Briefing Xi Jinping's Vision

7/30/2019 Briefing Xi Jinping's Vision

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Xi Jinping and the Chinese dream

The vision of Chinas new president should serve his people, not a

nationalist state

May 4th 2013 | From the print edition

IN 1793 a British envoy, Lord Macartney, arrived at the court of the Chinese emperor,

hoping to open an embassy. He brought with him a selection of gifts from his newly

industrializing nation. The Qianlong emperor, whose country then accounted for about a

third of global GDP, swatted him away: Your sincere humility and obedience can clearly

be seen, he wrote to King George III, but we do not have the slightest need for your

countrys manufactures. The British returned in the 1830s with gunboats to force trade

open, and Chinas attempts at reform ended in collapse, humiliation and, eventually,

Maoism.

China has made an extraordinary journey along the road back to greatness. Hundreds of

millions have lifted themselves out of poverty, hundreds of millions more have joined the

new middle class. It is on the verge of reclaiming what it sees as its rightful position in the

world. Chinas global influence is expanding and within a decade its economy is expected

to overtake Americas. In his first weeks in power, the new head of the ruling Communist

Party, Xi Jinping, has evoked that rise with a new slogan which he is using, as belief in
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Marxism dies, to unite an increasingly diverse nation. He calls his new doctrine the

Chinese dream evoking its American equivalent. Such slogans matter enormously in

China (see article ). News bulletins are full of his dream. Schools organise speaking

competitions about it. A talent show on television is looking for The Voice of the Chinese

Dream.

Countries, like people, should dream. But what exactly is Mr Xis vision? It seems to

include some American-style aspiration, which is welcome, but also a troubling whiff of

nationalism and of repackaged authoritarianism.

The end of ideology

Since the humiliations of the 19th century, Chinas goals have been wealth and strength.

Mao Zedong tried to attain them through Marxism. For Deng Xiaoping and his

successors, ideology was more flexible (though party control was absolute). JiangZemins theory of the Three Represents said the party must embody the changed

society, allowing private businessmen to join the party. Hu Jintao pushed the scientific-

development outlook and harmonious development to deal with the disharmony

created by the yawning wealth gap.

Now, though, comes a new leader with a new style and a popular photogenic wife. Mr Xi

talks of reform; he has launched a campaign against official extravagance. Even short of

detail, his dream is different from anything that has come before. Compared with his

predecessors stodgy ideologies, it unashamedly appeals to the emotions. Under Mao,

the party assaulted anything old and erased the imperial past, now Mr Xis emphasis on

national greatness has made party leaders heirs to the dynasts of the 18th century, when

Qing emperors demanded that Western envoys kowtow (Macartney refused).

But there is also plainly practical politics at work. With growth slowing, Mr Xis patriotic

doctrine looks as if it is designed chiefly to serve as a new source of legitimacy for the

Communist Party. It is no coincidence that Mr Xis first mention of his dream of the great

revival of the Chinese nation came in November in a speech at the national museum inTiananmen Square, where an exhibition called Road to Revival lays out Chinas

suffering at the hands of colonial powers and its rescue by the Communist Party.

Dream a little dream of Xi

Nobody doubts that Mr Xis priority will be to keep the economy growingthe countrys

leaders talk about it taking decades for their poor nation to catch up with the much richer

Americansand that means opening up China even more. But his dream has two clear

dangers.
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One is of nationalism. A long-standing sense of historical victimhood means that the

rhetoric of a resurgent nation could all too easily turn nasty. As skirmishes and

provocations increase in the neighbouring seas (see Banyan ), patriotic microbloggers

need no encouragement to demand that the Japanese are taught a humiliating lesson.

Mr Xi is already playing to the armed forces. In December, on an inspection tour of the

navy in southern China, he spoke of a strong-army dream. The armed forces are

delighted by such talk. Even if Mr Xis main aim in pandering to hawks is just to keep

them on side, the fear is that it presages a more belligerent stance in East Asia. Nobody

should mind a confident China at ease with itself, but a country transformed from a

colonial victim to a bully itching to settle scores with Japan would bring great harm to the

regionincluding to China itself.

