Revisiting China’s emergence – The lesser-known story of the rise of a global hegemon

• The credit goes to the duo of Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji for navigating China during the challenging times despite the severe shortage of qualified human resources.
• The missing of China’s top business tycoons such as Jack Ma has raised alarm bells on the extent and gravity of Xi’s unprecedented crackdown.
• There is a determination in the CCP, not to let the Army get away from being their sword arm or their guardians in arms, as a robust safety valve.
• Despite their revulsion and hatred for the west, Chinese leaders were successful in the projection of a positivist, warm and welcoming image to the western world, by sublimating their stark differences, including their perspective, and cohesive hegemonic ambitions.

The rise of China, as a global hegemon is apparent to everyone now. With the conclusion of the recent 20^th party congress of the CCP (Chinese communist party), the Chinese premier, strongman Xi Jinping was elevated to the status of “core of the communist party”. He was the fourth leader to have been elevated to this supreme status within the party, after Mao Zedong. Along with being the supreme commander of armed forces, he will also be the principal patriarch of the CCP, whose sovereign authority, command and power will be unquestionable.

A lot has been written, spoken and debated about Xi Jinping, in contemporary times, about his stature and rise as one of the most powerful and influential people in the world.  But the Chinese hegemonic resurgence as we know it today, actually happened in the two stimulative and transformative decades, between 1990 and 2012. Therefore it’s important to understand the political history of this period, where the Chinese political economy was steered through cohesive political decision-making and railroading the necessary reforms by its leaders.

The reformist decades and the role of its leadership

The transformative decades of 1990 – 2012, with leaders like Jiang Zemin,  Zhu Rongji and Hu Jintao, carrying the heavy mantle and burden of economic reforms, changed the face of China, forever. We tend to think and believe that Deng Xiaoping and the present leader Xi Jinping are the two leaders responsible for the development of China, and tend to forget these transformative years in China’s history. In these years, the Chinese GDP quadrupled, its military strength grew substantially, and its diplomatic influence across the world grew by leaps and bounds. The Chinese leadership took real political risks to railroad through, those reforms and they were able to manage the social, political and economic fallouts in such a manner that there was no repetition of the Tiananmen square kind of incident. They had sturdy political courage, did not roll back reforms, and stuck to the reformist agenda, despite the high inflation and unemployment crisis. The credit goes to the duo of Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji for navigating these challenging times despite the severe shortage of qualified human resources. They followed the words of Deng Xiaoping, as he had once said “We will cross a river feeling the stones, with our feet to experiment, and to continually refine the policy so that China, enjoyed three decades of double-digit growth”.

The Chinese started the process of the relaxation of authoritarian controls and restraints in a progressive way that allowed for an explosion of art, science, technology, research, education and innovation.

The Chinese started the process of the relaxation of authoritarian controls and restraints in a progressive way that allowed for an explosion of art, science, technology, research, education and innovation. In fact in the 1990s and the early 2000s, there was a lot of freedom in many respects, in the fields of education, research and the arts. But political freedom was absent, as criticism against the leadership’s policies and towards the party were not tolerated. These relaxations were taken to allow entrepreneurship and innovation to flourish. This led to spectacular economic growth in China, in these two decades. But however, the growing disparities between the urban and rural areas were a major concern. There was a developmental disparity between the east coast, which was prospering very well, and the hinterlands, specifically the northwest and southwest regions of China which was still trailing backwards. In fact, these high regional disparities caused long-term economic turbulence.

Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, recognized that this lopsided development of the economy would have longer-term political consequences and the communist party’s greatest worry was social instability, which possessed the ability to challenge its authority and political legitimacy. But his concern was addressed in a poised manner by the Hu Jiantao regime. They began to adjust the policy by talking about a harmonious society and introducing welfare measures to the economy. This was the time, that a safety net began to be created for urban workers and to a limited extent for rural workers. This meant that a certain degree of welfare-ism crept back into the governance, but it was always with the view to ensure that there was social harmony but was not intended to go back to the Maoist period, where there was complete social equality, enforced by the gruesome wrath of the state apparatus.

 The problem of systemic corruption is in fact, too inevitable in a liberalizing society. But effectively the concern of the party was that, the political leadership and their families were engaging in massive graft and corruption, and that beyond a point, this was not only harming the national economy but was proving to be a challenge for the communist party itself.

Although, Xi Jinping inherited a vibrant economy, but he also inherited the downsides of corruption and nepotism as major systemic challenges. And some of his initial policies are explained by the fact that he needed to deal with them so that, the anti-corruption campaign was made stringent as it was instrumental in clamping down the serial offenders, even from the topmost echelons of the establishment. The moving away from measuring economic success just in terms of GDP growth to using the measures of quality of life was brought into the Chinese system by Xi Jinping, to ensure a fairer society.

