(Melinda Liu’s post from the FOREIGN POLICY on 13 October 2022.)
Succession has always been the Chinese Communists’
Achilles’s heel: By Melinda Liu, Newsweek’s Beijing bureau chief.
They used to be called the “Eight Immortals”:
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elders who wielded political influence behind the
scenes. In the spring of 1989, as street protests and internal power struggles
bedevilled strongman Deng Xiaoping, he trotted out seven senior retired
officials to help him unify a factionalized leadership and calm an emotional
public. Together, the elders purged Deng’s heir apparent, Zhao Ziyang, who had
sympathized with the demonstrators, and soldiers were ordered to open fire on
civilians.
Watching Chinese TV at the time, I was among a group of foreign media and diplomats who could hardly believe it when the aged revolutionaries—most of whom had long faded from public view—were suddenly thrust back into the limelight, standing together on nationwide TV. A Western newspaper reporter beside me muttered, “It’s like I’m watching Night of the Living Dead.”
The challenges facing Xi Jinping are quite
different from the bloodshed of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. But old habits die
hard. The 1989 tumult proved once again that succession is the Achilles’s heel
of the CCP and, if mishandled, can tarnish the reputations of even the most
revered of the nation’s leaders.
When Chinese politicking gets messy—especially if personnel changes loom—party elders often reemerge, which helps explain why Xi moved with lightning speed to consolidate power as soon as he became CCP general secretary in 2012. And why he’s scrambling so hard today to keep the retired old guard out of sight and in the dark.
To that end, this spring the CCP released new, more
stringent guidelines. The guidelines warned senior party figures to keep quiet
about top-level policy discussions, avoid politically negative remarks, refrain
from influence-peddling, shun “the activities of illegal social organizations,”
and, above all, “resolutely oppose and resist all kinds of wrongful thinking.”
Some predict China’s current political tensions
will resolve during the 20th Party Congress, due to open Oct. 16. They are
wrong. The Party Congress may resolve one question, but it will trigger many
more. Xi is widely expected to assume a third term as CCP leader, thus
overturning decades-old practices adopted partly to prevent the dysfunctional
decision-making that darkened Deng’s legacy in 1989.
The fact that Xi has courted controversy and risked
political capital to prolong his reign into a third term—and even possibly for
life—also means he’s opening a Pandora’s box of political headaches.
“The 20th Party Congress will likely mark a stark break from past patterns of political succession,” Jude Blanchette and Evan S. Medeiros wrote in Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. They continued: “Xi’s next term may be definitive in establishing new norms for elite politics.”
Xi has “wrested control of central decision-making
from the government bureaucracy,” and with fears of regime survival acute, the
next five years will likely feature higher risk tolerance for “severe measures
with little regard for international opprobrium”—exemplified, of course, by
Xi’s unique and unpopular “zero-COVID” obsession.
Xi has so ruthlessly clamped down on critics that
public dissent is extremely rare—but not unknown. On Oct. 13 in Beijing, two
startling protest banners appeared in public in Haidian, where a number of
university campuses are located. Unfurled on an overpass above a major highway,
one declared: “Say no to COVID test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to
freedom. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform.
No to great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen.”
The other said: “Go on strike, remove dictator and
national traitor Xi Jinping.” Photos and video recorded at the time appeared to
indicate smoke on the overpass and a voice recording. Commentary on the banners
was quickly scrubbed from social media platforms by vigilant censors. Some
people obliquely signaled support for the protester (or protesters) by sharing
a Chinese song titled “Lonely Warrior.”
Xi began laying the groundwork for his ambitious
power play at least a decade ago. At the same time, he likely developed an
early appreciation of the party’s old guard because his father, Xi Zhongxun,
was a well-known party elder.
As early as 2015, Xi made clear he didn’t want any
meddling from the older generation. In a veiled warning apparently aimed at
former party chief Jiang Zemin, the official People’s Daily counseled retired
leaders that “once people leave, the tea cools down” and urged them to “adjust
their mentality” to their retired status.
Since then, Xi has had plenty of time to root out rivals and sideline foot-dragging peers. His main tool for consolidating authority has been a relentless anti-corruption campaign that has snagged many high-level officials.
During Xi’s first term, graft busters took down one
former member of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee and dozens of
lesser officials and generals as part of a high-risk anti-corruption crackdown.
Blanchette and Medeiros wrote that the crackdown “was epic by any measure.”
The dragnet also ensnared key figures in the
military, security, and intelligence sectors. In 2017, after suggesting that
Beijing reverse its heavy-handed policies in the largely Muslim region of
Xinjiang, Liu Yazhou, a high-level military officer, vanished from public life,
and according to Chinese social media and exiled former party insider Cai Xia,
his home was raided. Liu’s father-in-law was the late ex-President Li Xiannian,
one of the original Eight Immortals.
