Category: China

Hot Days in Hong Kong

Saturday May 11, 2019

There was heavy fighting yesterday in the Hong Kong legislature over a newly proposed extradition law. Legislators were injured in the melee. The previous day had seen demonstrations in the street.

The law is supposed to sort out a pending case of a murder committed by a Hong Kong man in Taiwan. The accused has fled back to Hong Kong and the authorities say that he cannot be extradited because there exists no appropriate law to do so. But Hong Kong democrats are highly suspicious because the law would also allows extraditions to mainland China.  They see in it the long hand of Beijing which wants to get hold of those it accuses of having committed political crimes. The Hong Kong government is trying to soothe tensions by arguing that there are safeguards in the new law. Extraditions will not be automatic but will be reviewed individually. But knowing the weakness of the Hong Kong authorities in the face of pressures from Beijing that sounds hardly reassuring.

Officially, Hong Kong s a “self-administered region” under the current “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement. But that arrangement is under pressure. It is set to come to an end in twenty-four years. At the same time, Beijing is increasingly making itself felt in a hundred different ways. It’s goal is evidently to integrate Hong Kong step by step into the Chinese system: politically, economically, and socially. The resukt is an inevitable struggle between those who are willing to go along wirh Beijing’s demands and those determined  to resist.  We must look forward to more turmoil in the years ahead.

 

America and China: new enemies?

From today’s South China Morning Post:

Renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs has said diplomacy is needed between the US and China to prevent “utter disaster” as he defended his controversial criticism of Washington’s targeting of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies.
The Columbia University professor faced a firestorm of criticism on social media after he accused the US of hypocrisy for its targeting of Huawei senior executive Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested by the Canadian authorities last month at the behest of the US.
“The US attacks on Huawei, in my view, are not about Huawei’s actions but about technological competition,” Sachs said on Tuesday.
“I don’t think we should take claims against Huawei by the US at face value.”
“We need diplomacy to stop an IT arms race,” he said. “Right now we are on the path to disastrous cyberwarfare.
“This is reckless and should not be left to the hardliners on both sides. We need global rules, globally supervised, just as in the areas of other armaments.”
He added that the US targeting of Chinese firms should be seen against the background of the Trump administration’s attempt to assert American “exceptionalism” and to fight the perceived challenge of China and Russia to US power.
“It is a very dangerous and utterly false idea that China is ‘attempting to erode American security and prosperity,’” he said, referring to the US national security doctrine issued by the White House a year ago.
Sachs warned that conflicts like the continuing trade war and the targeting of Chinese IT firms “recall an early era of great power confrontation that eventually led to utter disaster”.
“China is not America’s enemy, unless such zero-sum thinking by the [US government] drives China in that direction … China is not a malevolent actor to be ‘contained’ by the US.
“China is a great and rightly proud civilisation that aims for the prosperity of its people. China and the US have every reason to cooperate. It would be insane and utterly self-destructive to do otherwise,” he said.

 

 

The Enemy In-Chief

Since its foundation the US has always had an enemy in-chief. First it was the British who helped to solder the nation together. Then came the extermination of the American Indians extending the American territories “from sea to shining sea.”. Then the civil war when the Americans made mortal enemies of each other with wounds that are still not fully healed. Then came the Spanish, the Germans (twice), the Russians, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq,

Now it appears that a new enemy in-chief has come into sight. Today it is China’s turn. A new act in a deeply dangerous game.

Made in China 2025

The Trump administration has been worried about China turning itself into a leading economic power. Its current trade war with China is officially aimed at bringing about relatively small changes in China’s economic policies but its real aim is to constrain China’s long-term development. We can be sure that China would be willing to adjust its trade policies but it will certainly not abandon its overall development plans. There is no reason to think that the Chinese would ever consent to being in a permanently inferior economic position.  And it is not obvious that the US can keep it there.

