. Xi Sr. was also responsible for bringing to life the main brainchild of the architect of Chinese reforms - he oversaw the construction of the city of Shenzhen - the capital of the “special economic zone”, a kind of “incubator” for the first Chinese market capitalists.
"Daddy's boy" went to the people
Under his father's wing, Xi Jr. seemed to have a guaranteed and easy path to success. Having received a diploma as a chemical engineer, he began to make a career along the party line, then, under the patronage of his father, he became the secretary of the then Vice-Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, Geng Biao. The place is, as they say, warm, especially since Geng Biao at that time was also a member of the Central Military Council of the People's Republic of China.
The father also arranged the family life of Xi Jr., marrying him to Ke Xiaoming, the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Great Britain. As a wedding gift, the parents gave the newlyweds a luxury apartment in the prestigious Nanshagou district in western Beijing, where the embassies of all Western countries are located.
However, the marriage of convenience turned out to be sheer torture for Xi Jr. As American diplomats who lived in neighboring apartments recalled, the newlyweds quarreled almost every day. The educated and elegant beauty Ke was openly burdened by life in Beijing, where literally every step was under the control of party bodies and special services. She urged her husband to leave everything and go to live in the West, but he always refused, realizing how his escape would affect the position of his father and the entire family.
Ultimately, in 1982, the marriage broke up. Ke left the country and moved to England, while Jinping remained in China. Or rather, he not only stayed, but resigned from all his posts and asked to be sent to work somewhere in the provinces.
Perhaps he simply realized that the career of a “daddy’s boy” did not in any way correspond to his ambitions. However, in order to reach the top in the power system of the Celestial Empire, it is not enough to have connections and support from a related clan; for this you need your own political capital.
And Xi Jr. went to the city of Zhengding, the capital of the county of the same name in Hebei province in northern China near the coast of the Yellow Sea.
Surge after Tiananmen
student revolution", and in China itself - an attempt by the new Secretary General of the CPC Central Committee, Zhao Ziyang, a liberal and Westerner, to organize a party purge of the old party nomenklatura clans. The attempt failed - the generals intervened in politics, as a result the student "Maidan" in the center of Beijing was dispersed, and Zhao Ziyang himself was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
Following this, a series of arrests took place in the provinces of the country.
As a result, Xi Jinping's career took a vertical leap - in 1989 he became both the party leader of Fujian province and the first secretary of the district party organization of the People's Liberation Army of China. In the Chinese vertical of power, it is precisely such regional leaders who are the personnel reserve for the highest echelons of power. It seemed that young Xi was about to return in triumph to Beijing, but in the 90s he career seemed to have stagnated at the level of provincial leader. Perhaps the whole point was that the new Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who came to power in 1993, preferred to place his people everywhere - mainly people from Shanghai, where Jiang Zemin was the mayor.
Only in 2002, when Hu Jintao became the new Secretary General of China - by the way, a graduate of Tsinghua University, from which Xi Jr. also graduated, did Beijing remember his candidacy. And soon Xi received a new appointment as governor of Zhejiang, one of the richest provinces in the country.
At the same time, Xi Jinping has succeeded in building family happiness. Back in the early 90s, he married for the second time - to singer Peng Liyuan, the “golden voice of the Chinese army,” who is known throughout the country as a performer folk songs and songs from the military repertoire. The news of Peng Liyuan's wedding had the effect of a bomb exploding - no one could understand what she found in this “silent Xi”?!
And only very recently, Peng admitted in an interview that she was captivated by Jinping’s steely character, his gentleness and courtesy with women, and his equanimity - it seems that there is nothing in the world that could bring Xi out of a state of eternal peace.
But his indifference is a mask, - said Peng Liyuan, - in fact, no one knows how passionate and emotional a person he is.
In 1992, the newlyweds had a daughter, Xi Mingze. Today very little is known about the daughter of the Chinese leader. She now lives in Beijing, having returned from the United States - for several years she studied under a pseudonym at Harvard, where she studied law, art history and English literature.
It was in Shanghai
cultural" or any other revolutions. Or rather, surprises happen, but not at the time when impatient Europeans are waiting for them. For example, in 2002, Hu Jintao became the new Chinese leader, who - according to the country's Constitution - should rule for no more than 10 years, that is, until 2012. But the candidacy of Hu Jintao’s successor began to be discussed in Beijing in 2007 - on the eve of the next party congress. The logic here is simple: it is at the party congress that the leader of the state begins to nominate successors and gradually introduce them into a narrow circle of the country's top leadership.
