Time has elapsed, I know. Russia’s Wagner affair is having massive fallout, not least in Beijing. Yours truly was hit with midwinter (southern hemisphere) colds and flu, so much intriguing material has backed up. This will I hope be the first of a catchup series as we approach our second anniversary.
In this episode we are stitching together the three parts of a series of op-eds by Liang Jing 梁京, first introduced on Beijing Baselines many episodes ago. As stated, he is a former PRC official with policy experience and a distinct, original approach of his own that dispenses with official doctrine of most flavours.
My translation of the full series follows.
Xi Jinping's baseline thinking and the PRC’s political culture trap
Part 1 (30 May 2023)
Liang Jing, "Xi Jinping's baseline thinking and the PRC’s political culture trap (Part 1)”, Ziyou Yazhou diantai, 30 May 2023 [梁京:“习近平的底线思维与中国的政治文化陷阱(上)”,自由亚洲电台,2023年5月 30日 (in Chinese).].
Over the weekend, Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s international relations program GPS, mentioned a recently published Economist article, ‘Is Chinese power about to peak? The country’s historic ascent is levelling off. That need not make it more dangerous’; translated into Chinese, the main idea was ‘China’s power has reached its peak, don’t take the the change as too dangerous’. I haven’t read the full text, but it’s not hard to grasp the author’s intention, which typifies growing concern of the outside world about the dangerous trend of Xi’s dictatorship in the PRC. Some overseas ‘elites’ who have free-ridden on its rise, gaining fame and fortune, are still using their ‘smart tongues’ to describe the ‘beautiful prospects’ of China in the future, but they can’t convince anyone, just showing their ignorance and shamelessness.
Xi and his followers conceal ever less that they themselves are not optimistic about the PRC. Among the Party’s current propaganda foci is to lower domestic and foreign expectations of its future. In addition to reiterating the ‘primary stage of socialism’, it also declares that ‘China will always be a developing country.‘ What then will Xi use to replace ‘great rejuvenation’ he preached externally, and the ‘moderately prosperous level’ he promised internally? The answer is, his famous ‘baseline thinking’. Many people can, I’d argue, grasp Xi Jinping’s baseline thinking conceptually, namely, he will ‘never be China’s Gorbachev, nor lead a fallen party.’ But faced with a rapidly worsening global environment and a collapse-threatened PRC economy, what specific choices are implied by Xi’s baseline thinking is already a tough problem for everyone assessing future risks.
The main difference between Chinese and the US and the West at present is over whether Xi would attack Taiwan. Most Chinese with a deep grasp of the PRC don’t think so: it would be utter suicide; while US and European mainstream elites are ever more resolutely preparing for war. Seemingly paradoxical, this actually makes sense. If the US and the West do not ‘expect the enemy to be lenient’, i.e., prepare for war, politicians may be unable to explain to voters: given most of them having raised their vigilance towards China, they accept the judgement (or propaganda) that should Xi attack Taiwan, it would threaten the entire world’s economic security, hence we must guard against it.
A question arises from this: would the world be peaceful if Xi Jinping did not attack Taiwan? On this issue, given differences in standpoint and cognition among Chinese, there have been differences in judgments and propositions that far outweigh whether Xi would attack Taiwan. Those more sympathetic to Xi argue that given he would not, the US should not escalate tensions between the two. It should instead let Xi and China’s economy go. This would benefit everyone; Those who are strongly anti-communist and anti-Xi tend to argue that the PRC economy under him is hopeless and should not be saved.
But what we are seeing and will continue to see is that the US and the West must keep stepping up their preparations for war, while doing their best to maintain economic engagement with the PRC, even if the cost is extremely high: what the risks and consequences would be otherwise is unpredictable. Such an awkward predicament is linked to Xi Jinping’s baseline thinking. He still firmly believes, despite failures in domestic and foreign affairs, in a basic assumption: as long as they don’t face the threat of death by starvation, Chinese people will not stop thinking it ‘better live wretched than die well’. The fearsome thing is that quite a lot of PRC people, and many overseas Chinese who have already ‘run’ from it, also accept this assumption of Xi’s. How to understand this dilemma? Can this predicament last? To grasp and solve this dilemma, in my view, a political culture perspective must be introduced.