Here is an informative overview from the South China Morning Post of China’s 2025 development plans. Click here

 

Xi Jin Ping Thought Made Easy

“Xi Jin Ping Thought” has become the fourth pillar of China’s official political ideology. The other three are Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory. The official title of this new ideological component is “Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” But what is its content? Beijing’s People’s Daily has taken the trouble to make it all clear to its readers and here is the chart the newspaper designed for this purpose. Good luck with it.

The need that China’s rulers feel to formulate such an official ideology is surely remarkable. It reveals how differently they think about politics which they see as being not just a pragmatic operating with power but as requiring also an associated system of ideas. The roots of this way of conceiving politics go back to the Enlightenment and the French revolution. And it manifested itself subsequently not only in Marxism-Leninism but also in Italian fascism and German National-Socialism.

“Hong Kong is hell.”

That was about the last thing I heard as I was leaving the city. Said by the taxi driver who was taking me to Kowloon Station on the way to the airport. He was grumbling over the incessant building activity, the diversions and obstacle on the way to the station, and the ever congested traffic. But his real complaint was about rising housing costs. “It isn’t only that,” he added. “Store rents are also going up steeply and store prices are following along. Only the super-rich can survive here.” And he wasn’t the only one from whom I heard this during my visit.

Meanwhile the glitzy shopping malls were still full of customers strolling along with bags full of newly acquired possessions. Outside glamorous stores like Gucci, Hermés, and Dior lines of shoppers were waiting patiently to get admitted. Hundreds of mainland Chinese were rolling their suitcases down the marble floors stuffed full of goods to take home for resale. But the glitz, the glamour, and the frenetic shopping activity cannot hide the fact that the gap between super-rich and everyone else is becoming greater and greater in this capitalist paradise.

The result is that more and more young people in Hong Kong fear that they will never be able to afford a home of their own. And the rate of their emigration is going up. They are leaving for places like Taiwan and even far away Iceland. There is also increasing poverty here and the number of homeless is inevitably rising, much of this hidden from the view of visitors and the affluent shoppers. More on this

 

Two views of Beijing

 

 

August 16, 2018

The World Congress of Philosophy is continuing; but today, Thursday, it is mostly student presentations in Chinese. I take time off and get on the subway to do some sightseeing. Since it is a warm, sunny day I decide to visit Beihai Lake, a place I have not seen before. An artificial lake whose surroundings were once reserved for royalty, the lake is studded with the most exquisite mansions and temples along its shores, testimony to an astonishing aesthetic refinement. The beauty can make you shiver.

Today thousands of ordinary Chinese people stroll along the edge of the lake, boat across it, enjoy the sights, and eat ice cream. In one place a group of professional dancers are rehearsing. In another someone has brought along a boombox and couples are spontaneously beginning to dance. Everybody is peaceful, relaxed. I feel completely comfortable in this crowd.

In the distance we can see the hazy skyline of a new, modern Beijing. Out there are incredibly congested motorways, indistinct high-rises lined up mile after mile, air that can be heavy to breathe, though not perhaps today.

In the afternoon I visit the Confucius Temple and the adjoining Imperial Academy. The first time I had been there, in the Spring of 2010, the two places had been almost deserted. I sat for a long time undisturbed in the courtyard meditating on the ancient trees around me. This time, there were visitors galore, all kinds of school classes being led through by their teachers. What had changed? Was it the summer season bringing more visitors? Or had Confucius in the meantime grown in stature and recognition?

I had with me this time Frank Dikötter’s book on the Cultural Revolution. Visiting the lake, the Confucius Temple and traveling through modern Beijing made the events of half a century ago even more eerie. Were these the same people who had lived through those days of violence? I imagined that some of the older folks strolling along the lake might once have been Red Guards embroiled in the most atrocious happenings. It’s a puzzle I carry with me from my own childhood in Germany. An incomprehensible violence seems to be lurking somewhere deep in the human heart but you can’t hear it knocking on clear, sunny days like this one.