The other risk is that the Chinese dream ends up handing more power to the party than

to the people. In November Mr Xi echoed the American dream, declaring that To meet

[our peoples] desire for a happy life is our mission. Ordinary Chinese citizens are no

less ambitious than Americans to own a home (see article ), send a child to university or

just have fun (see article ). But Mr Xis main focus seems to be on strengthening the

partys absolute claim on power. The spirit of a strong army, he told the navy, lay in

resolutely obeying the partys orders. Even if the Chinese dream avoids Communist

rhetoric, Mr Xi has made it clear that he believes the Soviet Union collapsed because the

Communist Party there strayed from ideological orthodoxy and rigid discipline. The

Chinese dream, he has said, is an ideal. Communists should have a higher ideal, and

that is Communism.

A fundamental test of Mr Xis vision will be his attitude to the rule of law. The good side of

the dream needs it: the economy, the happiness of his people and Chinas real strength

depend on arbitrary power being curtailed. But corruption and official excess will be

curbed only when the constitution becomes more powerful than the party. This message

was spelled out in an editorial in a reformist newspaper on January 1st, entitled The

Dream of Constitutionalism. The editorial called for China to use the rule of law to

become a free and strong country. But the censors changed the article at the lastminute and struck out its title. If that is the true expression of Mr Xis dream, then China

still has a long journey ahead.

Chasing the Chinese dream
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THESE have been heady days for Chen Sisi, star of a song-and-dance grouprun by Chinas nuclear-missile corps. For weeks her ballad Chinese dreamhas been topping the folk-song charts. She has performed it on state

television against video backdrops of bullet trains, jets taking off from Chinasnewly launched aircraft-carrier and bucolic scenery. More than 1.1m fansfollow her microblog, where she tweets about the Chinese dream.

Related topics

United States Politics

World politics Asia-Pacific politics Chinese politics

Ms Chen is playing her part in a barrage of dream-themed propagandaunleashed by the Communist Party. Schools have been organising Chinese-dream speaking competitions. Some have put up dream walls on whichstudents can stick notes describing their visions of the future. Party officialshave selected model dreamers to tour workplaces and inspire others with their achievements. Academics are being encouraged to offer Chinese dreamresearch proposals. Newspapers refer to it more and more (see chart). InDecember state media and government researchers, purportedly on the basisof studies of its usage, declared dream the Chinese character of the year for 2012.

It was, however, one very specific usage just before that December

publication which set the country dreaming. On November 29th, two weeks
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after his appointment as the partys general secretary and militarycommander-in-chief, Xi Jinping visited the grandiose National Museum next toTiananmen Square. Flanked by six dour-looking, dark-clad colleagues from

the Politburos standing committee, Mr Xi told a gaggle of press and museumworkers that the greatest Chinese dream was the great revival of theChinese nation.

Soft placesThe adoption of a personal sloganone that conveys a sense of beyond-normal wisdom and vision in a short, memorable and perhaps somewhatopaque phrasehas been a rite of passage for all Chinese leaders since MaoZedong. Mr Xis Chinese dream slogan is exceptional, though. Its demotic

air can be read as a dig at the stodgy catchphrases of his predecessors: thescientific-development outlook beloved of Hu Jintao; the even more arcaneThree Represents cherished by Mr Hus predecessor, Jiang Zemin. It makesno allusion to ideology or party policy. It chimes, quite possibly deliberately,with a foreign notionthe American dream. But it is calculated in its opacity.Previous slogans, such as Deng Xiaopings reform and opening up, could bebroadly understood in terms of policy. The dream seems designed to inspirerather than inform.

The symbolism of the setting in which Mr Xi first gave voice to his slogan wasmore telling than the words that accompanied it. The National MuseumsRoad to Revival exhibit is a propaganda romp through Chinas history sincethe mid-19th century. Its aim is to show Chinas suffering at the hands of colonial powers in the century of humiliation and its eventual gloriousrecovery under party rule. (The millions of deaths from starvation and politicalstrife under Mao, and the bloody crushing of anti-government unrest under Deng, go unremarked.) Mr Xis words implied that the Chinese dream, in

contrast to its American namesake, was about something more than middle-class material comfort. His backdrop made it clear that he was flexing hismuscles as a nationalist and as a party believer.

