SinoInsight 1
On Oct. 2, Dong Hong, a central inspection group leader during Xi Jinping’s first term, was placed under investigation for “suspected serious violations of laws and Party rules,” according to the website of the CCP Central Committee for Discipline Inspection and the PRC National Supervisory Commission.
Many China watchers have speculated that the purge of Dong Hong signals a split between Xi and close ally Wang Qishan. They noted that Dong and Wang were once colleagues and the former was also appointed group leader of a central inspection group (sub-ministerial level) when the latter spearheaded Xi’s grinding anti-corruption campaign. They also pointed out that Dong’s investigation followed the recent sentencing of Wang’s friend Ren Zhiqiang to 18 years in jail.
OUR TAKE
1. Based on our research, the probe of Dong Hong hints at escalation in the CCP factional struggle. However, Dong’s downfall is very unlikely the result of a “Xi-Wang split.”
2. A look at Dong Hong’s career progression from publicly available information indicates that while he and Wang Qishan had a superior-subordinate relationship, their relationship is not patron-client and neither is Dong necessarily a close confidant of Wang.
In the 1980s, Dong Hong served as research office deputy director of the now defunct CCP Central Advisory Commission (CAC), and was also secretary to Bo Yibo, the CAC executive deputy director. Then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping established the CAC in 1982 ostensibly to provide “political assistance and consultation” to the CCP Central Committee. In reality, the CAC was a sort of transitional organ to “rehabilitate” elite, elderly cadres who were purged during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
After the CAC was dissolved in 1992, Dong Hong was transferred to Guangdong where he served as assistant to the mayor of Foshan City, director of the Institute of Contemporary China Studies, and director of the Guangdong provincial government’s Development Research Center.
Near the end of 1997, Wang Qishan was appointed deputy governor of Guangdong to deal with insolvency issues at state-owned enterprises. In 2000, Wang and Dong Hong were colleagues for a couple of months in the Guangdong government when the latter was promoted to provincial deputy secretary general. After that, Dong served under Wang as a deputy aide (bureau level) in a number of jobs, including at the PRC State Council General Office of Economic Reform (director of the Industrial Systems Department), Hainan (provincial deputy secretary general), and the Beijing municipal government (municipal deputy secretary general).
In March 2006, Dong Hong served as deputy director of the Central Committee’s Literature Research Center, a sub-ministerial level post. For the rest of his career, Dong would advance no further in official rank, and would remain at the Literature Research Center until 2013. Meanwhile, Wang Qishan became a Politburo member in October 2007 at the 17th Party Congress. In March 2008, Wang became one of the State Council’s four vice premiers.
At this juncture, it is clear that Dong Hong and Wang Qishan are not close and do not share a patron-client relationship. The highest position Dong held under Wang was the assistant aide role of deputy secretary general, not the top aide and confidant position of secretary general. Also, Dong’s political career had plateaued at age 53 when he became deputy director of the Literature Research Center, a department with no real power. If Dong was a true “client” of Wang or a close confidant, he should have either been named top aide to the vice premier (Wang) or promoted and appointed to an important office. Instead, Dong was effectively “frozen out” career-wise, which suggests that Wang did not find him suitable enough to serve as an aide to an elite official or be trusted with higher office.
In November 2013, Dong Hong, who had reached the retirement age for his official rank (60), was appointed deputy head of the second Party Central inspection Group. In 2014 and 2015, Dong would be appointed group leader of the 12th central inspection group, which was tasked with inspecting Fudan University, Jiangsu Province, and the energy SOE Shenhua Group. In July 2017, Dong accompanied Wang Qishan to Hebei Province for inspections as central inspection group leader and fifth team leader of the CCP General Office research and investigation unit, according to mainland media reports. What became of Dong Hong after July 2017 is unclear due to a lack of publicly available information.