This is what I read in Dikötter’s book, as I sat once again under the old trees of the Confucius Temple: “Lao She, one of the most celebrated writers and author of the Rickshaw Boy, had served as a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in the 1920s. Like many others, he was keen to serve the new regime after 1949, but his background got him into trouble. A few days after the mass rally [August 18, 1966 when Mao had hailed a million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square], he and twenty others were taken by lorry to the Temple of Confucius, a serene compound where hundreds of stone tablets, in the shade of ancient cypress trees, recorded the names of generations of scholars who had successfully passed the imperial examinations. Dozens of school girls from the Eight Middle School stood in two lines, forming a live chain. As the victims were pushed through the human corridor, they were pummeled by the Red Guards, screaming ‘Beat the Black Gang!’ Placards were hung around the necks, stating their names and alleged crimes, as an official photographer recorded the event. The beatings continued for several hours. A day later, Lao She’s body was found in the shallow end of a lake near his childhood residence.”

And just as I come to the end of this passage, another school group gets  ready to pose for a photographer in front of the statue of the philosopher. What do they know of the events of fifty years ago? Their innocent laughter follows me for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting Joshua Wong

August 11, 2018

It is Saturday morning and I am about to meet up with Joshua Wong at the Bricklane Café right across from Hong Kong’s Legislature where Wong’s political party has its office. It turns out that Wong has already been at work that weekend morning and I am not the only visitor he will see that day.

I am curious to hear from him about the current state of Hong Kong politics. My initial introduction to it had come about in 2010 when I taught a course in political philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My students alerted me then to the intricacies of Hong Kong’s political situation and took me along to some of their demonstrations. They appeared rather tame compared to what I had seen of such events in Europe and California. But they proved more effective than I had imagined at the time. In 2014 the “Occupy Central” movement and the student-initiated “umbrella movement” disrupted the city for months in a call for more democracy and this led to hard confrontations with the police. Two years ago, on a visit to Hong Kong University, I had met up with some of the activist leaders including Joshua Wong. At the time they were reasonably hopefully that change might come. They got into electoral politics and some of them were actually elected into the Hong Kong legislature. But since then, the establishment and the government in Beijing have hit back hard.

When Joshua strides into the café, I am struck by how young he looks – and is. Not yet 22, he had become a political activist at the age of 15. I ask him what had got him to do so. And he replies that it was probably his religious Christian upbringing which gave him a strong sense of social responsibility. He is clearly an immensely committed and idealistic figure; one who sees himself as an activist rather than a politician. “Though I realize that one is at times forced to engage in politics. You have to make compromises and deal, for instance, with some politician with whom you otherwise little in common.” A[art from organizing some gigantic political demonstrations, Joshua has founded a political party (“Demosisto”) and serves currently as its general secretary. He has also already been in prison for his activity and is for that reason barred from running for office for the next few years. He has been denounced by establishment forces in Hong Kong and the government in Beijing, he has also been feted in the West, and, unlikely as it sounds, has already been proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize.

All this has not made him lose his cool. He is serious and astonishingly self-contained. He also knows that the road ahead for him will be hard. When I ask him how he sees his future, he speaks first of all of more activism. Only when pressed, does he allow for the possibility that one day he may be working in some other field and possibly even find himself abroad. He is not afraid of being locked up forever. “I am too well known for that,” he is confident. “But one day, trying to come back from abroad, I may find that the door is locked and I am not allowed to return.” Right now, though, he can’t travel abroad. The authorities hold his passport and he is not allowed to cross any border.

