In October 2022, the Chinese Communist Party held its 20th National Congress. There, the incumbent General Secretary Xi Jinping secured for himself an unprecedented third term in office. This effectively made Xi the most powerful leader in China since Mao Zedong.
Xi’s predecessor, the 79-year-old Hu Jintao, sat alongside Xi in the congress hall, only to be forcefully escorted out by the officials. The video of Hu’s removal became viral and was widely covered by the media. China’s official state news agency reported on Twitter that Hu Jintao was simply not feeling well.
Western media, however, framed this as a power move and a sign of Xi’s unchallenged control over the CCP. Although the details of this particular incident will remain unknown for quite a while, it’s hard to deny that Xi Jinping did consolidate power, and that Chinese politics took a sharp turn towards a single-man rule. In this video, we will look at the factions of the CCP, the different visions they held for the future of China, and how Chairman Xi demolished all of them and became the sole arbiter of China’s future.
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Background Before we discuss Xi Jinping's rise to power, let us first examine what internal CCP politics looked like before his arrival on the political scene. The Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, was formed in 1921 with assistance from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In a matter of decades, it expanded, defeated the rival Kuomintang party, took control over all of mainland China, and, in 1949, established the People’s Republic of China.
Today, the PRC constitutes one of the most stable single-party systems in the world. However, many of the CCP institutional features were established long before 1949. One of them, the Organisation Department, was set up by Mao Zedong after the Long March to determine the loyalty of the newcomers after an influx of new members joining the party.
Since then, it has become a tool to dispense patronage in the form of government and party positions and a key fighting ground for internal political battles. As Richard McGregor wrote in his book "The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers," “the organization department has become the institutional hub of the entire political system. ” While the Organisation Department was crucial in internal CCP affairs, the decision-making power lay with top party positions.
They included the President, aka the General Secretary, the Politburo, its 7-member Standing Committee, and multiple other committees, congresses, and commissions. An important feature of the PRC government is the existence of two parallel hierarchies: the state and the party. From the central government to cities and townships, there are two parallel governmental seats.
Although there is a formal distinction between the state and party hierarchies, it is a false impression. In practice, the state bureaucrat is subordinate to the party secretary, appointed by the Organisation Department. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, different Chinese leaders took different approaches to navigate this state-party network, with policies that ranged from ruthlessly authoritarian to somewhat democratic.
The rule of Mao Zedong was undoubtedly autocratic, absolute, and, to put it mildly, excessive. Deng Xiaoping, while not a Western-type liberal, was a supporter of collective leadership and inner-party democracy and strongly opposed single-man rule and personality cults. His successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, mostly followed Deng’s policies, and collective leadership was praised as “a system with a division of responsibilities among individual leaders in an effort to prevent arbitrary decision-making by a single top leader.
” The Shanghai Gang and The Youth League The political pluralism that blossomed during the rule of Deng, Jiang and Hu allowed for factions to form within the CCP. As a phenomenon, different factions within the CCP with differing ideologies were nothing new. To quote Mao Zedong, “No party outside the party reflects an imperial ideology; no faction within the party is an incredibly bizarre notion.
” However, under the collective leadership system, which allowed different voices to be heard, factions became more potent. They could now provide patronage, awarding fellow faction members with government and party positions. The first prominent faction arose around Deng Xiaoping's successor, Jiang Zemin.
Back when he was in charge of Shanghai, Jiang created a network of political connections and acquaintances. In the 1990s, when Jiang became the General Secretary of the CCP, many of his Shanghai contacts had substantial career growth and became known as the Shanghai Gang. Throughout Jiang’s term, the Shanghai Gang dominated Chinese politics.
It corresponded geographically to the elites of China’s coastal cities and provinces, especially those of Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. The second prominent faction came about under Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao. Hu made his career in the Chinese Communist Youth League, essentially the youth wing of the CCP.
Like Jiang before him, when Hu rose to power, he elevated his old friends and connections from the Youth League with him, giving rise to the Youth League faction. Contrary to the name, the faction was not comprised of adolescents but of people who held major positions in the Youth League from 1982 to 1998. Hu Jintao himself assumed the top office at the age of 59.
Geographically, the CCYL was linked to China’s poorer interior provinces, as opposed to the coastal ones. It is an ongoing debate among scholars whether there is a third faction. If there were, it would be the “princelings,” the high-pedigree sons of high-ranking officials and revolutionary leaders from the 1940s.
