Chapter 2 Political Regression and Social Hooliganism

Xi Jinping has been in power for nearly nine years now. The Xi era has proven to be an era of political regression, human rights disaster, total hooliganization of Chinese society, age of the cult of the individual worship, of lies, and violence, and an era of injustice.

In 2012, Premier Wen Jiabao warned at the last press conference of his term of office. He said, “the reform has now reached a critical stage without the success of reform of the political system. The economic system reform cannot be carried out to the end, and the achievements made may be lost again. We will not be able to solve the new problems from the reform. The Cultural Revolution and other historical tragedies may happen again.” And thus Wen Jiabao’s fears have become a reality in the Xi Jinping era.
  
Throughout his nine years of rule, Xi Jinping has gathered power and governed the country. He has succeeded in removing political opponents Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Ling Jihua, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong and Sun Zhengcai through anti-corruption. He has punished more than 4 million CCP officials who did not abide by political rules. Xi has centralized military power through military integration; and has centralized government power in his own hands by establishing the numerous reform leadership groups. Xi has abolished the collective leadership system established by Deng Xiaoping and has returned to the individual dictatorship of Mao Zedong.

Xi Jinping’s regime has concentrated on arresting some human rights lawyers and activists; suppressing freedom of speech, religious freedom, and civil society; implementing a second “public-private partnership” for private enterprises in the name of “mixed ownership” reform; emphasizing “the Party leads everything” and annulling Deng Xiaoping’s achievements in separating the Party from the government and government from enterprises; persecuting ethnic minorities: genocide of Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang and cultural extermination of Tibetans and Mongolians.

In October 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its 19th National Congress. At the conference, wrapped in “beautiful” terms, Xi Jinping unabashedly articulated his policy – the ideas of totalitarian dictatorship internally and world leadership externally. In March 2018, Xi Jinping manipulated the National People’s Congress (NPC) to amend the constitution to remove term limits for the president and vice presidents. It abandoned the leadership succession system established by Deng Xiaoping, i.e., the realization of a term system for top leaders: the constitution stipulates that the term of office of the president shall not exceed two terms of five years each; instead of the current general secretary designating the next general secretary, the previous general secretary or the actual top leader shall exercise greater decision-making power, which is known as the “next-generational designation system; and the establishment of a “crown prince system,” or a succession system, whereby the party and the nation will make public the choice of the next general secretary after the new general secretary is confirmed.

On July 1, 2021, at the Communist Party’s centennial celebration, Xi Jinping delivered an aggressive war-wolf speech, demonstrating that he would not hand over power as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao did.
 
In summary, during Xi’s administration, China has experienced severe political regression and the legacy of Deng Xiaoping’s political reforms has been abandoned. In nutshell, China is evolving toward a North Korean political ecology.