In 2017, Wong’s Demosisto party fielded a series of successful candidates for the legislature. The fact that it did, reveals that the party has strong backing in Hong Kong’s population. But the success also alerted Demosisto’s opponents and this has led to serious setbacks for the pro-democracy movement. There have also emerged tensions within it about the strategies to be followed at this point. Wong’s own formula is clear: persist and survive. He is lucky that he is in a position to do so right now. I ask what his expectations are for Hong Kong – in the short and the long run. Wong concedes that Hong Kong is unlikely to become more democratic as long as Xi Jinping is in power. He sees, instead, an educational task ahead. “Our generation had to learn about Tiananmen Square and that knowledge motivated us. Now we need to teach the generation coming after us, those born after the year 2000, about the umbrella movement and its goals.” Much of that work will have to be done via the internet. Demosisto is, in fact, not a political party in the traditional sense. It consists of a small group of activists and a large number of followers who can be reached by facebook, twitter, and Instagram. Wong grants: “I now realize that we should have had more money when we first got going in order to promote our cause more effectively. And I am even more aware today of this need to have the financial means to keep things moving forward.”

But what is his hope for keeping the movement alive? What is the best outcome to be expected? Wong shies away from such questions. Democracy is, after all, first and foremost an ideal and as such never realized in a complete pure form. So, what kind of democracy can the people of Hong Kong reasonably hope for? I am not sure of the answer and I suspect that Joshua is in the same boat.

I suspect that those in the independence, localism, and democracy movement (not all the same) are also deep down motivated by the fact that Hong Kong has been separated for more than a century from China, that it has developed in its own unique way, that it is more international than mainland China, and that it feels this difference most strongly. Living in Hong Kong, I realized that the locals entertained, in fact, plenty of prejudices against the people from the mainland. A Hong Kong lady once asked me whether I understood that the announcements on the subway where in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. “Mandarin,” she said with a sigh, “so unnecessary.” In such conversations, I have tried to explain my own background. The Rhineland, where I was born, was part of the Roman empire two thousand years ago and we still feel different from the Germans across the Rhine even though we have been officially part of the German state for more than 150 years. Something like this may happen also to Hong Kong. Hopefully, its identity, vitality, and spirit of independence will persist when the “One country, two systems” agreement comes to an end – which will be only too soon, fifteen years from now.

It is impossible to predict how successful Joshua Wong’s activism will be. Will it still, in the long run, transform Hong Kong into a stronger democracy? Will it, perhaps, even contribute to China, as a whole, becoming more openly democratic over time? Or will it, at least, help to maintain Hong Kong democracy at its present, imperfect level? The prospects are uncertain and I can’t help worry about Wong’s personal destiny. Clear in my mind, however, is how uniquely admirable his moral and political commitments are.

You can support Wong and his cause financially from anywhere in the world. Find out more on their website www.demosisto.hk.

Hong Kong Rain

August 11, 2018

It was drizzling yesterday evening as my plane landed in Hong Kong. During the night, a drumbeat of rain kept beating my hotel room window – not an unpleasant sound when you are from water-starved California. This early morning, the weather outside is already hot and sticky as I am struggling to raise my room temperature above fridge-level.

But other things are on my mind. I am planning to meet Joshua Wong this morning, the 25 year-old prodemocracy leader who has already been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. That may be premature but Wong is certainly an impressively dedicated figure. He became engaged in politics at the age of 15. has mobilized mass demonstrations for political change, has founded a party, and he has been to prison for his activism. And he seems by no means ready to throw in the towel. I hope to get some answers from him about the current status and future of Hong Kong.

What interests me is that the city sits at the point of intersection between China and the Western world and the way it goes is likely to tell us something about the course of global politics. A British creation, Hong Kong was ruled from London for more than a century. No self-government here, no democracy, but plenty of free market capitalism. When Britain finally handed Hong Kong to China under the formula of “One country, two systems” a tentative and partial democracy came into existence. Hong Kong democrats hoped that eventually a more fully formed democracy would emerge and they also hoped that it might serve eventually as an example to China, making it also more democratic in due course. Neither of these two things has happened. And in the last few years China has more openly set limits to Hong Kong’s political freedom. Meanwhile, the city’s style of unconstrained capitalism keeps on flourishing.

