Rise to Superpower: From the Middle Kingdom to the Middle of the World: How Xi Jinping Shaped China Over the Past Ten Years

Xi Jinping is at the (so far) peak of his power.

Rise to Superpower: From the Middle Kingdom to the Middle of the World: How Xi Jinping Shaped China Over the Past Ten Years

Xi Jinping is at the (so far) peak of his power. The 69-year-old general secretary of the Communist Party (CP) is the first head of state since dictator Mao Zedong to serve a third term in office - breaking all the rules in force last weekend to thunderous applause from party members. Given his near-absolute control, Xi is now arguably the most powerful man in the world.

The fact that the KP throws itself at the feet of a single man is the result of a meticulously orchestrated process of change. His vision of the "great rejuvenation" has borne rich fruit - at a high price. But the first among equals actually not only promised, but also delivered. When Xi ascended to the party leadership in 2012, he tacitly offered a deal: economic prosperity and geopolitical importance in exchange for political and individual freedom.

In the following ten years, the Middle Kingdom has finally changed from the assembly line of the world to a superpower - economically, technologically, militarily. An overview of how the new "emperor" of China shaped the country.

In his ten-year tenure, Xi launched what is arguably the largest anti-corruption campaign in the country's history. What some unmask as political cleansing, others see as a fight against a "culture of debauchery," according to US news channel CNN. As the New York Times reported in 2012, the family of then Prime Minister Wen Jiabao alone had amassed assets of at least $2.7 billion. Jiabao was far from the only one who sucked the state into his account.

Since he came to power, 4.6 million officials have been investigated - including not only high-ranking decision-makers ("Tigers"). In the course of his power-political spring cleaning, he also crushed countless "flies" (low-ranking officials). Nobody seemed immune," wrote Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies at London's King's College, in a review of the campaign.

At the same time, Xi released an eight-point list of austerity measures aimed at putting an end to any excesses that had been practiced up until then. One of them, according to the news portal "Grid", was: "There should be no welcome banners, no red carpet, no flower arrangements or large receptions for visiting officials." With the rigorous action taken by the "degenerate" elite, Xi not only secured the goodwill of the population, but also found a tried and tested means of eliminating political opponents. In the course of the most recent party congress, Xi succeeded in filling the Standing Committee, the actual power body within the party apparatus, exclusively with loyalists.

Xi's approach to controlling the civilian population was no less radical. Dissenting Chinese were systematically suppressed. Human rights activists and activists in particular have a hard time in Xi's China. State investment in the tech sector has given the regime a number of new surveillance capabilities. As CNN reports, an estimated 770 million surveillance cameras were installed worldwide in 2019 - more than half of them in China. Xi's crackdown has left "there is almost no opportunity for people to voice their opinions," Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Grid.

This became particularly clear with the start of the corona pandemic - a suitable pretext for introducing all-encompassing, high-tech surveillance. To this day, the leadership has not moved a millimeter from this "zero Covid strategy", in the course of which entire metropolises such as Shanghai were cordoned off for months.

Internet censorship, the "state firewall", was also massively strengthened under Xi. This is exemplified by the influence of the popular microblogging service "Weibo". In some cases, according to a former employee, all words that even remotely sounded like "Xi" have been deleted from the app. The same applies to the media and press landscape. Document No. 9, an internal memo issued to party cadres in April 2013, called for "undeterred adherence to the principle of party control of the media," writes Grid. According to the British "Guardian", no other government has arrested so many journalists in the past three years. In 2021 alone, according to "Reporters Without Borders", 100 journalists are said to have ended up behind bars. This also applies to Hong Kong, which was considered the last oasis of press freedom.

The main reason why Xi has never been more firmly in the saddle is that poverty has fallen significantly under his reign. The numbers are impressive. According to reports, around 100 million fewer rural Chinese are living below the "absolute poverty" line compared to 2012. Average income per capita has doubled. Reason enough for Xi to declare his goal of "common prosperity" achieved last year. What he left out: the gap between rich and poor is widening year after year.

Especially in the first years of his reign, medium-sized companies flourished. The turning away from the restrictive economic policy had allowed China to advance from a poor agricultural state to an economic superpower. In the last decade, GDP has more than doubled, with China accounting for a fifth of global economic turnover.

This upswing was only possible because the state gave the private sector almost free rein at times. That's over now. The tech industry in particular, China's economic driving force, is increasingly complaining about state interference. As the "Guardian" reports, the party is now either demanding participation, hoisting officials into management positions or even setting up party cells in the companies. Xi, the tech bosses may have simply become too powerful.

But the economic downturn is now inevitable. Xi's strict corona policy, which is now an expression of his totalitarian policies, also contributed to the slump in growth. By 2021, according to CNN, Chinese companies had lost $3 trillion in market value worldwide. According to the Reuters news agency, more and more analysts are predicting an expiry date for China's model, which is based on massive investments and infrastructure development.

In terms of foreign policy, for decades China has maintained the appearance of following its "five principles", which are: "mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence." But Xi has perfected the art of seduction. With the billions invested in his "New Silk Road", his Middle Kingdom has bought influence in every corner of the world and made resource-rich but poor countries around the world dependent.

Xi's expansion policy is seen as a clear challenge to the United States. The desire to redefine the "world order" has brought Xi closer and closer to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin over the years. Even Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine has hardly caused the "rock-solid friendship" to crumble.

On the international stage, the Secretary-General ushered in a new, far more aggressive era in Chinese diplomacy. "Wolf warriors" are what Beijing's emissaries are called today. They are "combative, assertive and ready to lash out in front of the United Nations or on social media to defend Xi's policies," writes CNN.

Militarily, too, Xi has led his empire towards the top of the world. In the course of comprehensive modernization and restructuring, the defense budget has more than doubled in the past ten years. This puts China (albeit still at a considerable distance) behind the USA in second place among the countries with the highest military spending. In terms of the number of ships, China's navy has even overtaken the United States.

As the People's Liberation Army grew stronger, fears grew that China might annex the island nation of Taiwan. Xi has repeatedly emphasized that he sees the small neighboring nation as part of the People's Republic. With the conclusion of the party congress, the party constitution also underlines for the first time the strict rejection of Taiwan's independence.

Until a few years ago, "smog" and "Chinese metropolis" were to be understood as synonyms. During the "airpocalypse" in winter 2013, the air in some parts of the country was so polluted that it was considered dangerous to stay outdoors for a long time. In view of the alarming values, the Beijing authorities kept children off the streets, closed factories and tried to curb traffic, the US business news portal "Quartz" reported at the time.

Xi promised remedy. In the same year, the KP presented a national action plan to combat air pollution, which primarily provided for the switch from coal to renewable energies. As the University of Chicago reported in February of this year, by 2020 the values ​​had fallen by an average of 40 percent, and in Beijing by half. On average, life expectancy increased by a full two years. On top of that. Xi announced in 2020 that China would be completely carbon neutral by 2060 and phase out coal-fired power plants altogether.

So much for the first decade under Xi. Another five years are to follow. But observers agree: "Mao's successor" is far from enough.

Quellen: CNN; "The Grid"; "The Guardian"; "NBC News"; Reuters

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