Xi Jinping was, by the beginning of November 2022, trying to pull the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China out of the terminal velocity death spiral into which he had deliberately placed them in order to win total power.
But blunting the velocity of the implosion—the hard landing—of China will prove less easy than starting the intra-party civil war in which he began to seize that total power. And he still has to purge more domestic enemies within the CCP and civilian communities.
The result may still be that Xi could soon need a distraction for the Party and the public, possibly in the form of re-escalating confrontation with the Republic of China (ROC: Taiwan). But there is some evidence that Xi—along with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—would prefer to avoid the “Taiwan problem” in the near term.
Indeed, moving the Taiwan “problem” into kinetic warfare at this stage could trigger a PLA/Xi defeat. The ROC is getting better organized to resist a PLA attack, and the PLA itself does not have a guarantee of overwhelming capability unless it uses nuclear weapons to actually destroy life and infrastructure in Taiwan.
That option should not be ruled out, but, at this stage, Xi has won nominal control of the Party and mainland China and would clearly prefer to manage that situation rather than engage in another existential risk before he can, in Sun Tzu’s terms, “win without fighting.”
Xi, with the end of the CCP’s 2oth National Congress on Oct. 22, had won his battle for formal, total, singular control of the Party and mainland China. He must now complete the purge of internal enemies while stabilizing the civilian population and economy. He needs the international community to give him breathing space through continued trade and investment.
Continued economic collapse—particularly at the pace he allowed in order to suppress internal opponents, including wealthy individuals—seemed likely, by the end of the Party Congress, to lead to increased civil desperation in the cities and possible mass unrest. Once the Congress ended, he needed to inject some hope into the housing sector, into which many millions of Chinese had invested their savings and ongoing payments to create value for their retirement. However, it is now probable that the bulk of the housing sector cannot be salvaged.
So Xi needs to continue his purge of domestic opposition—including the formerly free-wheeling private sector and the ability of relatively wealthy Chinese to travel, export funds, and act independently—while reducing the growing global fear of China and continuing to exhibit strength around the world. This requires a deliberately contradictory—Janusian—approach, calming domestic audiences while ratcheting up controls, and calming the galvanizing of opponents abroad while building PLA capabilities to support Chinese strategic projection.
On Nov. 4, soon after the Party Congress, Xi was able to get German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to visit Beijing—the first significant G-7 visitor for some three years—to “further develop” Sino-German economic relations. Little wonder that realpolitik is a German word! It does not imply “reality” in politics, but transactionalism.
Xi’s apparatus that day revealed that the CCP and the Japanese government were considering a meeting in mid-November between Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. That would be an attempt to calm tensions with the Japanese government and population, which had committed to a strenuous increase in Japanese military capability and support for Taiwan.
Another member of the anti-China “Quad” (of Japan, the United States, Australia, and India) was also pulled away from its mounting hostility toward China during the Sept. 15-16 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Samarkand. Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to reduce tensions. Xi’s new offensive is degrading the Quad.
With all this, Xi is preparing to offer Australia—which depends heavily on China trade—the prospect that the long economic honeymoon between China and Australia has not ended. This will add pressure from Australia’s big mining sector companies on the Australian Labor government of Anthony Albanese to ease its military confrontation with China. “Scare over!” they sigh.
Even so, the Achilles’ heel of Xi’s efforts to protect himself remains the unhappy and suppressed domestic—particularly urban—population. He is not yet out of the woods; neither is the rest of the world.
