SinoInsight 1
Nov. 5
1. According to Bloomberg News, Bauhinia Culture Holdings is working on a deal to acquire Hong Kong English language newspaper South China Morning Post from Alibaba. “Deliberations are ongoing and other state-backed entities could also consider submitting offers for SCMP,” people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Bauhinia Culture Holdings is a key state-owned enterprise under the PRC’s Ministry of Finance. Bloomberg says that the PRC’s Hong Kong Liaison Office owns Bauhinia through its Sino United Publishing Holdings Ltd. unit, citing government records from March. In April, Bauhinia acquired a stake in Phoenix Media; former Phoenix Media CEO Liu Changle had earlier stepped down in February.
2. In a report about Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Reuters wrote that Beijing “was unhappy about Ma meeting Trump without its prior approval” in 2017 days before the latter’s inauguration, citing two people close to Alibaba. Also, Beijing only learned about the Ma-Trump meeting “along with the rest of the world when Ma held an informal televised Q&A session with reporters in the lobby of the skyscraper,” according to four people close to Alibaba and a Beijing government source.
Reuters added, “The four people close to Alibaba said they believed the [Ma-Trump] meeting was a negative turning point in the relationship between Ma and Beijing. They did not elaborate on their thinking.”
Ma continued meeting with high-profile politicians and dignitaries from 2018 to 2020. “Ma had viewed meetings with foreign politicians as ‘unofficial diplomacy’ for China, which he enjoyed doing,” Reuters reported, citing a person close to Ma.
Reuters also reported that “Ma requested an audience with at least two people in Xi’s inner circle in the weeks following the blocking of Ant’s listing, but his requests were turned down by both,” citing two separate sources briefed by those people. Ma later wrote directly to Xi earlier in 2021 “offering to devote the rest of his life to China’s rural education.” However, Reuters “could not determine whether Xi approved of or responded to the offer, which has not been previously reported, or precisely when Ma … penned the missive.”
OUR TAKE
The above developments follow Jack Ma’s “study tour” to Europe in late October and come just before the opening of the Sixth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee on Nov. 8. Both developments appear to be linked to the Xi-Jiang factional struggle and Xi Jinping’s effort to tighten control in the regime through cracking down on his factional rivals’ remaining strongholds (tech, finance, Hong Kong, etc.).
We previously analyzed Xi’s move to wrestle “control and influence over public discourse” in Hong Kong from the Jiang faction (through the Zeng Qinghong clan) through controlling various media outlets and cultural institutions in the city. We wrote in May that “Xi’s effort to rope in the pro-Beijing, pro-Hong Kong establishment Phoenix Media via Bauhinia Cultural Holdings shows that he does not trust the Hong Kong establishment to loyally do his bidding; the Hong Kong establishment’s mainland ties are almost certainly with the Jiang faction given the latter’s over two-decade-long dominance over the city.” In light of Jack Ma’s ties to the Jiang faction, Xi would definitely want state-backed entities that he controls or has greater influence over, like Bauhinia, to take over South China Morning Post from Alibaba even though the media outlet already leans pro-China in its reporting.
Meanwhile, Reuters’s description of its sourcing for its Nov. 5 piece on Jack Ma indicates that it received unflattering information about Jack Ma directly from PRC sources who are in the Xi camp. We previously explained that “one of the ways in which the various factions in the CCP try to gain leverage over each other is by leaking damaging information about their rivals to overseas media outlets.” Such information usually emerges around the period in which key political meetings are held for maximum impact.
It is possible that the release of unfavorable news about Jack Ma and the central government’s plan to acquire an influential media outlet owned by Alibaba is yet another effort (see the Peng Shuai-Zhang Gaoli scandal) by the Xi camp to place the Jiang faction and its associates on notice before the Sixth Plenum and dissuade them from undermining the rollout of Xi’s “historical resolution” and other “quan wei”-building agendas.
Reuter’s revelation that Beijing was displeased by Ma’s unofficial and unsanctioned diplomacy in recent years also indirectly affirms the warnings in Party media of “another Party Central” challenging the Xi leadership. Given Ma’s factional connections, the Xi camp would naturally suspect that the billionaire was conducting informal diplomacy not on behalf of the regime or himself, but rather as a proxy (“white glove”) for “another Party Central” (the Jiang faction) or other “ambitious and conspiratorial people” who are looking to “usurp power” from Xi. And if Xi Jinping had suspected that his factional rivals were conducting back-channel diplomacy through Ma and others in preparing to transition the regime back to their hands after the end of his second term in office, it would help explain why the Xi leadership carried out high-level meetings on financial risk in April and July of 2017 (CMC, PAP, and PLAC personnel participated in the July meeting), purged very senior Jiang faction officials (Sun Zhengcai, Fang Fenghui, Zhang Yang) before the 19th Party Congress, and laid the foundation for a third term bid at the Congress (wrote “Xi Jinping Thought” into the Party Constitution) and during the 2018 Two Sessions (scrapped term limits for the PRC presidency).
