An image of China’s leader Xi Jinping is seen at an exhibition about history of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at Red Building of Peking University, in Beijing on Oct. 7, 2022. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)
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The world can expect a more militarily aggressive China after Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term in power, cementing his status as the most powerful Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader since Mao Zedong, the regime’s first ruler, according to analysts.
Xi’s tenure for another five years, and perhaps more, also puts him in the position of leading a military that, for the first time in the Party’s history, poses a real threat to others in the region, they said. But with newly-appointed loyalists in the military who are aging and lack combat experience, Xi also faces deep uncertainty about whether the Party’s military arm, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), can actually win wars with advanced armies.
The leader’s reappointment as the Party’s general secretary came after the close of CCP’s 20th National Congress on Oct. 23, during which the composition of the Politburo Standing Committee, the CCP’s pinnacle 7-member decision-making body, was also revealed. The four newly-appointment members of the committee were all Xi allies.
Aparna Pande, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told The Epoch Times that Xi is now “more powerful than many of his predecessors,” including Deng Xiaoping, the CCP’s supreme leader from 1978 to 1989, who still had to contend with Party elders.
The leader’s consolidation of power has been matched by a doubling down of propaganda painting Xi as the Party’s “core.” The CCP amended its constitution on Oct. 22 further cementing Xi’s policies and ideologies. In 2017, the Party’s charter was amended to incorporate Xi’s own brand of dogma, known as “Xi Jinping Thought.”
Over the past week, several reports about Xi on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV’s mobile app were tagged under the title “people’s leader.”
This personality cult under the banner of “people’s leader” marks the end of the period of China’s economic reforms initiated under Deng’s reign during the 1980s, said Frank Lehberger, a Europe-based sinologist and expert on CCP policies, who noted that Deng had prohibited leaders from establishing personality cults.
Heightened Threat
With many a comparison being made between Xi and Mao, experts note that while Xi, unlike Mao, isn’t a hardened military leader, he has solidified control of the military by rooting out insubordination from the PLA and appointing loyalists. Xi leads the PLA as chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Party’s top military body.
Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, told The Epoch Times that Xi is the first Chinese leader since Mao who has the political clout to take the communist regime in his chosen direction.
“But unlike Mao, Xi has the military capability to take on the United States and to project force in China’s immediate vicinity,” said Newsham, adding that the PLA is gradually building the capability to project power both regionally and globally.
If necessary, Xi will not shy from using his solidified position and progressively capable military to further intimidate and assault Taiwan, the self-ruled island that the CCP claims as its own, according to Newsham.
For Pande, an unchallenged Xi isn’t just a concern for the United States, but also for China’s neighbors in Asia—from Japan and South Korea to India and Vietnam.
“Xi is likely to continue his policies over the last decade that include a more aggressive China that seeks to wipe out the century of humiliation, reclaims territory through salami slicing, and uses the weakness of certain powers (Russia) and distraction of others (U.S.) to build its presence in key parts of the world,” Pande said.
Such goals indicate the “messianic aspect to Xi’s behavior,” according to Newsham, who said that the United States and other free nations should be prepared for a fight.
“Expect Chinese political warfare—a preliminary to kinetic warfare—to continue globally,” he said. By political warfare, Newsham meant the use of a range of measures, usually non-violent, to weaken, confuse, demoralize, or even defeat an adversary.
China’s leader Xi Jinping (front) walks with members of the Chinese Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee, the nation’s top decision-making body as they meet the media in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 23, 2022. (Noel Celis / AFP via Getty Images)
Appointing Military Loyalists
While the CCP’s military may pose a heightened threat to those in the Asian region and beyond, Lehberger cautions that Xi’s promotion of generals based on loyalty, rather than combat experience or expertise, represents an Achilles heel.
During his 10-year rule thus far, Xi has been extremely suspicious of the top brass of the PLA and has purged many of them while appointing past-retirement-age loyalists around him, Lehberger noted. Xi has also reorganized the complete defense structure, most notably during sweeping military reforms in 2015.
This reorganization was “designed to prevent PLA generals [from] ganging up on [Xi] and toppling him from absolute power,” Lehberger said, noting that it, ironically, also created powerful enemies in the process.
To overcome insubordination, Xi on Oct. 24 announced the promotion of a few generals whom he could trust like the 72-year-old general Zhang Youxia whom Lehberger described as Xi’s “neighbor and playing pal as a kid.”
Zhang, who retained his position as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, is one of the few PLA generals who has actual combat experience, but that was from over four decades ago in Vietnam, the analyst noted.
“He is so old he should be retired according to CCP rules, but Xi bent the rules in his favor and he now has been elevated to first vice chairman of the Central Military Committee, the second most powerful military man after Xi himself,” said Lehberger.
The other vice chair role went to He Weidong, who was commander of the 31st Army on the shores opposite Taiwan in Fujian Province, and is equally past retirement age, said Lehberger, adding that the general was formerly in charge of the Western Theater Command, headquartered in China’s western region and tasked with fighting India.
“During the last years, Xi liked [He’s] performance in the west and did promote He on a fast track to become boss of the Eastern Theatre Command, the entity in charge of an envisaged invasion of Taiwan. He is now second vice chairman of the CMC after Gen. Zhang,” said Lehberger.
The third PLA figure promoted to the Central Military Commission was Adm. Miao Hua, 66, whom Xi has known for three decades. Lehberger described Miao as “another leading political cadre (without combat experience and just a communist apparatchik in the military) from the 31st Army,” whom Xi has known since his days as a Party official in Fujian Province from 1985 to 2002.
Xi wants to annex Taiwan, and for this, he needs solid expertise in high-tech warfare, notably air warfare and marine or naval warfare, according to the expert.
“Therefore, Xi has built up his Navy to impressive proportions [that] now rivals the Americans in number,” he said, but its “rank and file as well as officers all lack professional expertise, when compared to the best in the region: the Japanese Navy and the U.S. Navy.”
Lehberger said that Xi’s choice of Miao mirrors this particular dilemma, and indicates what might unfold in the long run.
“Miao is just a political officer, basically a scheming bureaucrat without any naval combat experience whatsoever. So, with such a person in charge of the invasion of Taiwan, this can only lead to disaster for Xi himself,” he said.
“But Xi is not interested in professionalism, just personal loyalty.”