Since that debut in November Mr Xi has returned to the idea of the dream onmany occasions. In March the Chinese dream was the main subject of hisacceptance speech to the National Peoples Congress, Chinas parliament, onbeing appointed state president. In early April, at an annual forum attended byforeign political and business leaders on the tropical island of Hainan, Mr Xisaid the Chinese dream would be fulfilled by the middle of the century. On the


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following day the partys propaganda chief, Liu Yunshan, ordered that theconcept of the Chinese dream be written into school textbooks to make surethat it enters students brains.

Mr Xis repetition of the slogan, as if rallying demoralised troops, hints at thepartys sense that for all its stellar economic achievements, it is still strugglingto win public affection. He has been trying to address this by talking tough oncorruption (fighting tigers and flies at the same time) and waging war ongovernment extravagance (only four dishes and a soup). To this end he hascultivated a man-of-the-people style; many believed a report in a pro-Communist Hong Kong newspaper that he had taken a ride in a Beijing taxi,until state media denied it. The dream rhetoric fits with that image.

It is also distinctively Mr Xis. The term had been used in the titles of a coupleof Chinese books in recent years. It had also been used at times in foreigncommentary on Chinas rise. But it was not in common use before Mr Xis tripto the museum.

Tales in the sandWhere did the slogan come from? Quite possibly the New York Times . LastOctober, in the run up to Mr Xis ascension, the Times ran a column by

Thomas Friedman entitled China Needs Its Own Dream. Mr Friedman saidthat if Mr Xis dream for Chinas emerging middle-class was just like the

American dream (a big car, a big house and Big Macs for all) then another planet would be needed. Instead he urged Mr Xi to come up with a newChinese dream that marries peoples expectations of prosperity with a moresustainable China. Chinas biggest-circulation newspaper, Reference News ,ran a translation.

According to Xinhua, a government news agency, the Chinese dream

suddenly became a hot topic among commentators at home and abroad.When Mr Xi began to use the phrase, Globe , a magazine published by Xinhua,called Mr Xis Chinese-dream idea the best response to Friedman. ZhangMing of Renmin University says Mr Xi may have deliberately used the term asa way of improving dialogue with America, where it would be readilyunderstood. Mr Xi had seen the American dream up close, having spent acouple of weeks in 1985 with a rural family in Iowa. (He revisited them duringa trip to America last year as leader-in-waiting.)That does not mean his musings on the dream have been designed to meetMr Friedmans appeal for more sustainable growth. Rhetorically at least, such


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a need was central to party policy long before the latest slogan. Mr Husscientific-development outlook was all about being greener, even if his tenyears in power saw little abatement of relentless environmental damage.

Through protests and media commentary the public is pressing Mr Xi to cleanup more vigorously. But he has been shy of making commitments. OnNovember 15th, in his first speech after taking over as general secretary, Mr Xi mentioned a better environment toward the end of a list of what he saidwere the publics wishes. Better education and more stable jobs were at thetop.

If Mr Xis Chinese dream is not Mr Friedmans, what is it? So far that is beingleft deliberately vague. The unwritten rules of succession politics in China

require Mr Xi to keep his policy preferences close to his chest at the beginningof his term in office, and to stick to the guidelines laid down by hispredecessors. He is all but obliged to work towards the targets of the five-year economic plan that was adopted under Mr Hu in 2011 (which is strong on theneed for more environmentally friendly growth). He has to stick to the partyslonger-term plans as well: the attainment of a moderately well-off society bythe time of the partys 100th birthday in 2021 (one year before Mr Xi wouldhave to retire); the creation of a rich, strong, democratic, civilised and

harmonious socialist modern country by 2049, the 100th anniversary of thefounding of the Communist nation. (The meaning of these words has never been made clear, but officials are explicit that democratic does not involvemulti-party politics.) If precedent is any guide, Mr Xi would not begin to startany serious tinkering with policy until a meeting of the partys centralcommittee in the autumn, a year after his assumption of power.