The city, I fear, may prove to be a lab case for how the increasingly shaky relations between China and the US will play out in coming decades. Sitting between these two powers, Hong Kong is forced to adapt itself to the forces that pull either way, The result is a peculiar hybrid system. Unlike China, Hong Kong has political parties and elections, but the election process is guided and constrained by Beijing. You might call it partial democracy. But if the conflict between China and the US intensifies, Hong Kong may really find itself exposed in the political rain, forced to seek shelter where it can – which will surely be as part of China. But this does not necessarily mean that the identity of Hong Kong will be entirely submerged in the greater Chinese universe. Hong Kong’s political activists still believe that their democratic spirit will prevail and may even come to infuse China.

There is a third possibility: that Hong Kong is a model for where both East and West are heading. It’s a fallacy that people are completely free to choose their political order. If we assume that material, and above all technological conditions circumscribe political options, we may want to conclude that the political systems of China and the West are bound to converge, given that they are on the same trajectory of technological development. What we might see then is a West that is less fully democratic than it is now and a China that is a little more so. In both parts of the world will there be thriving quasi-democracies as well as thriving capitalist markets. At that point, the whole world will have become one great Hong Kong. There are plenty of reasons for being unhappy with such a potential outcome.

It’s, in any case, from my friend Joshua Wong that I hope for some insightful thoughts on these worries.

 

 

 

 

Robotic Doves Circling over Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish from 1975 was the first book to raise the question of the surveillance state. The book was about changes in the practice of punishment and how these illustrate the emergence of a modern disciplinary society. But disciplinary society was for Foucault also and above all a society of surveillance. Hence the French title of the book: Surveiller et Punir. Foucault brilliantly illustrated his point by recalling Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon – an architectural design of a prison, conceived by the utilitarian philosopher, that allowed for the continuous surveillance of the prisoners and for their disciplining. In his presentation of this conception Bentham had already suggested its wider uses in schools, hospitals, factories, and workhouses.

Our society has developed much further into a surveillance society since Foucault published his book and certainly since Bentham wrote his treatise on the panopticon in the late 18th century. This has not escaped the attention of social scientists and there exists now an extensive literature on the topic of surveillance. For all that, we still need to reflect much more on this theme.
A useful stimulus to this end comes from a new report on a further step in the development of surveillance drones in the form of robotic birds. In the US, Europe, and China this development is well advanced. The Chinese are, in fact, already using robotic doves extensively in their rebellious Xinyang province. It’s worth looking at this article and the enclosed video from the South China Morning Post:

Click here

Capitalism and Democracy. A Lesson from Hong Kong

The rise of Xi Jinping has made Hong Kong democrats increasingly nervous. But the main threat to their goal to make Hong Kong more democratic does not even come from the authorities in Beijing; it comes from their own home-grown capitalists. The case of Hong Kong raises broad questions about the state of global politics and the future of democracy.

When I last visited Hong Kong, I had a chance to talk to some of the young political activists who have come to the world’s attention through their prolonged occupation of the central section of Hong Kong. But what did they really stand for? I discovered that, though they had acted together in 2013, they were, in fact, divided into three separate factions. The most radical among them were calling for Hong Kong independence; a second group was seeking to assure Hong Kong’s local autonomy; and a third group was pushing for democratic reforms. At the time, I thought that the democratic activi sts had the best chance (and perhaps the only chance) to realize their ambitions. But since then, some of their leaders have been sent to jail and some of their elected representatives have been expelled from the Hong Kong legislature. These actions were taken by local authorities — though, probably, under some pressure from Beijing. But it is noteworthy how readily the Hong Kong authorities acted in tune with Beijing’s wishes.