They could be seen as an independent faction, a part of the Shanghai Gang, or not a faction at all. During Hu Jintao’s term, these two to three factions co-existed and developed a system of power sharing. If a faction member held one of the two government seats on a national or local level, the other seat was usually held by an official outside the same faction.
Members of the Politburo included bureaucrats from both the Shanghai Gang and the Youth League. Sometimes, the CCP was even categorized as “one party, two factions. ” Factional Models One of the most prominent features of Chinese politics is the use of governmental models.
This principle is rooted deeply in Confucian ethics: since ancient times, people have been obliged to emulate virtuous individuals who served as role models. Mao Zedong, although not a fan of Confucianism, used the same technique. For example, Lei Feng, a soldier of the People's Liberation Army, was presented as a hero, a role model, and someone Chinese citizens should emulate.
Another example is the village of Dazhai, which successfully implemented commune measures and, under Mao, became a role model for all Chinese villages. In the context of factional competition, models became a sort of exhibit, a sample of the future that different wings of the CCP wanted to see in China. Under this system, local governors would implement socioeconomic policies different from the mainstream as an experiment.
If successful, the same policies would be extrapolated to the national level. Of particular importance are the two models, prominent between 2008 and 2012: the Guandong model and the Chongqing model. This was the period of run-up for the 18th Party Congress, which would witness the change in top party leadership, which only happens once in a decade.
Guandong: Attempt at Liberalism The first of the models was implemented in the southern coastal province of Guandong. It was launched by the local party secretary Wang Yang and was dubbed “Thought Emancipation 3. 0”.
Its core ideas would be structural political reforms, liberalization, and the downsizing of state-owned enterprises. This reform was designed to create an atmosphere of free and critical thinking, promote free market principles, and generally align with ideas of democracy, constitutional governance, and human rights. The campaign quickly came under attack from the left wing of the CCP.
The Beijing Party Committee dismissed the concept on the grounds that “it was unclear what it wanted to achieve or what problems it wanted to solve. ” The model was criticized for undermining China’s socialist economic institutions and even trying to end the CCP leadership. However, the hardest hit for this project was the stimulus plan, which the central government introduced to alleviate the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
The funds were mainly given to state-owned enterprises rather than the private sector, indicating that the Party was not eager to accept the Guandong ideas. The reform did take place in the end, albeit in a much more limited way. Policies regarding state-owned enterprises were dropped, while the political reforms were re-oriented to strengthen the capacity, efficiency, and lawfulness of the existing political system rather than full liberalization.
Chongqing: Sing Red, Smash Black A model with a completely different ethos was promoted by Bo Xilai, the party secretary of Chongqing. Embraced by the left wing of the CCP, it promoted an all-out expansion of the state, combining Maoist, populist, and even mafia-like elements. The core of the Chongqing model was the so-called “livelihood projects,” which aimed to improve the living conditions of the poor.
They included the building of large-scale social housing, expansion of transportation networks, provision of jobs, and job training for unemployed farmers. These livelihood projects were financed exclusively by state-owned enterprises without the private sector's involvement. The most controversial part of the model was its “sing red, smash black” campaign.
“Singing Red” meant that at schools, companies, government and party offices, and even prisons and hospitals, people were mobilized to sing revolutionary songs glorifying the CCP and Mao, read Chinese literature, speak about the good deeds of the Party, and share uplifting messages. The “smash black” stood for eradicating organized crime. Besides asking the city residents to report criminal suspects, the Chongqing administration placed over 100,000 policemen and security guards in schools and kindergartens, supplemented by 300 police booths on the main streets.
Under the “smash black” campaign, three richest men in Chongqing were accused of sponsoring organized crime. They and multiple other billionaires were either imprisoned, executed, or forced out of the country. Private entrepreneurs were forced to “donate” at least 50 million yuan, and over 200 of them emigrated en masse to Canada, fearing for their lives and property.
The confiscated and extracted money was mostly funnelled to state-owned enterprises. In 2011, Bo Xilai forced Chongqing Satellite TV to replace commercials and entertainment programs with political propaganda. The viewership, of course, declined, costing the Chongqing Broadcasting Group about three billion yuan.
In light of the scandal, Bo’s arbitrary exercise of power was compared to Mao's Cultural Revolution and resulted in him being removed from office. It could be assumed that the two models belong to the two political factions, with prosperous coastal elites following a liberal Guandong ethos and interior elites preferring a Chongqing “eat the rich” approach. The reality, however, is more complicated.
