By Liang Jing, Translation by David Kelly, China Policy
In the 1980s reform and opening, had there been no peasant household contracting in Anhui under Wan Li and no opening of TVEs in Guangdong under Xi Zhongyun, Deng Xiaoping’s line would have completely lost out to Chen Yun’s, and the historic rise of China’s economy would simply not have taken place. With ever more people identifying and understanding the historical truth, I believe that even were the CCP to be no more, the historical reputation of these two communists will not be damaged; whereas Xi Jinping will likely be forever branded with historical infamy.
The historical roles of Wan Li and Xi Zhongyun are, of course, related to their fine personal qualities; as we know, though, there was no lack of good people among those who threw their lot in with the communist revolution; but few were as fortunate as Wan Li and Xi Zhongxun. Many failed to reflect in time, and were swallowed in CCP bloodshed or eliminated by officialdom’s adverse selection. While many survivors woke from the harsh reality of harming others only to harm oneself, they had lost any chance of making up for and correcting the CPC’s and their own crimes, hence lost any chance of redeeming themselves. It was otherwise with Wan Li and Xi Zhongxun. They not only had opportunities to gain the power of self-reflection from their personal experience of purging others and being purged, but also learned from the repeated high-level struggles for power in the CCP after the Cultural Revolution, gained opportunities to redeem themselves by advancing individual emancipation and social progress.
Being the kind of CCP leaders who were more endowed with humanity, Wan and Xi had more respect for freedom and liberation; hence both felt deep guilt for the misery the CCP revolution had brought to the peasantry. If not for the power struggle in the CCP following the death of Mao, and the serious economic situation at that time, such people could scarcely have been given senior appointments on the marches. Anhui and Guangdong were where the Post-Cultural Revolution rural crisis was most evident. Anhui’s peasants were starving; in Guangdong they were fleeing to Hong Kong. Post-CR the central authorities clearly knew, to send mediocrities to run these provinces was to risk the stability of the whole country. Wan and Xi thus gained a chance to launch reforms, and both unreservedly seized this historic opportunity.
Once prosperity is restored to the realm was, able enterprising talents cannot be tolerated—this is the invariable political logic in China under Grand Unity (大一统). And this logic inevitably brings irresistible political decline and social decay. The misfortune of Xi Jinping is that his political experience and career as a courtier basically coincided with this cycle of political decline, and his promotion to a position of supreme power is closely related to China’s being on the verge of all-out crisis.
Xi is of course not without opportunities, for it was his forebears’ generation who achieved the reform breakthrough, giving unprecedented opportunities: China has economic power and global influence to rebuild its internal order and the world order.
Xi’s problem is that given the major trend of political decline and social corruption, he has to make corresponding adaptation of his worldview and morality for the sake of political survival and career advancement; otherwise, he would long ago have lost out in the competition for power. Even meritorious reform officials like Wan Li and Xi Zhongxun had to choose the policy, traditional in Chinese statecraft, of preserving themselves through retirement, in the interests of their offspring and friends. Although this can be held against them, Xi Jinping has apparently drawn quite negative lessons from it. His language and performance thus far makes it hard to feel optimistic about Xi Jinping’s ability to go beyond the political thinking of the Party-realm and promote progress in China’s politics, in its and the Party-world’s political thought. This undoubtedly increases the risk of China once again missing historical opportunities, and relapsing into the cycle of chaos and contention. If so, Xi Jinping will clearly be unable to escape historical infamy.
Today’s China and the world are, however, quite unlike a century ago; Xi Jinping’s inability to go beyond himself, does not mean China cannot escape a fated cycle of order and chaos. Were things to develop such that China transcends Xi Jinping, achieving a historic breakthrough in political order, Xi himself would still not escape infamy. Does Xi Jinping have any chance of transcending himself, laying down some historical merit like that of his father’s generation?
No one can make a convincing prediction. But I believe, if he keeps persisting in centralising power as he has, and fails to appoint people of the quality of Wan Li or his father Xi Zhongxun to go to the regions and find solutions, he cannot escape the vituperation of history.
People like Wan Li and Xi Zhongxun, it is said, are not to be found in today’s China. I cannot accept this judgment. The real challenge is whether this behaviour of Xi’s will, like Hua Guofeng’s, undermine his own position. Faced with this challenge, what Xi needs is not only more faith in himself, but more faith in justice and history, like that of Wan Li and his father.
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