Since Xi Jinping has come to power the mainland government has inserted itself more and more openly in the affairs of Hong Kong. This month, on March 4, 2018, a leading member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo warned a delegation of Hong Kong law makers: “Using the high degree of autonomy to reject, fight and erode the central government’s comprehensive jurisdiction is absolutely not allowed.” He added: “[Hong Kong] needs to manage the relationship between one country and two systems well … strictly act in accordance with the constitution and Basic Law … and organically meld the central government’s comprehensive jurisdiction with [the city’s] high degree of autonomy.” This restated Xi Jinping’s own call in October of last year for an “organic” melding of Beijing’s authority with the city’s semi-autonomous powers in order to assure Beijing’s “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong.

In the same spirit, Wang Huning, Beijing’s new, powerful propaganda chief, has warned Hong Kong in the last few days that “no act that jeopardizes the Basic Law or Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability can be tolerated … The central government also has zero tolerance of Hong Kong independence, and it must be seriously tackled, or even suppressed.” And he encouraged the people of Hong Kong to strengthen their “patriotism and sense of national identity.” They needed to understand that “the nation’s fate is closely related to them, and that … Hong Kong youth’s future and the country’s development are also inseparable.”

Beijing’s determination to bring about a re-unification with Taiwan has contributed to the anxiety of Hong Kong’s democratic activists. Right now, the mainland government is trying to lure Taiwan by offering it favorable trade and economic terms. But if these sweeteners fail to work, the mainland could move forcibly to seize the island. The message appears to be that the Taiwanese may go on enjoying their capitalist way of life but that they must submit themselves to the comprehensive jurisdiction of Beijing. General Han Weiguo, a People’s Liberation Army ground force chief, said a few days ago that the PLA hoped Taiwan’s problem could be solved peacefully, as soon as possible. “Taiwan should be unified, not by force, but peaceful means. But that doesn’t mean the problem could be postponed indefinitely. It should be solved as quickly as possible.” Taipei needed to appreciate the urgency of resolving the issue, Han said. Resolving the “Taiwan problem” is seen as a major step in achieving Xi’s goal of “national rejuvenation.”

While the central government keeps repeating the mantra of “one country, two systems” in addressing itself to Hong Kong, it is becoming increasingly uncertain how the mainland authorities want to interpret this dualism. Hong Kong has lived with some such dual arrangement for a long time. As a British creation it was governed directly from London without any democratic pretensions. At the same time, the colonial authorities allowed a completely unregulated capitalism to flourish. This dual arrangement of political impotence and economic freedom has proved largely unproblematic to the local capitalists. With the end of colonial rule, they quickly transferred their loyalty to Beijing. In their minds the formula “one country, two systems” means: we are willing to go along with Beijing’s political demands as long as we are left to go on minting money. And for their own economic reasons the Beijing authorities have been willing to accept this division of labor.

To return to the Hong Kong activists and their unsuccessful push for more democracy. They quickly found out that they were opposed not only by the central government but just as much by the Hong Kong capitalists who could see nothing but political conflict with Beijing and bad business at home in the agitation. The story is of interest for the rest of us, because it throws light on the relation of capitalism and democracy. We are often told that the two go naturally and, indeed, necessarily together. Hong Kong teaches us a different lesson.

And here is a nice update to this item from the South China Morning Post on March 18 concerning Li Ka-Shing, one of Hong Kong’s richest men:

"It has been common for Hong Kong’s billionaires to cultivate close personal relations with China’s top leaders. The scale of their investments on the mainland was seen as a mark of patriotism, especially during the early years when the country was opening up and badly needed overseas investors.
 
Li was among the first group of Hong Kong’s super-rich who won Beijing’s trust and in return were gradually able to reap the rewards of investing in the huge mainland market.