The vagueness of the Chinese dream slogan allows Mr Xi to embrace theseinherited aims while hinting that, under his rule, change is possible. But the

lack of specificity also carries risks. It provides a space in which the Chinesecan think of their own dreamswhich may not coincide with Mr Xis. SinceNovember the term has not merely been promulgated. It has been discussedand even argued about across the political spectrum, both in articlespublished by the official media and in outpourings online. In effect, the publicis defining the dream by itself.

Nationalists see their own dreams validated. To them the tall and portly Mr Xirepresents a new vigour in Chinese politics after Mr Hus studied greyness.


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His talk of Chinas revival plays to their sense that China has a rightful placeat the top of the global pecking-order.

In 1820, as some historians reckon and Chinese commentators like to pointout, Chinas GDP was one-third of the world total. Then the reversals of thecentury of humiliation brought it low. By the 1960s, Chinas GDP had droppedto just 4% of the world total. Now it has recovered to about one-sixth of theworlds GDPand at least 90% of Americasin purchasing-power parityterms, according to the Conference Board, a business research organisation.Nationalists eagerly await the day when Chinas economy becomes oncemore the biggest in the world by any measure, a day which many observersexpect to dawn while Mr Xi is still leader.

Mr Xi appears anxious to secure the support of nationalists, particularly withinthe armed forces, and dream-talk helps. In December, during an inspectiontour of the navy in southern China, Mr Xi spoke of a strong-army dream andsaid that resolutely obeying the partys orders was the spirit of a strongarmya swipe at liberals who argue that the army should be removed fromthe partys direct control. In March the army issued a circular to troops sayingthat the strong-nation dream of a great revival of the Chinese people was ineffect a strong-army dream.

Sound and furyNationalist hawks, especially military ones, are a constituency Mr Xi cannotignore. In recent years their views have been expressed far more openlythanks to an easing of controls on publishing by officers. Shortly after Mr Xifirst spoke of the Chinese dream in November, the publishers of a 2010 bookcalled China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-

American Era rushed to bring out a new edition. The official media, happy to

discuss Mr Friedmans prior use of the dream notion, have made nosuggestion that the book has any connection to Mr Xis slogan. But it is themost prominently displayed work on the dream theme in a large state-ownedbookshop near Tiananmen Square. The books author, Liu Mingfu, a senior colonel, argues that China should regain its position as the most powerfulnation in the world, a position it had held for a thousand years before itshumiliation.

Mr Xi prefers to avoid any public talk of surpassing American power. During a

trip to Russia in March (his first foreign excursion as president) he said


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fulfilment of the Chinese dream would benefit all countries. But as HenryKissinger suggests in his 2011 book On China, Mr Lius views reflect atleast some portion of Chinas institutional structure. As tensions roil with

Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines over maritime territorial claims, the role of these shadowy figures among Chinas security policymakers is a topic of much speculation. Mr Xi has not been helping to clear the air (see Banyan ).Chinas chest-thumping has not been restricted to its neighbours. Whilecontriving not to mention America by name, an April white paper on defencecarped about its security pivot towards Asia making the situation in theregion tenser. The state-controlled media went further. China Daily , a Beijingnewspaper, quoted military experts as saying that the Chinese governmenthad no problem with America seeking involvement in the regions prosperity.But China was concerned, it said, that Americas renewed focus on itsalliances in Asia might be aimed at China and disturb the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

The white paper was released just after John Kerry, Americas secretary of state, visited Beijing in April. The trip was aimed at reassuring China of

Americas commitment to good relations following the re-election of BarackObama and the handover to Mr Xi. Youve all heard of the American dream,Mr Kerry said in Tokyo after leaving Beijing. Now Beijings new leader hasintroduced what he calls a China dream. Mr Kerry tried to reconcile the twoby proposing that America, China and other countries work towards a Pacificdream of co-operation on issues ranging from job growth and climate changeto pandemic disease and proliferation.
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But this suggestion did little to abate the two countries mutual wariness. Theidea of a Pacific dream, said one Chinese commentator, was an attempt tospread the American dream into every corner of Asia in order to ensure that

Americas dominance of this region will never pass into anothers hands. ToChinese nationalists that is more like a nightmare.