SinoInsight 2
1. State mouthpiece Xinhua published a more-than 13,000-character profile of Xi Jinping titled “Xi Jinping Leads the Century-old Party on a New Journey” (習近平帶領百年大黨奮進新征程). The original Chinese-language edition of the piece contained the following six subsections: “A Party General Secretary who ‘loves the people as he loves his parents’” (“像愛父母那樣愛老百姓”的黨的總書記); “A Well-respected Leadership Core” (眾望所歸的領導核心); “A Strategist and Doer Who Makes the Country Strong” (讓國家強起來的戰略家實干家); “An Era-changer Who Opens Up New Horizons” (開闢新境界的時代變革者); “A Leader of a Great Power With the World in Mind” (胸懷天下的大國領袖); and “A Leader Who Continues to Lead the Way” (繼往開來的領航人).
Highlights of the piece include:
- The piece strives to depict Xi as a “central figure in the tide of history” who will “lead the Party to fulfill its important mission amid opportunities and challenges,” as well as “lead China back to the center of the world stage and what impact that will have.”
- The piece claims that “public opinion of Xi Jinping at home and abroad says that he is a man of determination and action, a man of profound thoughts and feelings, a man who inherited a legacy and dares to innovate, a man who always grasps the big picture and is sensitive to change, a man who struggles nonstop yet has strong self-control, and a man of humility, calmness, and without fear.”
- The piece cites foreign media and commentary about how Xi views the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” as a “historic mission.”
- The piece notes that corruption was a serious “challenge within the Party” when Xi took office. After “clearly recognizing the danger,” Xi issued a stern warning, “Facts show us that if the corruption problem worsens, it will eventually lead to the destruction of the Party and the fall of the country.” The piece then cites Radio France Internationale as saying, “at a critical moment, Xi Jinping’s [anti-corruption effort] saved the day.”
- The last subsection of the piece (“A Leader Who Continues to Lead the Way”) said that the CCP has mapped out the regime’s development goals for the “two one-hundred years” (the CCP’s first and second centennials in government), and Xi “presided over detailed planning for the second one-hundred years.” The piece concluded by recalling Xi leading other top cadres in swearing to “fight for communism for the rest of my life” before the Party flag.
Key points of the article include:
- The article rehashes and touts various CCP propaganda narratives, including claims like, “the CCP led and united the Chinese people over the past 100 years” and how the Party “opened up a great road, created a great cause, and obtained great achievements.” All in all, the article seeks to package the CCP’s totalitarian rule as an important chapter and development both in China’s history and in the history of human civilization.
- The article notes the importance of Xi’s “self-revolution” in fighting corruption and governing the Party strictly. Also, the article repeatedly stresses the need to “safeguard the ‘quan wei’ and centralized leadership of Party Central,” adding that doing so is “key to the Party becoming a century-old Party and creating a century of greatness.”
- The article concludes by noting the need to “look back at the past road of struggle and look forward to the road of progress.” To actualize the “second one-hundred year struggle objective and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the Party must “unite most closely around Party Central with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core.”
OUR TAKE
The two articles above are meant to boost Xi Jinping’s “quan wei” ahead of the Sixth Plenum and further justify his effort to break modern CCP leadership succession norms and take a third term at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. Like the “Four Histories” introduced earlier this year, both the Nov. 6 Xinhua and People’s Daily pieces endeavor to play up Xi’s importance in the CCP’s past (“first one-hundred years”) while indicating that he is set to perform a crucial role for the Party in the future (seeing how he “presided over detailed planning for the second one-hundred years”). Xi’s “historical resolution” at the Sixth Plenum will likely make the case for the CCP’s importance in Chinese history and Xi’s importance to the Party’s future.
However, the fact that official CCP media has to continually depict Xi as being absolutely “great, glorious, and correct” indicates that he still lacks “quan wei” and faces widespread opposition within the Party over his various policies and third term bid. Otherwise, there would be no need for propaganda outlets to keep reminding CCP members to “unite most closely around Party Central with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core” or instruct the People’ Liberation Army to recall the “Party’s absolute leadership over the military” and the “CMC Chairman Responsibility System.” As the CCP struggles to survive a “perfect storm” of problems (economic deterioration, Evergrande crisis, debt crisis, natural disasters, food shortages, rising COVID cases, escalating factional struggle in the Party elite, etc.) and with the international community testing Beijing’s “red lines” over Taiwan and challenging the “East is Rising, the West is Declining” narrative, Xi is forced to use propaganda to control public discourse and paper over the cracks, upkeep his and the Party’s image of “infallibility,” mobilize supporters amid factional fighting, and justify his staying on as Party leader despite having presided over many failures and few genuine successes.
The subsection on anti-corruption in the Xinhua piece is likely intended to serve as a warning to factional rivals who continue to undermine the Xi leadership. Xi is making it known that he will view efforts to sabotage him as a serious “challenge within the Party” and take necessary action to avert the “destruction of the Party and the fall of the country.”
