SinoInsight 1
On Oct. 29, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced the investigation of Chen Zehun, the former executive deputy mayor of Hunan’s Changsha municipal government and Standing Committee member of the Changsha Municipal Party Committee. Chen was charged with “violating political discipline,” “possessing books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues,” “hiding the books and magazines, as well as sharing them with others,” “destroying and transferring the material evidence in defiance of an organized investigation,” as well as other disciplinary and corruption-related issues.
Chen was promoted to head of Changsha’s Propaganda Department, a deputy bureau-level position, and became a Standing Committee member of Changsha’s Party Committee in September 2006. He stayed at the deputy bureau-level rank until his retirement in December 2017.
OUR TAKE
1. The charges of “possessing books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues” and “sharing them with others” indicate that Chen Zehun very likely purchased reading material with content on CCP elite politics from Hong Kong or outside China (see point 3). The CCP officially forbids the formation of “cliques and factions,” so the very act of reading about Party elite politics (which inevitably bring up factional struggles) and talking about it with others constitutes a crime in the regime.
2. It is unsurprising that Chen, a former propaganda worker and deputy bureau-level official, felt the need to look outside China for information on CCP elite politics and factionalism.
First, the aforementioned information is heavily censored and extremely limited on the mainland. That means that CCP elite politics and factionalism is a black box not only to those outside China, but to people living inside China as well, including middle to lower-ranking officials. Officials will try to get a feel for how the factional struggle in the elite ranks is going by reading between the lines of key state and Party media like Xinhua, People’s Daily, CCTV, and Qiushi Magazine, such as tracking the public appearances of leading officials, counting how many minutes of air time a leading official gets on CCTV’s “Xinwen Lianbo” program, etc. However, the information that they can squeeze out of propaganda outlets is limited, and they will not get a big picture perspective.
Second, CCP officials are keen to know what’s really going on at the top so that they may better align themselves with the leading powers. Middle to lower-level officials in particular want to ensure that they have established “correct” patron-client relations with powerful factions or factional networks to better safeguard and further their interests. Meanwhile, elite officials looking to “recruit” followers will promote those who duly implement their orders or float “trial balloons” in official propaganda to gauge loyalty. For example, after Xi Jinping carried out military reforms and prepared to move away from the “collective leadership” system in 2016, mainland media raised the idea of a “leadership core” and “uniting around Party Central.” Subsequently, 19 provincial leaders publicly called for “uniting around Party Central” and upholding the “Xi core.” After a round of “fealty declarations,” Xi proceeded to purge a batch of provincial leaders who were associated with the Jiang Zemin faction and replace them with “loyalists”; in total, Xi replaced 14 provincial bosses in 2016.
Third, the various CCP factions get around mainland media restrictions on “cliques and factions” by “leaking” information and disinformation about the factional struggle overseas, be it in Hong Kong and foreign media outlets, academia and think-tanks, social media, etc. While the information and disinformation requires some decipering and reading between the lines, they offer valuable insight into CCP elite politics that would otherwise be closed off to CCP officials who just read the mainland press.
Given the importance of factionalism and staying “politically correct’” in the CCP regime, it is no wonder that officials (even retired officials like Chen Zehun) are willing to take a chance and read “taboo” material on CCP elite politics from abroad.
3. Chen Zehun is not the only official to be probed for corruption and having the charge of reading material from abroad on “serious political issues”:
Aug. 9, 2018: Wu Dehua, former member of the Standing Committee of Chongqing City’s Yubei District Party Committee, was purged (“shuang kai,” 雙開) for “purchasing and secretly collecting reactionary magazines, spreading political rumors, and joining illegal organizations.
According to the CCDI’s official newspaper, Wu has connections with disgraced Politburo member Sun Zhengcai, and bought the “reactionary magazines” to find out more information about Sun’s arrest in July 2017.
Sept. 1, 2018: Feng Yue, former Party Secretary and chairman of the state-run Chongqing Energy Investment Group, was investigated by state supervisory authorities. One of Feng’s charges was “privately buying, reading, and collecting books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues.”
Sept. 20, 2018: Wang Xiaoguang, former vice governor of Guizhou and Standing Committee member of the provincial Party Committee, was investigated by the CCDI. One of his charges was “enthusiastically reading books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues.”
July 7, 2019: Wang Yinfeng, the former Party Secretary and chairman of Chongqing Grain Group, was purged and accused of “actively looking for political backers, enthusiastically reading and privately collecting books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues.”
Oct. 12, 2019: Yang Hongwei, former deputy Party Secretary and deputy director of the Chongqing Administration for Market Regulation, was investigated and charged with having “political issues” and “reading and collecting books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues.”
4. CCP elite politics is upstream of nearly all issues in China today. And at the core of elite politics are factional struggles within the Party. The fact that many CCP officials have been arrested for “reading and collecting books and magazines from abroad that contain serious political issues” affirms our observation.