We established above that Dong Hong and Wang Qishan are not in a patron-client relationship. So why would Wang and Xi Jinping tap Dong for important anti-corruption work? As we explained in previous analyses, Xi did not have his own faction before taking office in 2012 and a ready pool of supporters to call upon. Concurrently, Xi could not trust officials who are loyalists or supporters of the Jiang Zemin faction (this can be discerned to a degree by tracking the career trajectory of officials and spotting patron-client relations) with important tasks. An analysis of officials preferred by Xi for key posts reveals a number of them have minimal Jiang faction influence over their career or were marginalized (overlooked for promotion, sidelined to “sinecure” posts, etc.) during the Jiang faction’s era of dominance from 1997 to 2012 (we identify Xi’s other criteria for selecting officials here). Dong Hong happens to fit both mentioned criteria, with the added “bonus” of being a retirement-age official (and in theory, less susceptible to being swayed by political interests or corruption in doing a job).
3. The notion that there is a “Xi-Wang split” is debunked by the lack of patron-client relationship between Dong Hong and Wang Qishan. In a previous newsletter, we also explained why the Ren Zhiqiang case has little bearing on the Xi-Wang relationship.
The Xi-Wang political alliance is built on firm ground due to personal ties and deeply intertwined interests. Xi Jinping and Wang Qishan were acquainted in their sent-down youth days during the Cultural Revolution, and became close allies during Xi’s first term in office. Then, Wang greatly aided Xi’s power consolidation and purge of the Jiang faction through strict implementation of the anti-corruption campaign. Xi cannot isolate and attack Wang now without discrediting the anti-corruption campaign and undermining his own political legitimacy. Meanwhile, Wang does not pose a threat to Xi’s paramount leadership given his age and lack of real power in the regime (Wang may be PRC vice president, but he is not even a Central Committee member). If anything, Wang needs to keep backing Xi to preserve his own political legacy; undermining Xi is tantamount to undermining himself.
Xi’s rivals, however, have great interest in turning the pair against each other. Given the centrality of the anti-corruption campaign in the political mythos surrounding Xi, a genuine “Xi-Wang split” would become a modern day “Lin Biao affair”; the purge of Wang Qishan will leave the Chinese people questioning the credibility of Xi’s anti-corruption effort and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. Thus, the “anti-Xi coalition” sees benefits in keeping alive and promoting the “Xi-Wang split” narrative even if there is no real disagreement between the two. However, it should be noted that not everyone who is talking about a “Xi-Wang split” are elements of the “anti-Xi coalition.”
4. There are several possible reasons for why Dong Hong was purged. Dong could be genuinely involved in serious corruption (taking bribes while serving in the central inspection groups, for instance). Also, opponents of Xi in the anti-corruption agency could also be taking advantage of the Dong-Wang connection to play up the “Xi-Wang split” narrative and stir trouble for Xi ahead of the upcoming Fifth Plenum; while such efforts have little chance of damaging the Xi-Wang alliance, they are capable of shaping public perception (and by extension those of foreign governments and powerful interest groups) to Xi’s detriment.
Xi relied on the anti-corruption campaign and agency to consolidate power, but not everyone inside is an ally. We previously noted that CCDI head Zhao Leji is somewhat politically suspect given his ties with recalcitrant officials in Shaanxi Province.
SinoInsight 2
On Oct. 2, President Donald Trump announced that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 and would go into quarantine.
PRC foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted the news and added, “hope they both have a speedy recovery and will be fine.” Hua’s post was retweeted by Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, whose Twitter feed showed he was unusually quiet and sympathetic about Trump coming down with the coronavirus instead of showing the usual schadenfreude. However, a search of deleted tweets reveals that Hu had stuck to his customary vitriol before self-censoring—“President Trump and the first lady have paid the price for his gamble to play down the COVID-19. The news shows the severity of the US’ pandemic situation. It will impose a negative impact on the image of Trump and the US, and may also negatively affect his reelection,” he wrote.
PRC state and Party media did not make any snide remarks about Trump coming down with COVID-19. The CCP’s “Fifty-cent Army” also appeared to refrain from criticizing Trump. However, the CCP did not censor social media posts and other internet content celebrating news of Trump’s positive test, as well as other hateful messages.
In the evening of Oct. 3 (Beijing time), state mouthpiece Xinhua reported that Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan “extend sympathy” to Trump and his wife over being tested positive for COVID-19 and “wish them a speedy recovery.” Xi was one of the slowest among world leaders to officially respond to news of Trump’s illness, with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un sending his “sincere” wishes a day earlier. Among the first to send their wishes were the prime ministers of India and Pakistan.