Part 2 (6 June 2023)
Liang Jing, "Xi Jinping's baseline thinking and China's political culture traps (Part 2)”, Ziyou Yazhou diantai, 6 June 2023 [梁京:“习近平的底线思维与中国的政治文化陷阱(中)”,自由亚洲电台,2023年6月 6日 (in Chinese).].
My insistence on grasping the relations between China’s crisis and that of the world order in political culture terms is based on understanding that the survival strategy of a nation or state at a historical juncture plays a decisive role in shaping political culture. That China has a tradition of changing dynasties is well-known; the CPC regime is a product of this tradition in the process of responding to the challenges of Western civilisation and building a modern state. Xi’s ‘baseline thinking’ is derived not only from his personal direct experience, but to a considerable extent reflects as well the collective experience of modern Chinese society as a while. The way of thinking and behaviour brought about by this experience is repeating the tragedy of the cycle of chaos and self-destruction of Chinese civilisation in history. This is what I call China’s political culture trap.
While alternating governance and chaos is not uncommon elsewhere, Chinese civilisation, a super-large-scale political entity, clearly has its unique features. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Han Chinese, making up an absolute majority of the population, have accepted that dayitong (大一统, Grand Unity) is the sole legitimate political order. Rulers and rebels hence never hesitated to pay huge prices in life and land to preserve or rebuild ‘Great Unity’. Governing transitions of power in Chinese civilisation over the past two millennia, this logic applies to the establishment of the CPC. Yet China’s agricultural society has an extremely strong ability to compensate for mass killings: a necessary condition for the ‘law of cycles’ to be effective.
34 years ago, on the night of June 4th, young students standing firm in Tiananmen Square faced tanks sent by Deng Xiaoping, witnessing yet again that this logic still dominated China’s power game. The PRC is today ‘rich and powerful’ at last, industrialisation and urbanisation have been achieved, and population decline has become irreversible. The imperative of preserving Grand Unity at all costs has not been abandoned, but has become the logic of the CPC dictator’s coercion of the world. How can this be explained? In Chinese culture terms, Xi’s explanation is, ‘I (we) have no choice‘, but one obvious reason is that the world’s dependence on the PRC has never been greater, and the threat to the world of its collapse is also greater than ever. unprecedented. Xi saw a chance to use state power to coerce the world. Why didn’t he choose reform? Because he saw quite clearly that the risk of reform is tantamount to suicide, he has the latest tech means to suppress revolution, as well as nuclear weapons to deter Western intervention.
It is now widely realised that Xi’s experience ensures that he cannot have the ability to reform. So the really hard question is why someone like him was put in such a position of power when the PRC was rising, and the harder question is why so many people misjudged and underestimated how Xi Jinping would be. The risks? Why don’t China and the world seem to be able to do anything about him?
Thinking about these issues in political culture terms, I come to several conclusions.
The political unification reinforced by the CPC is generally not conducive to reform. Even were reformers in power, it would be difficult to escape the cultural predicament of dayitong
Given strong national power and an unprecedentedly favourable international environment, Xi uses ‘baseline thinking, i.e., uses suicidal coercion to maintain power and position, to threaten and coerce the world, signifying the exhaustion of this political culture;
The real threat that Xi brings to the world has been recognised by it, creating unprecedented conditions for China to escape the dayitong political and cultural trap. Besides the difficulty of escaping by its own efforts, the outside world’s unprecedented motivation to help China escape is a factor; trying to stop the civil war in China after World War II, the Americans failed halfway. This time, it’s a matter of their own survival. In the end, Chinese people, including overseas, deeply grasp the pitfalls of China’s political culture and have felt deep pains. Recently asked by a reporter what challenges he faced personally, Jack Ma’s answer was: "dialogue". This is the key to China getting out of the cultural trap.
