Chinese Conundrum

In October 2022, China organized its 20th Party Congress. After the ascension of Mao in 1949 and Deng Xiaoping’s opening of presidency in 1978, the 19th and 20th Party Congress is unique in the sense that it is creating a sense of uncertainty among Sinologists that it might bring China back to the Mao era of authoritarianism or totalitarianism with Xi-Jinping at the helm of affairs and global community especially India should brace itself for more offensive- realist China. The 20th Party Congress ushered in a sweeping leadership change across all levels of the Communist Party of China, but unlike other congresses, it did not emphasize change but the continuity of policies adopted by Xi-Jinping since he became the Chinese President in 2012. The 20th Congress marks the complete end of Deng Xiaoping‘s era.?

Now, the question arises of how Xi’s era was different from Deng's. When Deng started his presidency in 1978, China was still to recover from Mao‘s policies such as the “Great Leap Forward(1958-62)” which resulted in mass famine in China, and the “Cultural Revolution(1966-76)” that targeted the top leadership of Communist Party including Deng and Xi’s father Xi Zhongxun. Deng introduced the concept of “Collective leadership” to prevent China from going back to the era of the despotic rule of Mao. But in Xi’s New China power is centralized totally in the hands of the President of the Communist Party and a few of his coterie built a repressive system through a cruel surveillance state. Another reform that Deng embarked upon was that he set a two-term limit on successors meaning leaders of the Communist Party should pass on the baton to their successors every 10 years this made China an “autocracy with a difference” and prevented many succession wars. But the third term of Xi is an indicator that he shuns that reform as well.??

Deng reinstated many leaders cast aside by Mao including Xi’s father and nurtured a new generation of leaders like Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao and introduced limited democracy in the party in 1987 by allowing more candidates to run for the Congress than the number of posts. Deng’s reform was further advanced by leaders such as Jiang and Hu by institutionalizing the use of power and establishing a system of “rule by law” to check party power. But various videos circulating on social media sites of party congress where an old veteran of the Communist Party was ill-treated shows that Xi is least interested to carry on the reforms of Deng.?

The current Chinese dispensation under Xi-Jinping is breaking the centuries of misconceptions perpetuated by Sinologists. New China under Xi-Jingping had forgotten Deng’s “24-character strategy” of maintaining a low profile and biding time. Now, China is acting like any other rising power based on offensive-realist policies. It is deploying all the instruments of Kautilya that are?saam, daam, dand, bhed to meet its end which is evident from ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy and salami-slicing technique. The offensive-realist policy of China is not only limited to the U.S. the prime target of New China is India. Under Xi-Jinping we are witnessing unparalleled rivalry between India and China, Government data shows that there were 1025 Chinese transgressions reported from 2016 to 2018 and last year a drone shot down along the India-Pakistan international border in Punjab had "footprints" and was earlier flown in China and Pakistan.?

Sinologists are saying that Xi-Jinping changed the inward-looking strategic culture of China but Napoleon Bonaparte predicted the expansionist China in his famous quote “Let China Sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world”.