Initially, Bo Xilai’s policies were praised by most of the Politburo, with the exception of the Youth League leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. The latter even saw the Chongqing model as a warning for China: “Without successful reform of political institutions, reform of economic institutions cannot be carried through to the end. The achievements we have made may be lost.
The root cause of new social problems cannot be addressed. Moreover, historical tragedies such as the Cultural Revolution may happen again”. Rise of Xi, Death of Factionalism By the time of the crucial 18th Party Congress in 2012, there was an understanding in the party that China needed change.
In light of the Chongqing scandal, the government of Hu Jintao was considered weak and an enabler of corruption. Power had to be stripped away from the Youth League and given to someone who would put the house back in order. Ultimately, the Party Congress appointed a compromise candidate, Xi Jinping.
Xi’s public image was a paradox, for he was both a princeling and a common man. His father, Xi Zhongxun, had held a high position in the revolutionary government, essentially that of Mao Zedong’s second-in-command. During the Cultural Revolution, however, Xi the Elder fell into disfavour and was sent to work in a tractor factory.
He eventually rejoined the Party, and his son joined the Shanghai Gang. Xi Jinping was thus able to appeal to the princelings, the coastal elites, and the popular masses of the interior simultaneously. By the time he came to power, Xi had developed a belief that all the key pillars of the Communist rule over China were corrupt and would crumble unless reinforced.
Thus, Xi’s main focus was an anti-corruption campaign, which, in reality, was a broad purge and a crackdown on factionalism. A wide investigation was launched, targeting officials suspected of corruption, participating in collusive networks, or even acts of decadence, such as elaborate celebrations, luxury purchases, and extravagant dining. Detention and interrogation were common, and the law was not treated as an obstacle.
Between 2012 and 2017, about 1. 4 million officials were investigated and punished, with over 5000 receiving criminal sentences and hundreds of officials having committed suicide. In what was dubbed "China's Trial of the Century," Bo Xilai was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Xi’s alternative to factionalism is a strictly enforced centralism. The broad purge attacked both the Shanghai Gang and the Youth League, as well as the princelings and the military. His poverty alleviation campaign eroded the Youth League's power base in the interior, and multiple factional governors were replaced with Xi’s protégés.
As a consequence, the power of both factions has been reduced to a minimum, and the six largest Chinese cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Chongqing, are all run by Xi’s men. The Observer Research Foundation dubbed this new group of officials the “Xi Gang. ” Naturally, the decline of factions meant the rise of Xi as an autocrat and the replacement of collective leadership with a strongman authoritarian rule.
No longer bound by the terms limit, Xi can now rule China for life. Zhejiang: Xi Jinping Thought Although the viewers may draw parallels between Xi and Mao, Xi Jinping is no Maoist. In fact, he proposes his own political vision, called the Xi Jinping Thought, or Xi'ism.
This doctrine frames itself as pragmatic socialism, disapproving of both Maoist collectivization policies and Western political values, such as freedom, democracy, and human rights. Regarding economic policies, Xi values the Chongqing model rather than the Guangdong one, preferring state-owned enterprises to private businesses. To promote his ideas, Xi Jinping picked Zhejiang province as a role model.
A number of measures were taken there to ensure the so-called “common prosperity” and instruct other provinces to learn from Zhejiang. What exactly is “common prosperity” is split into two components. The first is “material prosperity,” which aims to increase economic growth, ensure redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, build new infrastructure, and expand the state-owned sector of the economy.
The second component is “spiritual prosperity” and has some overtones which, from the Western liberal perspective, can sound outright sinister. At its core lies a strategy to achieve total social control over society using digital technology, pre-empt any popular grievances against the CCP, adopt a social credit system, and use artificial intelligence to monitor, reward, and punish Zhejiang residents. By November 2021, there were 500 “spiritual prosperity” centers active in China.
How Xi’s policies would play out in the end remains to be seen. Xi has destroyed the factionalism within the CCP and enjoys almost unlimited control over Chinese society without regard for law, freedom, or human rights. The PRC’s chairman is well-entrenched in power, and any prospects of Xi being removed from office look unlikely.
At the same time, it made Beijing less flexible in its decision-making and more prone to bad, arbitrary decisions. Challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, the trade war with the United States, and the Evergrande scandal all add up to China’s problems. The ability or inability to tackle both those and new problems will decide whether Xi Thought is a viable alternative to Western liberalism or a downgrade from Dengist collective leadership.
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