Actually, the main successor at that time was considered to be a certain Chen Liangyu - a member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee and the head of the Shanghai Regional Committee of the CPC, a man from the powerful "Shanghai Clique" of former Secretary General Jiang Zemin, who later became the Chairman of the PRC. Moreover, Chen Liangyu himself was so confident in the strength of the “clique” that several times he allowed himself to publicly argue with Hu Jintao at Politburo meetings.
But the Politburo did not forgive such insolent people.
In 2006, Chen Langyu was suddenly arrested by agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security on charges of misuse and theft of approximately $400 million from local Pension Fund. “Silent Xi,” appointed to the post of mayor of Shanghai, was assigned to investigate the case. As a result, Chen Liangyu received 18 years in prison, and with him, several dozen officials from the “clique” were arrested in the case of stealing money from pensioners.
And in 2007, the country learned the name of Hu Jintao's likely successor. True, the list of contenders for the throne was not limited to the name of Xi Jinping. There were other successors. The main competitor is Li Keqiang, former secretary of the CPC Committee of Liaoning Province and leader of the so-called. Komsomol group - officials who began to make a career in the governing bodies of the Communist Youth League of China. Another contender is Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Shanghai Clique who rose to the post of Minister of Public Security of the People's Republic of China.
But everything was decided by the 2008 Olympics in Beijing - its holding was supervised by Xi Jinping, who was elected Deputy Chairman of the People's Republic of China. After the sporting triumph of the Chinese team, no one was left with any doubt about who exactly would lead China into the future.
Fifth generation versus fourth
From the outside, Chinese politics resembles Chinese traditional theater - "jingxi", when something is clearly happening on stage, but what exactly is completely unclear. At least for uninitiated viewers. Initiated people are in no hurry to explain the meaning of what is happening, because it is absolutely impossible to explain to the European barbarians - "laowai" - that in the Chinese theater the very action of the play has almost no meaning, that the art of "jingxi" is built on canonized and refined conventional techniques of expressiveness, on stylized movements and gestures appropriate for each character in the play, expressing a certain role.
The laws are exactly the same in Chinese politics - all the main action takes place outside of public space, in the quiet of corridors and offices. In public, Chinese functionaries only regularly perform ritual gestures. But sometimes the laws of the Jingxi theater are broken, and then the audience becomes visible to all the behind-the-scenes mechanisms and squabbles of the Beijing Olympus.
Something similar happened with Xi Jinping in September 2012 on the eve of the 18th National Congress of the CPC - it was at this congress that Xi and the “fifth generation” of Chinese managers came to power.
On the eve of the congress, Xi Jinping disappeared from public politics for several weeks. Moreover, he canceled a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Singaporean Prime Minister, and Russian ministers. However, as the American Washington Post reported, citing Hong Kong sources, in fact, Xi was severely beaten during a meeting with representatives of Zhou Yongkang’s “army group”. Allegedly, during the meeting, the conversation in a raised voice turned into a real fight, and the enraged generals almost hit the head of the Deputy Chairman of the People's Republic of China with broken chairs.
Therefore, according to American journalists, Xi Jinping was forced to lie down at home for several weeks, waiting for the bruises to go away.
Well, Xi Jinping took brutal revenge on the offenders. Less than six months after the congress, Zhou Yongkang was arrested on charges of a whole bunch of corruption crimes.
The topic of fighting corruption in general became the main leitmotif of Xi’s first term, who, having entered into an alliance with Li Keqiang (Li is now the head of the PRC government), began to persecute appointees of the former elites with a strong hand. However, ordinary Chinese only welcomed how waves of purges, one after another, covered the military and party elite, mired in theft.
The scope of the anti-corruption campaign is astonishing: in four years - from 2013 to 2017 - the special services “cleaned out” more than 1.35 million officials and party leaders. Of course, two-thirds of those convicted got away with dismissal or expulsion from the party, but several hundred thousand officials - mostly from the upper levels of power - were sentenced to life imprisonment and death penalty through execution.
Among the convicted “heavyweights” were the deputy head of the Central Military Commission, Guo Boxiong, and the deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xu Caihou, and the former chief assistant to Secretary General Hu Jintao, Ling Jihua, and former minister commerce Bo Xilai is another “crown prince” who created a business empire that covered the whole of China. By the way, they say that Xi Jinping had plans to visit Bo Xilai personal accounts- During the Cultural Revolution, Bo was the commander of one of the capital's Red Guard detachments, who hunted people of the older generation. They say that Bo Xilai did not even spare his own father, breaking all his ribs during interrogation. Along with Bo Xilai, his wife Gu Kailai was arrested and accused of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood, who helped move billions of Chinese officials to offshore accounts. As a result, Gu Kailai was sentenced to death, and Bo Xilai to life imprisonment.