Jiang was party chief from 1989 to 2002 and was
perceived as having clung to power by remaining head of the party’s powerful
Central Military Commission until 2004. Jiang is considered the boss of a
so-called “Shanghai clique” in Chinese politics and would be considered one of
the most influential of China’s retired top-level officials, though he’s
rumored to suffer from ill health.
Similarly, his blunt and widely respected premier
Zhu Rongji, 93, is also reported to be unwell. Zhu’s health issues haven’t
stopped some Chinese analysts from insisting that Zhu is appalled by Xi’s
economically disastrous and isolationist anti-COVID policies. One
well-connected Chinese source who requested anonymity said Zhu knows that “many
people have pinned their hopes on him and expect him to speak out at the right
moment.”
But do China’s party elders continue to pull the
strings, even in the Xi era? The original 1989 Eight Immortals are gone. At the
time, the eight included Deng because his hand-picked successor, Zhao Ziyang,
had already become party chief—until Zhao was purged.
Deng died in 1997. Their nickname, evoking eight
Taoist figures with supernatural powers in Chinese lore, stuck around for a
while. Eventually, it came to mean the eight most senior retired party veterans
who were still alive. Now, thanks to Xi’s ruthless neutralization of political
rivals, most potential challengers in his own generation are co-opted, cowed,
acquiescent, or behind bars.
This fact helps explain the wild rumors that began
flying recently after party elder Song Ping, a onetime kingmaker who turned 105
this year, appeared in the news. In September, Song was recorded on video
addressing a charitable foundation, reportedly something vague about “reform
and opening up.”
Chinese social media went into hyperdrive. Coup
rumors circulated. Internet censors scurried to scrub reports about Song’s
comments from cyberspace. Never mind that whatever words Song uttered were
either totally innocuous or used in the past by Xi himself.
Song is not regarded as a risk-taking firebrand.
He’s seen to be a conservative and wasn’t among the original 1989 Immortals
because he was holding an important job at the time: heading the party’s key
Central Organization Department. As such, he announced the party’s decision to
expel CCP members who had sympathized with the Tiananmen protesters.
But there’s one possible reason to take note of
Song’s sudden reappearance. A political player for three generations of Chinese
leaders, Song appears in fairly good health and is among the most influential
of the surviving 20 or so former members of the party’s key Politburo Standing
Committee.
Moreover, he’s identified with the tuanpai—the
“Youth League faction”—in Chinese politics. The Communist Youth League is aimed
at nurturing Chinese youth between the ages of 14 to 28. (Preteens are known as
Young Pioneers and are often seen wearing red kerchiefs.) Youth League
advocates often seek to promote development and tackle income disparity in
China’s poorer inland provinces.
That contrasts with champions of the prosperous and
glitzier east coast, home turf of the Shanghai clique. Song had risen through
the ranks in remote, hardscrabble Gansu province, and he mentored two prominent
figures of the Youth League faction, ex-President Hu Jintao (who may have
landed on a trajectory for the top job after Song recommended him to Deng) and
former Premier Wen Jiabao.
The Youth League faction has not prospered in the
era of Xi. His premier, Li Keqiang, is seen as a Youth League figure, but Li’s
office and influence has been diminished by Xi’s persistent accumulation of
power and establishment of leadership groups with himself at the helm, earning
Xi the nickname “chairman of everything.”
The Youth League has lost influence bureaucratically, and key figures have been demoted or purged. At one point, Xi criticized Youth League cadres, saying that “all they can do is just repeat the same old bureaucratic, stereotypical talk.” Not only has Li’s authority been clipped, but some unsubstantiated reports state he’s been banned from meeting even casually with party elders.
“Senior retired officials are not supposed to be
socializing with senior leaders, except for Xi,” said the Chinese source, who
knows a number of top government officials. “This has been the case for years.”
Against this backdrop, Song’s reemergence—not what he said but the fact that he
was seen at all—has fueled speculation that the party’s Youth League advocates
now are pushing behind the scenes for more of their candidates to be promoted
during the coming personnel reshuffles. (While the transition is slated to
unfold during the Party Congress, government changes will be endorsed next
March at the National People’s Congress session.)
Much is at stake. At least two of the seven (not
counting Xi) members of the party’s Politburo Standing Committee are expected
to retire, as is nearly half of the Politburo, assuming today’s age norms
remain in place. Two of China’s most senior diplomats are also due to retire.
Last but not least, Li is slated to step down as premier, and all eyes are on
who might replace him in this key government role.
Xi is leading Chinese politics into uncharted
territory. By jettisoning term limits and other norms that had brought some
predictability to post-Deng politics, he has made a lot of enemies.
Paradoxically, he has also made life difficult for any chosen successor.
Blanchette and Medeiros predict a period of “[s]uccession uncertainty” that
won’t end until Xi nominates a “clear and credible successor and establishes a
clear and credible timeline for the transfer of power.”
That won’t be easy. As Richard McGregor, an analyst
at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute and the author of The Party, which explains
the CCP’s inner workings, said, “One of the most dangerous things to be is Xi
Jinping’s nominated successor. People can’t attack Xi, but they can line up
against anybody he might favor to replace him.”