Part 3 (13 June 2023
Liang Jing, "Xi Jinping's baseline thinking and China's political and cultural trap (Part 3)”, 自由亚洲电台, 13 June 2023 [梁京:“习近平的底线思维与中国的政治文化陷阱(下)”,自由亚洲电台,2023年6月 13日 (in Chinese).].
Why should dialogue be the key to China escaping the political culture trap? Have dialogues been rare in recent years between Chinese and the outside world, between Chinese and Chinese? With what result? Have we not again fallen into the curse of ‘periodicity’? Does emphasising dialogue have any real significance in dealing with Xi Jinping’s baseline thinking or the challenges posed to the world by Chinese civilisation’s self-mutilation?
That sped-up confrontation between the US and the PRC is accepted by all as marking an era of intensified global conflict. And Xi’s baseline thinking means that he will not hesitate to use destructive means to protect his position: nor would he see this as for personal desire for power, but based on the argument that if I, Xi Jinping, step down, the CPC regime would inevitably be overthrown, portending civil strife and division in China. This will not be accepted by everyone, but it must be admitted that as long as the CPC’s high-handed rule remains effective, many, including many foreigners, will accept that Xi’s case is not the only possible, but indeed the most possible. That is to say, people see no other way out and can only resign themselves to fate.
The greatest significance of dialogue is hence that, if effective, it can change many people's expectations and actions, thereby changing the conflict’s evolution and outcomes. The Russian-Ukrainian war is the most important current example. It shows on the one hand that human conflicts are inevitable, yet the whole process continues to support the assertion that effective dialogue can change the direction and outcome of conflicts. We have all witnessed that without Zelensky’s dialogue with the US and the EU, the war might have ended long ago.
The question that arises from this is, what is ‘effective dialogue’? Does it have anything to do with political culture? Do Chinese people, including overseas Chinese who care about Chinese politics, have a chance to help China escape the political culture trap via ‘effective dialogue’? This is the question I’m trying to answer. In terms of common sense and experience, the idea of ‘effective dialogue’ is not hard to grasp. Mao Zedong’s favourite saying ‘seeking truth from facts’ was directly related to this concept. The problem is that not everyone, at any time and place, can realistically engage in it.
In this regard, I make a major judgement. With the current pattern of China’s relationship with the world, with the latest communication methods, especially the in-depth communication methods powered by the latest AI technology, those insightful people who are familiar with world events have the opportunity of effective dialogue to push China out of the political culture trap. Significant attempts are in fact already being made. These efforts cannot be expected to yield substantial progress. Firstly, the stress of the crisis has not been enough to dissuade enough elites from passive self-preservation, but beyond that, there are big questions to be explored.
Recently, a century-old Henry Kissinger lamented that the difficulty of US-China dialogue lay in failure to achieve a certain conceptual breakthrough. That is to say, he doesn’t like Xi Jinping’s ‘special major power relations’, nor Biden’s ‘competition without hostility’, nor ‘escape from danger without decoupling’. I came to realise that the two US parties are unanimous in foreign affairs and can’t find a way to deal with China. The underlying reason is that apart from Xi’s baseline thinking, China’s elite have no new concepts for dialogue on how to construct the future Chinese order. In other words, if the topic of China’s (including overseas) elites is always limited to moral and value discourse, or always predicts when the CCP will collapse, without the conceptual breakthrough of which Kissinger spoke, it will be difficult to cure the symptoms of cultural malaise.
So, how to grasp the conceptual breakthrough that China now needs? The most direct source of experience is Mao Zedong’s ‘surrounding the cities from the countryside.’ Without this conceptual breakthrough back then, China and the world today would be very different. Effective conceptual breakthroughs can provide large-scale collective actions with a time-space logical imagination based on deep experience, and inspire millions of people to create history.
A fascinating insight Daev
I suggest that ‘effective dialogue’ is a contradiction in terms. True dialogue can never be presupposed as effective, nor should the term 'effective communication'. Meaning will always lie in the interpretation afforded to message content by the recipient - never guaranteed to be the same as that intended by the communicator.
I've analysed this here https://bit.ly/3vCMOGu