An interesting detail: the defeat of Zhou Yongkang’s “Shanghai group” caused a lot of concern in Russia. It was Zhou Yongkang, who oversaw the work of Chinese oil and gas companies on behalf of the government, who was the main initiator of the construction of the Russian Power of Siberia gas pipeline going to China.
But Xi Jinping was then considered a real pro-Western politician - as a representative of the industrialized South-East of the country, he advocated the development of geothermal “green” energy and the development of the liquefied gas market, which was supplied to China by Qatar, Malaysia and Indonesia.
However, very soon Xi Jinping proved that it was not for nothing that in Fujian province he was called the most flexible politician - he restored relations with Gazprom, and showed himself to be Russia’s best ally, and put forward the “One Belt and One Road” initiative, making Russia one of them China's main economic allies on the path to building the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "Maritime Silk ways XXI century."
For the third term
The identity of Xi Jinping’s possible successor has been debated for a long time, but the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, held in October 2017, did not bring any clarity on this matter. If Xi Jinping had any thoughts about worthy representatives of the “sixth generation” of Chinese officials, he preferred to keep them to himself - none of the young provincial governors or Xi’s nominees received a “landmark” invitation to enter the highest echelons of power at the congress. Moreover, some of the “sixth generation”, who were tagged as “heirs”, became involved in new “corruption” investigations. For example, the most likely contender for the post of Secretary General was considered Sun Zhengcai, the former head of the Chongqing City Committee, who on the eve of the congress was removed from all posts and placed in Qincheng Prison - an elite detention center in the center of Beijing, open specifically for high-ranking officials and party leaders.
The current members of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee and even Xi’s deputies on the State Council and the Military Council are also not suitable as successors - in 2022, when Xi will have to resign, as required by the Constitution of the PRC, almost the entire Chinese Areopagus will reach 70 years of age retirement age, after which their path to power will be barred.
But Xi himself will be only 69 years old in 2022 - by Chinese standards, his prime age. For example, it is appropriate to remember that Deng Xiaoping himself became the leader of China at the age of 73 - after many years of living under arrest. And Mao Zedong, at the age of 70, had not yet even gotten a taste for ruling the country.
So it is no coincidence that in China they not only started talking about a possible change to the country’s Constitution so that Xi Jinping could remain for a third term, but also already approved this draft amendment.
Deputies at a session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the highest legislative body, approved the abolition of restrictions on holding the positions of the chairman of the PRC and his deputy.
This decision allows Xi Jinping to be re-elected to office after 2023, when his second term comes to an end.
On the day when the Supreme Court finally rejected Ksenia Sobchak’s complaint against Vladimir Putin’s registration as a presidential candidate, the third plenum of the 19th convocation of the CPC Central Committee opened in Beijing. And on Sunday, amendments to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China proposed by the Central Committee were officially announced. The Central Committee proposes, in particular, to include in the Basic Law the ideas of the current Chairman of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping on socialism with Chinese characteristics, to insert there a phrase emphasizing the leading role of the CPC, and to remove from the Constitution of the country the phrase that the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the People's Republic of China "may hold office no more than two terms in a row."
Head of the Center for Oriental Studies High school economics in Moscow, a sinologist notes that talk about abolishing the provision on a maximum of two terms for the Chairman of the People's Republic of China has been going on for a long time, this idea was “thrown in” through the press:
– The first leak, apparently, was made by the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, which is well informed and is in such a positional game with the PRC, which often publishes hard-hitting articles about the situation in China, although it never engages in direct, sweeping criticism of Beijing and does not take anti-Chinese positions . Let me remind you, almost all last year many articles in the Western press, not just the Chinese, and even articles in such a respected publication as the Economist, were filled with hints and discussions: what will happen if, after all, China moves to almost permanent leadership? Will this be good or bad? In fact, the world's reaction to what could happen to China and the world was being tested, and perhaps is still being tested. public opinion How will Chinese dissident circles in the West, of which there are quite a few in both the USA and Great Britain, rise to the occasion? How will the world and its closest neighbors, for example, Russia, react to this proposal? In principle, oddly enough, it doesn’t matter how true it is. The important thing is that yesterday and today the whole world is discussing this statement.
– For you, as a China specialist, how realistic is it that this initiative will be implemented? Most recently, at the congress of the Communist Party, the ideas of a specific person, Xi Jinping, were included in its charter for the first time since the time of Deng Xiaoping. It seems that he is taking leaps and bounds towards becoming a truly authoritarian leader. Do you agree?
