Xi’s absolute power is cause for worry

The forced removal of Hu Jintao, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s immediate predecessor, from the top stage of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress in Beijing, conveyed unmistakably what the congress was all about. It was a total reaffirmation of Xi’s leadership beyond question and for the foreseeable future. The official version that Hu was escorted off the stage for health reasons cannot be believed given the circumstances in which the drama happened. Whether it was a scripted scene or was improvised on stage, it sent out the most brazen message to the 2,300 delegates and to all of China and the world that Xi, with his power consolidated, would not be bound by norms of public conduct or niceties. It was thought that Hu would present some resistance to Xi in his bid for absolute power and was considered not to be in favour of an extension of tenure for him. His forced exit showed that there is no room for such dissent in the Communist Party or the State, which in China is, of course, one and the same.

It symbolically showed, through the public humiliation of Hu, the final denunciation of the Hu era, which Xi has dismantled over the last 10 years. Within the framework of an authoritarian system, Hu had introduced some liberal norms in the party and the State, tried to improve working relations with other countries, and de-emphasised conflict and confrontation as China sought a ‘peaceful rise’ globally. But Xi took the party and the State in the opposite direction on these issues. He has concentrated all authority in himself and got the party rules amended to give himself another term in power. He has used the anti-corruption plank to weed out all dissent and opposition within and pursued an aggressive foreign policy which saw relations with other countries, strong and weak, neighbours and others, deteriorate steadily. The escalation of the situation across the Taiwan Straits, the crackdown on Hong Kong and the needling of India across the border are typical examples of that policy.

Xi has pushed out most old and senior leaders from the party and government positions and placed his loyalists in the new Politburo Standing Committee and other key positions. He has created a totalitarian surveillance state and promoted a personality cult about himself. The party congress has endorsed all his policies, decisions and actions of the last two terms, and he will have hardly any challengers. But China is facing challenges, including demographic decline and a slowing economy, a pushback from the West as well as countries it tries to lord over. Xi has used extreme nationalist sentiments to cement his power but that can boomerang, too. India can expect a more difficult-to-deal-with China.