Li had an impressive list of peers at the time: Henry Fok Ying-tung, Beijing’s confidante who was elevated to the post of vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; Y.K. Pao, “shipping king” and founder of Hong Kong’s World-Wide Shipping Group; Pao’s son-in-law Peter Woo Kwong-ching, former chairman of Wharf Group and one of the four candidates to become the city’s first chief executive after the 1997 handover; and Cha Chi-ming, the well-known industrialist and philanthropist who donated much to the country’s aerospace science development and other projects, and one of whose sons, Payson, was once the boss of the ill-fated Asia Television. 

The list goes on, but these were among the most prominent tycoons who forged lifelong friendships with top leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao."

President for Life

‘PRESIDENT FOR LIFE’ XI RISKS REPEAT OF CHINA’S MAO-ERA MISTAKES

A reliance on the strongman model of leadership poses dangers not only to the Chinese president – but to China itself

BY CARY HUANG
11 MAR 2018

An effort to clear the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely, by amending the state constitution to abolish term limits on the Chinese presidency, could become the most controversial political development of modern Chinese history – not only since the establishment of communist rule in 1949 but since the founding of the republic in 1911, when the last Chinese imperial dynasty was overthrown.

By eliminating the two-term limit, Xi will ensure that he can stay at the helm beyond 2023 when his second five-year term ends, enabling him to become president for life, if he so chooses. In political science, a president for life is regarded as a de facto monarch.

Xi has already achieved near-absolute dominance over the Chinese political system, having accumulated more power in his first term than any of his predecessors since Mao Zedong. Xi, nicknamed “China’s chairman of everything”, has taken personal control of policymaking on everything from politics, the economy, national security and foreign affairs to the internet, environment and maritime disputes. His political theory – “Xi Jinping thought” – has been enshrined in the party charter, an honour that puts it on par with Mao’s doctrine and superior to Deng Xiaoping’s.

In making constitutional changes to ensure his indefinite rule, China is morphing from one-party rule to one-man rule, backtracking to the Mao era. The development has in effect overturned the party’s most important political norms and rules regarding governance and power succession – rules that were agreed by post-Mao party leaders led by Deng. Apart from being the mastermind of China’s market reform and opening up, Deng also implemented major reforms aimed at preventing the revival of Maoism and particularly one-man dictatorships.

In setting up age and term limits, Deng’s aims were to avoid the excessive centralisation of power in the hands of one leader; to prevent personality cults; and to scrap the practice of lifelong service for senior officials. Deng also established a “collective leadership” system based on consensus building, power sharing and a mechanism for orderly successions.

While Xi has largely inherited Deng’s pragmatic economic policies, he has shown a determination to rewrite the rule book and revive some of Mao’s philosophy of rule. His fiercest critics accuse him of building a personality cult and indoctrinating the masses. Xi has expanded his clampdowns on corruption and political dissent into a broader crusade to root out anyone disloyal or who fails to comply with his orders.

A more centralised and top-down system might have the merit of allowing for expedited decision-making as Xi aims to lead China’s national rejuvenation at a critical historic juncture.

However, relying on the strongman model is risky, both for Xi himself and the country. It puts the steering wheel of the world’s most populous nation and second largest economy in the hands of one person, spelling danger when that helmsman gets old or ill – as was seen in Mao’s later days. The model makes it harder for Xi to avoid misjudgments and policy mistakes as few will dare to speak out. Removing term limits will help prevent future challenges to Xi’s authority and legitimacy, but the resurgence of strongman politics could intensify internal power struggles as factions will compete for the powers and resources once shared among all.

History has shown many political leaders who sought lifelong service have not managed to realise their vision. Some have been deposed long before their deaths, others have even been assassinated by political enemies. And even if Xi succeeds in becoming a lifelong leader, he would in all likelihood then face serious challenges in selecting a successor to continue his legacies after his death and guaranteeing a smooth transition of power. Mao repeatedly failed in this regard. The stakes could not be any higher: renewed hostility among political rivals and the repression of political dissent puts China at risk.2

Cary Huang, a senior writer with the South China Morning Post, has been a China affairs columnist since the 1990s