- In general, yes. Because if we rewind a little, in both 2016 and 2017, a cult of personality and the sole power of Xi Jinping was actively created. For example, Xi Jinping has been called the "core" of national ideology. This is a designation of a leader who is already above his formal responsibilities as chairman of the CPC Central Committee. At the 19th CPC Congress, which took place in 2017, no successor was named. Although theoretically, at least two young successors should have been identified during this period. And one of them, again theoretically, could be nominated for the next term as Secretary General of the CPC Central Committee. Accordingly, since in China one person combines both posts - Chairman of the People's Republic of China and Secretary General of the Central Committee - then today we should know the names of several successors. But there are none. And finally, it became extremely intensified in Lately the personality cult of Xi Jinping (we are talking about his portraits and quotes, which has not happened for almost 35 years). All this suggests that there is indeed a tendency to strengthen the authoritarian regime under Xi Jinping.
The fear of transferring power suggests that Xi Jinping simply does not trust a large number his comrades
“But this system, in which the leader holds office for no more than two consecutive terms, at least worked for thirty years.” extra years. When Xi Jinping came to power, he was talked about as the person who would most likely preserve this system. After all, he experienced the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, he is from the family of one of the repressed leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Why do you think things are happening while Xi Jinping is in power?
– Firstly, the nature of power has changed in China, it just changed imperceptibly. The fact is that the enormous successes that have occurred over the past 30 years have given rise to a number of opposing trends. First of all, this is the growing influence of local elites who have become rich. And they are bound by party circles that want to play their own games, and they have their own views on the future, the future of their families. At the level of provincial or even district leaders, administrations, city committees, regional committees, these are people whose many children study abroad. They are already integrated into world economy, firms and enterprises are opening all over the world. And, in general, thereby losing primary loyalty to the state, that is, the impetus for the growth and development of China is lost. In fact, this is what Xi Jinping noticed. And the fight against corruption in the last 5 years is, in fact, a fight not against theft or the cutting of the state budget. This is a fight against these elites, who have essentially ceased to understand their tasks before the state. And this is what, in fact, Xi Jinping is trying to correct. Why does he do this? Because there are problems within the Chinese economy, again generated by growth: this is the gap between the poor and the rich, the unprofitability of Chinese enterprises, the huge debts of enterprises to the budget, the uneven development of regions. Rich south, very poor northwestern regions, and so on. There are plenty of such imbalances. And it is no longer possible to solve them only by internal means, because the old drivers of growth, for example, the export economy, cheap labor, have already disappeared. As a consequence, you need to go outside.
Actually, this is what is taking shape in Chinese politics, in the slogan put forward by Xi Jinping: “One Belt, One Road.” This is, in essence, the export of Chinese capital, their investment in infrastructure projects, in the energy sector, so that capital works abroad, and China itself gradually takes control of the largest shipments, transport routes and the economies of a number of countries. Then China acquires some international stability. And this allows him to position himself in a completely different way. In essence, this is re-globalization according to the Chinese model. If earlier it came from the West, now it will come from China. But one term is not enough for this. This can be done in 10 years. It is impossible to correct the situation in China in the next 5 years, that is, the years that Xi Jinping has left. Thus, if we are now talking about the real possibility of extending his powers, then we are talking about the fact that he is extending the opportunity to carry out reforms. At the same time, oddly enough, this also speaks of the weakness of the current wing, which is headed by Xi Jinping. Because the fear of transferring power, the fear that all reforms will suddenly be completed, suggests that Xi Jinping simply does not trust quite a large number of his associates, says Alexey Maslov.
“On Thursday, V.V. Putin will come out to the world with a program for a new six-year term (address to the Federal Assembly). The day before, the Chinese, with their historical amendment to the Constitution, completely removed the “2024 problem” for Putin. This is how the next interlocutor of Radio Liberty, a political scientist, responded to the proposals of the Central Committee PDA.
Putin gets the opportunity to say: look, big nations, entering the historical arena, are not at all guided by the norms of change of power
– This decision is important for Russia and, of course, for all of Eurasia. This is a global event, for sure. If we look, relatively speaking, from the perspective of Samuel Huntington's famous 1991 article on the “waves of democratization,” and this text is based on the simple observation that the waves of the spread of the liberal democratic regime of government go in waves. And Huntington said there that there was a first wave, then a wave that restored liberal democracy in Europe after the war, and this same wave was also a wave of anti-colonialism, which led to the spread of democratic ideals in former colonial countries. And then there was the third wave of the so-called “velvet” revolutions - the fall of the Eastern Bloc. And then the question arose: will there be some next wave? This is a fair question, because the world is changing, the global world is changing. Big big new players - China has changed over the last 25 years, and so has the Middle East and all of Asia. And during this same period, during these same 25 years, post-Soviet countries and regimes made historical choices for themselves.