OUR TAKE
1. CCP propagandists usually never let the misfortunes of others, and particularly enemies of the regime, go to waste. Thus, it is atypical for Beijing to curb the aggressive, “wolf warrior” instincts of Party propagandists, especially those in the official apparatus, on the issue of President Trump contracting COVID.
One likely reason why Beijing restrained its propaganda workers from mocking Trump is an unspoken understanding between both Beijing and Washington not to explicitly attack each others’ respective heads of state. Thus, CCP propaganda outlets refrain from criticizing Trump personally but instead take out their frustrations on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Conventional wisdom, however, suggests that Beijing would feel vindicated in going after Trump over a major issue—his being coronavirus positive—given the Trump administration’s increasing willingness to directly implicate General Secretary Xi Jinping for the CCP’s malign behavior under his leadership, particularly over the regime’s actions in the South China Sea.
A stronger reason for Beijing’s low-key approach to news of Trump testing positive for the novel coronavirus is fear of angering the President and worsening the already frosty Sino-U.S. relationship during a crucial period. As we have elaborated on in recent newsletters, Xi is already heading into the crucial Fifth Plenum at the end of October with a “perfect storm” of problems on his plate, and likely does not want to make things more difficult for himself by provoking Trump into action with incendiary propaganda. Allowing regular Chinese citizens to mock Trump, however, is another matter.
2. We believe that Trump will more likely than not roll out strong China action in the coming days and weeks regardless of Beijing’s response to his condition.
As the case of UK prime minister Boris Johnson shows, there is at least one precedent of a world leader noticeably altering his or her country’s attitude towards China after contracting COVID-19. Having come down with the virus, President Trump could become even keener to get tough on China.
Since May, the Trump administration has noticeably stepped up the introduction and implementation of one tough China policy after the other on a range of issues. This is likely due primarily to Trump’s annoyance with the PRC’s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak and its pandemic opportunism, as well as political considerations during an election year. The administration’s “tough on China” momentum will likely pick up as election day (Nov. 3) approaches.
Trump also has incentive to make holding the CCP accountable for the origins of the coronavirus and other world issues a focus to shift public attention away from his medical condition. The Trump administration could make more headway on the “coronavirus origins and the CCP” front, be it publicity or policy, in the coming weeks. Furthermore, the administration could go after the CCP over Achilles Heel-type issues like its most egregious human rights abuses, such as those involving persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, as well as particularly controversial matters like forced organ harvesting. The U.S. could also draw even closer to Taiwan, such as by negotiating a trade deal and pushing more aggressively for Taiwan’s inclusion into international bodies.
The CCP factional struggle could see sharp escalation in October depending on how hard Trump goes after the PRC. Escalating factional struggle within the regime could in turn trigger political Black Swans in China.
SinoInsight 3
In the past week, the U.S. again made moves to strengthen ties with Taiwan, condemn the PRC’s suppression of religious freedom and human rights, as well as spotlight the ideological nature of the CCP regime.
Ideology
Sept. 29
In a video message, Keith Krach, the State Department’s Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment called on Xi Jinping to “tear down China’s Great Firewall” at the Ronald Reagan statue in Berlin.
Sept. 30
1. The House Intelligence Committee released a report assessing the U.S. intelligence community’s “capabilities and competencies with respect to the People’s Republic of China.” The report concluded that U.S. spy agencies are failing to meet the China challenge and recommends fundamental changes in the way intelligence agencies operate. Some highlights from the report include:
- “Safeguarding U.S. national security requires the capacity to understand Chinese military capabilities, elite political dynamics, and international posture, but also, as the utter devastation of the pandemic has brought home, to provide sufficient indications and warnings for events of global impact, such as a disease outbreak.”
- “The stakes are high. If the IC does not accurately characterize and contextualize Beijing’s intent, America’s leaders will fail to understand the factors that motivate Chinese decision-making. If policymakers do not understand how and why Beijing makes decisions, they will struggle to develop policies that result in outcomes favorable to U.S. interests and global security overall.”