Most officials today might not believe in Marxism-Leninism, but they definitely believe in factionalism in the CCP elite and what understanding the factional struggle situation will do for their interests. Otherwise, officials would not bother to consume sensitive material on CCP elite politics from outside China and talk about it amongst themselves.
Businesses, investors, and governments should also closely track developments in CCP elite politics to see through Party propaganda and make more educated decisions on China.
SinoInsight 2
Following the release of the CCP Fifth Plenum communique, commentators are claiming that the Central Committee had conferred the “title” of “helmsman” on Xi Jinping, citing the phrase “the Party’s core navigator and pilot of the helm” (全黨的核心領航掌舵) as evidence.
OUR TAKE
1. We briefly explained previously why the phrase, “the Party’s core navigator and pilot of the helm,” is not particularly significant in the context of the Fifth Plenum communique. To repeat, the phrase only appears once in the 6,000 character document and is not used in the headlines of articles in mainland media outlets. These two signs are enough to debunk the theory that Xi Jinping assumed the “helmsman” title at the recently concluded plenary session.
Given the prevalence of analysis about the importance of the phrase, however, we will dig in a bit deeper here on the issue.
2. In a previous newsletter, we noted that The New York Times referred to Xi as “helmsman” in the headline (“As the West Stumbles, ‘Helmsman’ Xi Pushes an Ambitious Plan for China”) of their Fifth Plenum piece. They translated the phrase “全黨的核心領航掌舵” as “the Party’s core navigator and helmsman,” which we reproduced in the earlier newsletter. However, the Chinese for Mao’s “helmsman” is “舵手” (duo shou), whereas the phrase used in the Fifth Plenum communique and earlier documents is “領航掌舵” (ling dao zhang duo), which is more accurately translated as “pilot at the helm.” There is a clear difference in semantics, and one is not the other in the original Chinese; a helpful way to think about the difference between “helmsman” and “pilot at the helm” is that the latter is a simile while the former is a metaphor.
Xi Jinping has flirted with the “helmsman” title before, but not during the Fifth Plenum. During the close of the 2018 Two Sessions, National People’s Congress chairman and Politburo Standing Committee member Li Zhanshu hailed Xi as “core of the Party, commander of the military, leader of the people, helmsman of a socialist country with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and the people’s guide.” We believe Li conferred the various adulatory phrases and titles on Xi at the time to boost his “quan wei” (權威) and “legitimize” a string of controversial power consolidation moves, including moving the regime further away from “collective leadership” and towards strongman rule, scrapping term limits for the PRC presidency and vice presidency, and the writing of “Xi Jinping Thought” into the Party constitution.
3. Xi frequently “borrows” tokens of “quan wei” (titles used by Mao and Deng, visits to revolutionary sites, etc.) in “you know what I mean” (你懂的) fashion to strengthen his position and deal with factional struggle problems. The use of “the Party’s core navigator and pilot of the helm” in the Fifth Plenum communique is a rhetorical device aimed at emphasizing Xi’s “General Secretary Plus” status and distinguishing himself from the other members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
Xi, however, has not “worn” the titles associated with Chairman Mao formally or for lengthy periods. Aside from Li Zhanshu hailing Xi at the 2018 Two Sessions, the titles “people’s leader” or “helmsman” are used only in modified formats in official documents and propaganda. For instance, Xi is referred to as “the Party’s core navigator and pilot of the helm” or is said to possess “people’s leader’s deep feelings for the people” (“人民領袖深切的為民情懷”). Those rhetorical, adulatory phrases are a “wink and nod” towards Mao, but are clearly not the Chairman’s titles.
Beijing has also shut down excessive efforts by local governments to promote Xi’s “cult of personality.” In 2018, for example, overseas Chinese media reported before the Beidaihe meeting in July that the CCP General Office had ordered many local governments not to put up Xi portraits “without authorization” after a proliferation of the practice. Another notable episode that year involved local official media in Guizhou’s Qianxi Prefecture running overly flattering headlines and pictures of Xi on their front page for consecutive days in November. One newspaper edition saw Xi’s portrait taking up the full front page, with the words, “Great Leader General Secretary Xi Jinping” on top. On Nov. 17, Xinhua issued a commentary praising Xi with more modest phrases like “leader,” “commander-in-chief,” and “head architect.” The following day, the Qianxi official media deleted all its overly flattering propaganda of Xi from its website. Since then, other local governments also refrained from using bombastic phrases like “Great Leader Xi” in their official documents, and stuck for the most part to “approved” terms in Xinhua and Party Central documents. Overseas Chinese media outlets later reported that CCP propaganda overseer Wang Huning had demanded “accurate” and “well-deserved” propaganda on Xi Jinping after the 19th Party Congress, and banned the use of phrases like “Great Leader.”
4. As we observed in January, Xi’s “borrowing” of titles associated with Mao is a sign of weakness, not strength. If Xi was truly all-powerful, he would not have to engage in rhetorical phrasing and would just assume Mao’s titles. The fact that Xi has not outright claimed Mao’s titles for himself points to the presence of substantial resistance to his rule in the regime and his lack of absolute authority and overwhelming “quan wei.”