The Eurasian world has become completely special type board
And in this context, the decision of the Chinese leadership now clearly indicates that such a significant historical choice has been made, which emphasizes that the most important element of the liberal democratic concept of government, namely the turnover of power, from the point of view of China, is no longer some kind of ideological priority. This calls into question a very large tradition in general. Vladimir Putin has already joined Alexander Lukashenko in his concept of power, and Nazarbayev before. Therefore, it is no coincidence that we now often say that if the glass of democracy in Russia was half empty or half full, and 10 years ago it might have seemed to an outside observer that Russia was able to maintain the framework of liberal democratic development, but now it is not. Now, of course, the Eurasian world has become a completely special type of government. China clearly joins it.
– I don’t think that the Chinese prepared their Central Committee Plenum for the Russian presidential elections and, especially, for the day when the Supreme Court of Russia rejected the appeal of Ksenia Sobchak, who complained about the registration of Vladimir Putin as a presidential candidate in these elections. Do you think Putin will openly mention this step of the Chinese authorities (although it has not yet been formally completed) when he talks about politics in some of his upcoming speeches?
- He can joke about it. I don't think he will seriously appeal to this experience. In general, he doesn’t need this. But this, of course, is a ball in his basket. He receives absolutely obvious support and the opportunity to say: look, large, huge nations, developing nations, entering the historical arena, are not at all guided by the norms of succession of power. This will, of course, help him, but to say that he will play with it somehow, I would say no. Because, in my opinion, Putin retains the opportunity in 2024 to try again the model of transfer of power, in which he will retain his key position in the system, transferring the presidency to someone else.
– If China does things the way they do, maybe in 2024 they will be able to say: “Well, look, since such a great power as China does not limit the terms of government for its leaders, then I can take advantage of this”?
– Yes, of course, especially since it is obvious that the existing authorities, the political elite of Russia will overwhelmingly support any proposal and are ready to always put forward this proposal that Putin remain the leader of the country until the end of his life. In this sense of the word, there are some options that everyone is discussing. There are many such discussions that a State Council can be created, and then it will be the chairman of the State Council, or a constitutional decision can be made that removes restrictions on powers. There are many possibilities here. And indeed, it must be said that society will accept this completely without complaint.
– Let's return to generalizations. We talked about countries such as Russia, China, Kazakhstan, large, influential countries, of course, we are also talking about Belarus. You said that Putin accepted Alexander Lukashenko’s concept of power. Could all this, the path that all the countries mentioned have taken, been avoided?
- Of course! History is not so determined that it simply runs on rails, like a trolley. There are historical forks. And, of course, Russia had such a fork in the road in 2008–2011. Probably, if a significant part of the economic, political and military elite had chosen in favor of further changes in power, rallying at that moment around Medvedev or, conversely, someone else, preventing Vladimir Putin from castling and returning to the Kremlin, then, of course, , history would have taken a slightly different route. But now you can’t go back to that. The fork has been passed. Now, unfortunately, we must drink the cup to the bottom, - Alexander Morozov believes.
“The CPC Central Committee proposed to include patriots who dedicated themselves to the great revival of the Chinese nation into the ranks of the united patriotic front. Such amendments are proposed to be made to the Constitution of China. According to these proposals, for long years revolution, construction and reform, under the leadership of the CPC, a broad united patriotic front was formed, consisting of democratic parties and people's organizations and includes all socialist workers, all builders of socialism, all patriots supporting socialism, as well as all patriots advocating the reunification of the motherland and dedicating themselves to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
The CPC Central Committee proposed to include “harmonious socialist relations between nationalities” in the Constitution. It is proposed to change the phrase “Socialist relations of equality, unity and mutual assistance between nationalities have been established and will continue to be strengthened” to “Socialist relations of equality, unity, mutual assistance and harmony between nationalities have been established and will continue to be strengthened.”
The CPC Central Committee proposed to include “work to build a community with a common destiny for mankind” in the Constitution.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to include the mechanism for taking the oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the country into the basic law. It is proposed to include in the Constitution an article stating that all civil servants must publicly swear allegiance to the Constitution before taking office.
The CPC Central Committee proposed to include the Supervision Commission in the Constitution as a state body."
