China, Xi Jinping and the making of ‘one people, one ideology’

It is rare that disagreements among China’s political elite are reflected or even hinted at in public. So the high drama that unfolded between Xi Jinping, Beijing’s authoritarian leader, and Hu Jintao, his predecessor, in front of the world’s television cameras in 2022 rated as communist box office.

Xi and Hu were sitting next to each other before the massed ranks of deputies at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist party, a convocation so important that it is held only once every five years. Xi had used the congress to secure a third term as head of the party, a distinction that effectively meant he was set up to become China’s “leader for life”.

But something was amiss. At the closing ceremony, Hu reached to take a red folder in front of him. Another Chinese official slid it out of his grasp. Xi then signalled to an orderly who grabbed Hu under an armpit and escorted him from the auditorium. 

On the way out, Hu touched the shoulder of Li Keqiang, China’s premier, a former protégé, but the premier offered him only the merest of acknowledgments. As Hu was hustled out, none of a seated row of top officials even so much as turned to wish him well. They stared straight ahead, studiously ignoring his humiliation.

This chilling episode is one of many analysed in a probing new book by Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, two respected sinologists at Soas University of London. Over seven chapters, it dissects what must have a claim to be the most important yet least understood political philosophy of our age. 

The Political Thought of Xi Jinping jettisons a vogue for China books with sensationalist titles (Danger Zone, Destined for War, When China Rules the World and so on) but offers a valuable service. Patient scholarship is deployed to slash through a jungle of jargon and impenetrable doublespeak until shafts of light shine through. 

Understanding what is truly meant by Xi’s “community with a shared future for humankind”, “Chinese Dream”, “dual circulation” and several other slogans is part of the demystifying process. But the ultimate conclusion of Tsang and Cheung could not be more stark.

“In short, Xi’s vision puts the Party led by himself front and centre to forge a single powerful country with all its people united in the ambition of restoring China to its ‘historic’ place as the centre of the world,” they write. Thus, all of Xi’s circumlocutions end with a single ambition — “One Country, One People, One Ideology, One Party and One Leader”.

Anything or anybody who gets in the way — as Hu apparently did that day — is dealt with. The reason that Hu was prevented from opening the red folder, Tsang and Cheung say, is that the dossier inside would have revealed that his protégé, Hu Chunhua, had failed to secure promotion to the politburo. With this move, Xi was amputating his predecessor’s power base.

Another book that seeks to demystify the world’s second superpower is China’s World View by David Daokui Li, one of China’s most high-profile academics and founding dean of the Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Li has also served as an influential adviser to China’s central bank.

Given his status as an insider, readers might expect a recitation of CCP talking points. But this thought-provoking book is far more nuanced, honest and at times critical of China’s reality. Written in the vein of a tutorial for interested foreign observers, Li’s book seeks to explain how China really works, with chapters on the central government, local governments, corruption, the environment and other aspects of the national polity.

Li’s view of Xi is much more favourable than that of Tsang and Cheung. At times, he lets slip fascinating vignettes: Xi’s first wife, Ke Lingling, sought to divorce him, wanting to emigrate to the UK. “For one year, every week he would make phone calls to the UK to persuade her to come back,” Li writes. Ke did not heed his entreaties and the couple divorced in 1982.

Li portrays Xi as a detail-orientated leader with a thirst for first-hand knowledge. In a meeting that Li attended, Xi is quoted as saying: “I want to taste the steam bun myself. I don’t want other people to chew it for me.” 

One big challenge that Xi faces, according to Li, is that as people become better educated — with over 50 per cent of young people attending college — they are increasingly argumentative and expressive. “Obviously, no Chinese leaders confronted such an issue until now,” he writes.

In the chapter on local governments, he is similarly frank. He tells the story of a highly capable local official named Chen, who knew that “superb job performance would not be enough to secure a promotion”. Chen chose to bribe a powerful political mentor who himself was later sentenced to life in prison for taking “huge bribes”. Chen went down in the fallout, confessing to bribery and ending up in jail. 

The reader is left with a sense of how difficult China’s governance model makes it for local officials to remain uncorrupted. But Li remains optimistic, seeing a future reminiscent of Singapore, in which officials are paid so handsomely that the incentive to be corrupt is diminished.

The final chapter in his book argues that the rise of China is unlikely to cause a war — either hot or cold — with the US. Li’s argument rests on an assertion that China’s emergence will provide economic opportunities for most people in the world, more public goods in the form of advances in science and technology, and a more effective fight against climate change. 

This may be true but only up to a point. The much less appealing reality for many in the west is that as Chinese industries climb the value chain, they are eating away at the market share of the west’s most vaunted corporations.

Politicians in Washington, Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere are growing increasingly concerned that China’s rise will not enhance the west but hollow it out. And that, to borrow Tsang and Cheung’s vision, will embolden China’s ambition of seizing a place at the centre of world affairs.

The Political Thought of Xi Jinping by Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung OUP £22.99/$29.95, 272 pages

China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict by David Daokui Li WW Norton £22.99, 288 pages

James Kynge is the FT’s global China editor

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