In the old days, China’s top boss would call in
favors from party elders to help navigate the political horse-trading and
factional jostling of such a transition. Today, the old guard is more likely to
feel alienated from or even angry at Xi than supportive of him.
The coming wave of newly retired cadres, meanwhile,
will create a fresh tranche of party elders. Even if they lack the
revolutionary credentials of the older Immortals, these veterans may have more
political savvy than junior colleagues—and more pent-up energy for pushing
back, in accordance with a Chinese proverb stating that “aged ginger is
spicier.”
While in office, fear of being fired or purged
likely deterred some from criticizing current policies. Retirement may convince
a few that they have nothing left to lose.
Deng Xiaoping’s Eight Immortals!
When the new senior leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) was revealed to the world following the 18th Party
Congress in November 2012, most outside observers were stunned by the extent to
which officials linked to former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin dominated
the leadership transition.
Although formally retired from all offices for
eight years prior to the Congress, Jiang was evidently able to muster enough
clout to place protégés in six of the seven seats of the Politburo Standing
Committee (PBSC), the Party’s top policy-making body. By contrast, outgoing
General Secretary Hu Jintao—by formal position, the top official in the
Party—secured a PBSC seat for only one of his followers, PRC Premier-designate
Li Keqiang .
The outcomes of the Party Congress raised questions
anew regarding the interaction of formal and informal authority at elite levels
of the CCP—and particularly, the continuing influence of “Party elders” on
matters of leadership succession.
“Party elders”—senior CCP officials who are
officially retired, but remain politically active––have wielded a powerful
voice in Chinese politics over the past three decades. This was particularly
true of a core group of senior officials sometimes referred to as the “Eight
Immortals”—centered on Deng Xiaoping, and also including powerful figures such
as Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Yang Shangkun, and Bo Yibo—whose revolutionary-era
credentials and high-level Party relationships allowed them to exert a strong influence
on major policy decisions throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
(Key Figures Often Associated with the Concept of CCP Elders: Deng Xiaoping: Often considered the paramount leader of the era following Mao Zedong, and a key figure in initiating economic reforms. Chen Yun: A top economic planner and a powerful voice within the party. Li Xiannian: A veteran leader who held various high-ranking positions. Peng Zhen: A prominent figure in the early years of the PRC and a key player in legal and political affairs. Wan Li: A reformer who played a significant role in economic and agricultural policies. Yang Shangkun: A military leader who served as the President of China. Bo Yibo: A veteran leader who was involved in economic and industrial policy. Song Ping: A long-serving party official who was known for his organizational skills. Jiang Zemin: While he later became a paramount leader, he also exercised influence as an elder figure before rising to the top.)
The influence of these figures was given
semi-official status by the creation of a “Central Advisory Commission” of
Party elders in existence from 1982 to 1992, with Bo Yibo—father of jailed
former Politburo member Bo Xilai—assigned an early leading role. However, the
true power of these men lay in their personal authority and connections within
the Party and the military, as displayed during leadership deliberations in the
lead-up to the June 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
The crucial debates leading to the final decision
for the crackdown were dominated by Party elders who made decisions outside of
formal channels of authority, resulting in the sacking of CCP General Secretary
Zhao Ziyang and the employment of the PLA against pro-democracy protestors.
Deng himself attributed the Party’s survival amidst
the Tiananmen crisis to resolute actions taken by his fellow elders, stating
that the timing of the “counter-revolutionary rebellion” was fortunate, as “we
[still] have a large number of veteran comrades…[who] have experienced many
disturbances and understand [how to] deal with them”.
Party elders today may not act as the de facto
shadow government once represented by Deng Xiaoping and his fellow “Immortals,”
but they remain influential figures. Retired senior-ranking CCP
cadres—particularly, former members of the Politburo—retain a number of
privileges, to include bodyguard protection, special housing, and staff support.
They also maintain access to, and the right to
comment on, major policy documents and deliberations (Wall Street Journal,
September 6, 2012). More importantly, within the highly personalized realm of
CCP politics, patrons retain significant influence over younger protégés and
are in a position to shape the membership of the CCP’s top policy-making
institutions.
Elders of lesser rank, while not enjoying the
perquisites or the clout of more senior figures, may still seek to leverage
their moral authority on policy debates: One such example was seen in 2010,
when a group of 23 retired officials (including Li Rui, former personal
secretary to Mao Zedong) issued an open letter criticizing the CCP Central
Propaganda Department and calling for greater freedom of expression.
Too often, discussion of CCP Party elders treats
them as a monolithic and faceless group. However, the CCP’s most influential
elders are colorful individuals, with sometimes sharply contrasting views on
policy and the future course of Chinese society. An examination of the CCP’s
Party elders, their patronage linkages to younger officials and the extent of
their behind-the-scenes influence is long overdue.