Although Mr Xi doubtless feels a need to play towards such sentiments, heprobably shares his predecessors wariness towards at least some of their proponents. Chinas modern history offers many examples of anti-governmentmovements cloaked in nationalist garb. And his dream-talk is clearly alsointended for a wider audience. While his speech in November on the Chinesedream appealed to the nationalist cause, by March his language had turned

softer. In the end the Chinese dream is the peoples dream, he said at theNational Peoples Congress, omitting any reference to the century of humiliation. (Around this time the English-language media, which initially wentback and forth, plumped for Chinese dream over China dream as atranslation, thus subtly emphasising the people over the nation.) An articlepublished by Caixin Media , a Beijing news portal, said there was nothingshort of a competition between the American dream and the Chinese dream.But it said China needed to address this by boosting its moral appeal to

others. Doveish voices abound in China too.Playing houseBy tangentially evoking the American dream with his language, Mr Xi may betrying to reassure the countrys new middle-class, a constituency that couldpresent a powerful challenge to party rule if it becomes seriously disaffected.Officials predict that economic growth will be slower under Mr Xi than it wasunder Mr Hu. Mr Xi is suggesting that this will not mean a tightening of middle-class belts.

Li Chunling, a specialist in middle-class studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that the dream of Chinas wealthier middle-classmembers is to live like their American counterparts (and to see them in action:hence a surging enthusiasm for travel abroad). Mr Xi would not want to letthem down. But Ms Li suggests this will be hard. Among the better-off, worriesabout Chinas development in the coming years, including risks related topollution and social unrest, are prompting growing numbers to emigrate, shesays.


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Mr Xi will face difficulty selling the idea that China can be rich and strongwhile remaining a one-party state. According to Zhang Qianfan, a liberal legalscholar at Peking University, more than three-quarters [of the Chinese] would

associate the Chinese dream with a dream of constitutionalism.Constitutionalism is the belief that the constitutionwhich, except in itspreamble, does not mention any role for the party itselfshould have anauthority that overrides the whims of the party. In January a state-controllednewspaper, Southern Weekend , tried to publish a new-year message entitledThe Chinese dream: a dream of constitutionalism. Only with a division of powers, said one passage, could China become a free and strong country.The article was replaced with a censored versionentitled The Chinesedream is nearer to us than ever beforestripped of the originals commentson the importance of the constitution. Several journalists went on strike inprotest.Mr Xi has spoken of the importance of the constitution, but he has notmentioned constitutionalismand he has avoided the use of the word freewhen talking about the dream. In unpublished remarks made during his trip tosouthern China in December, and later leaked by a journalist, Mr Xi said: TheChinese dream is an ideal. Communists should have a higher ideal, and thatis communism. He said the reason for the Soviet Unions collapse was its

straying from ideological orthodoxy. In other words, he would be noGorbachev.

But Mr Xis talk of a dream will always run the risk of sharpening appetites for change. Mr Zhang says that 150 people, many of them prominent scholars,have signed a petition for full implementation of the constitution that helaunched last December. In late March Peoples Forum, a website run bythe Peoples Daily , the partys main mouthpiece, tried to gauge public supportfor Mr Xis dream by carrying out an online survey. The Chinese dreamslogan, it said in an introduction, had reignited hopes for the great revival of the Chinese nation. The page was quickly deleted after around 80% of morethan 3,000 respondents replied no to questions such as whether theysupported one-party rule and believed in socialism.

According to Ms Chens rather syrupy song, the Chinese dream is A dream of a strong nationa dream of a wealthy people. Mr Xi seems of the sameopinionand has, as yet, been little more specific. In the absence of substance, Mr Xis talk of a dream is creating space for a lively debate over where China should be heading. For the time being it may suit Mr Xi to keep


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the course he will be following unclear. But demands for clarity can only growlouder.

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Briefing Xi Jinping's Vision

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