Although, Xi Jinping inherited a vibrant economy, but he also inherited the downsides of corruption and nepotism as major systemic challenges.

In fact in his second term, what has really happened is that China has come close to a being rigid bureaucratic state. Some of the control measures and autocratic decisions with an obsession to ramp up the security architecture of China, have led to the stifling of entrepreneurship, has stifled innovation and discouraged the private sector. The missing of China’s top business tycoons such as Jack Ma has raised alarm bells on the extent and gravity of Xi’s unprecedented crackdown. There is a negative impact because of these rabid measures, on the Chinese economy, as India’s former foreign secretary Mr Vijay Gokhle said, “tightening the screws, has actually slowed down the Chinese economy, and it would further lead to worsening of their overall financial situation despite being a manufacturing and supply chain giant in the world”.

The PLA and changes under Xi Jinping 

The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) is not an independent sovereign army as it is a wing of the CCP, including its navy and the air force. It plays a pivotal role in the power structure and power system in China, as its ideological control and command always emanate from the CCP. During the regimes of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, the PLA had autonomy, in its functioning and operations to a great degree, but Xi Jinping has cracked down on the fault lines which had developed within the PLA, such as corruption, and has brought about full control over all the armed forces.

The PLA is the sword arm of the Chinese communist party, as the party itself grew out of a revolutionary force of the Long March of Chairman Mao. In the first four decades, Mao and Deng Xiaoping fought on the ground and had a direct experience with the military. They had gained immense combat experience, as they had fought shoulder to shoulder with their military comrades, during the revolution, and therefore exercised command and authority over them.

The post-Deng Xiaoping establishment lacked military experience, and therefore they found a new modus operandi, wherein the civilian leadership could control the military establishment without interfering with their autonomous functioning.  So, the power structure that evolved during the period of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao was described as “Reigning but not ruling”. This is similar to a constitutional monarchy, where the party’s civilian leadership was nominally the head of the military institutions and the formal military structure. This ensured that the military did not enter civilian politics, which was the principal concern of the Chinese at that point in time. But as a downside, the military establishment became quite powerful and gained significant independence in its working and structural manners. The CCP felt that if they are allowed this degree of independence, the army might be separated from the party itself due to its gained strategic interests and autonomic power structure, within the Chinese establishment. This also happens to be one of Xi Jinping’s major concerns, even now. There are two significant reasons for this,

1) As per the assessment of the CCP, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, which happened between 1989-1991, the Red Army did not come to the support of the communist party of the Soviet Union, at this critical time of disintegration and collapse. Therefore there is a determination in the CCP, not to let the Army get away from being their sword arm or their guardians in arms, as a robust safety valve.

2) The belief that the west by introducing the ideas of democracy, rule of law, and liberal constitutionalism, intends to separate the PLA from the CCP, which would weaken the imposed control structures on the party. This is seen as a strategic subversion attempt of the west against the CCP. As the Chinese have always practised and professed the idea of an obsessed national security state. These beliefs, which might sound absolutely bizarre to the rest of the world, are followed ardently.

The previous generations of Chinese leaders had marshalled the skills of deft diplomacy and ultimately gained substantial success in capturing the west’s capital, talent and technology.

Perhaps, the biggest success that the Chinese achieved in luring the western world is, despite their strong resistance, to validate the checklists of democracy, freedom and rule of law, they succeeded in capturing the western markets economically and triumphed in wooing the west with its cultural diplomacy. As the western multi-national corporations quadrupled their profit margins, with the aid of Chinese manufacturing and robust supply chain networks, the often disturbing human rights violations in China were ignored by the west, so much so that even the international agencies blindfolded themselves towards it, and failed to even offer their lip-service to the victims of the Chinese abuses.

Nevertheless, due credit must be given to the Chinese leaders, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao. Despite their revulsion and hatred for the west, they were successful in the projection of a positivist, warm and welcoming image to the western world, by sublimating their stark differences, including their perspective, and cohesive hegemonic ambitions. The main intention was to capture their (west’s) capital, talent and technology, in this regard, the previous generations of Chinese leaders had marshalled the skills of deft diplomacy and ultimately gained substantial success in these objectives.

_{(The author has an MA in International Relations. Views expressed are author’s own)}

Viswapramod C

Viswapramod is a PhD Scholar at the Department of International Studies and Political Science, Christ University, Bangalore. He has an MA in International Relations. Views expressed are the author’s own.