Chapter 4 What Exactly Is Xi Jinping Up To? (1)

There are currently five main different views.
 
The first view: Xi Jinping wants to return to the Maoist era. This view is that Xi Jinping is a Red Guard trained by Mao Zedong and that he wants to return China to the era of the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, Xi’s governance is full of Maoist elements. But what is difficult to explain is that Xi has not closed the door of China’s opening to the outside world, has not engaged in a planned economy and has not encouraged the masses to rebel and seize power. Despite holding high the banner of Maoist thought, Xi Jinping does not possess many utopian elements which have been grafting the legitimacy of the CCP onto traditional Chinese culture.

The second view: the continuation of Deng Xiaoping’s line
 
This view is that Xi Jinping is not essentially different from Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao and is still following the path of Deng Xiaoping, adhering to reform and opening up and following the four basic principles. According to political scholar Hu Ping, in essence, there is no difference between Xi Jinping’s line and Deng Xiaoping’s line. What Xi Jinping has done is basically an extension of Deng Xiaoping’s line but with some deviations, taking the evil elements inherent in Deng’s line to the extremes. According to Cha Jianguo, Xi Jinping claims not to follow Mao’s old path and not to follow the “evil path” of Western democracy but to be more leftist in politics and more rightist in economics, with both hands being harder. This is the core concept of understanding China’s current era and current situation. But what is difficult to explain is that Deng Xiaoping abolished the lifetime system and established the tenure system, opposing the cult of individual worship . Jiang Zemin advocated “making a fortune by muffled voices,” and Hu Jintao advocated “no fuss”, but Xi Jinping’s policy is exactly the opposite of theirs. He has abolished the tenure system of the president, vigorously promoted the cult of the individual, advocated the philosophy of struggle, approached the center of the world stage in a high profile and has not stopped tossing and turning.

The Third View: The Road to the Red Empire
 
According to Li Weidong: Xi Jinping is not going back to the Cultural Revolution but to build a Nazified Red Empire representing the interests of the CCP’s powerful capitalist clique. Xi has a mature set of strategic thinking and is not blindly fooling around.  He wants to avoid the lessons of the Soviet Union’s demise by continuing to carry the banner of Marxism and insisting on market-oriented reforms under the premise of macro-controllable and state-owned subjects. Xi’s Chinese dream is to achieve national wealth and strength while maintaining the one-party rule of the Communist Party in the long term. In order to realize his dream, it is necessary to remove all murmurs, regain the ideological position, vigorously promote anti-constitutional and anti-universal values and revive the “main theme” of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Xi Jinping does not want to return to the Cultural Revolution but emphasizes “national socialism”. Xi’s path is to build a Naziized Red Empire that represents the interests of the Communist Party’s powerful capitalist group.

The Fourth View: Neo-Totalitarianism
 
The first person to put forward the view of neo-totalitarianism was Professor Xu Ben of Saint Mary’s College of California. He has argued in his 2005 article “China’s “New Totalitarianism” and The Scene in Its End Times” that China entered a post-totalitarian era between the end of the Cultural Revolution and the June 4 massacre in 1989 after which China entered a neo-totalitarian period. On the other hand, Cai Xia, a retired professor at the former Central Party School, argues that Xi Jinping implements a highly refined form of neo-totalitarianism. She points out that since Xi came to power, he has worked hard to use high technology to gain a super powerful surveillance capability that surpasses that of Hitler and the former Soviet Union. Based on Brzezinski’s overview, perhaps we can now define the CCP’s rule in China as fear + ideology + digital technology control system (using information technology and artificial intelligence) = redefined as a highly sophisticated new totalitarianism.

Xi Jinping’s regime is totalitarian because he also practices “one doctrine, one leader, one party” and “grand unification (Han Chinese unified state).” The Nazi Party under Hitler’s control was “National Socialist” based on racism; Xi Jinping’s extreme nationalism is also associated with racism. Moreover, the CCP has continued reinforcing its sense of Han Chinese superiority by practicing disguised cultural genocide against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia for a long time.