- “Under the leadership of Chairman Xi Jinping, China has reasserted its ideological commitment to Marxist-Leninism and sought to further cement the Chinese Communist Party within the Chinese state apparatus.”
- “…those outside of Beijing have little opportunity to define what this ‘community of shared future for mankind’ might consist of, particularly as China continues to pressure international organizations to integrate its own ideological maxims into multilateral agreements. This raises the specter of the further globalization of Beijing’s ideology, potentially degrading longstanding international norms concerning the rights of the individual, and the very idea of liberal and free societies.”
- “Although the CCP is careful to project a steely veneer of monolithic policy preferences, failing to understand the competing perspectives, different centers of gravity, and diverse viewpoints within China’s vast internal bureaucracy and different regions will cheapen U.S. analysis of internal PRC dynamics – dynamics that plausibly set the trajectory for the early stages of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Hubei Province.”
- “Statements and articles emerging from China’s vast propaganda apparatus must be analyzed through the prism of narrative control, rather than uncritically accepted as fact or reflexively assumed as false. Within academia and China scholarship broadly, there is a long tradition of utilizing careful propaganda analysis as a method to discern CCP policy preferences and priorities. Understanding what information the CCP seeks to suppress or amplify, and at which inflection points, provides critical insights into the Party’s objectives both domestically and abroad.”
- “…open source intelligence (OSINT) will become increasingly indispensable to the formulation of analytic products.”
In an article in Foreign Affairs, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff wrote, “China itself views competition with the United States unfolding in ideological and zero-sum terms … Going forward, if we fail to accurately predict and characterize Beijing’s intent, we will continue to struggle to understand how and why the leadership of the CCP makes decisions and fail to respond effectively.”
2. The China Task Force, a group of 15 House Republicans, released a report with over 400 recommendations. In the report’s executive summary, its first recommendation called for “evaluating whether the CCP’s crimes against Uyghurs amount to genocide, fully implementing sanctions laws enacted in response to the CCP’s Hong Kong crackdown, and taking further specific actions to respond to the full range of CCP human rights violations, from religious freedom violations to forced organ harvesting.”
The report recognizes the paramount role of communist ideology in the CCP’s actions. “The CCP is completely committed to a hostile communist ideology that seeks to eliminate any perceived threats to its security—chief among them the values that underpin American society and the U.S.-built international system … Communist ideology dictates the CCP’s every decision and action,” the report said in its introduction. Also, “the U.S. and the free world must understand and accept the reality of the CCP’s loyalty to communist ideology, because it reveals that the CCP can never be a trustworthy partner, a ‘responsible stakeholder,’ or even a ‘competitor’ that plays by the same rules. The CCP’s obsession with absolute control means that free people and free societies will always be the enemy of the Party .. The CCP’s communist ideology itself brought the world to a deadly, painful, and costly standstill.” The first of six chapters in the report deals with ideological competition.
Religious freedom and human rights
Sept. 29
In a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the Fourth Conference on Women, Secretary of Education Elisabeth DeVos said, “Since 1995, the Chinese Communist Party has been responsible for the murder of millions of baby girls through brutal population controls on an industrial scale, unfortunately with support from UN agencies. Today the CCP is attacking ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities by turning these same population controls on these vulnerable minorities, subjecting women to forced sterilization, forced abortion, and forced birth control. This is in addition to the mass detention and intrusive surveillance system the CCP has put in place to Sinicize and control every aspect of Uyghur life.”
Sept. 30
In a speech at the Holy See Symposium on Advancing and Defending Religious Freedom Through Diplomacy in Rome, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Nowhere is religious freedom under assault more than it is inside of China today. That’s because, as with all communist regimes, the Chinese Communist Party deems itself the ultimate moral authority. An increasingly repressive CCP, frightened by its own lack of democratic legitimacy, works day and night to snuff out the lamp of freedom, especially religious freedom, on a horrifying scale.” Pomeo noted the special attention he called to the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, and added that “the Chinese Communist Party has battered every religious community in China: Protestant house churches, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong devotees, and more.”
Oct. 1
In remarks to traveling press, a senior State Department official said, “We’ve had very productive engagement with the Vatican and a very respectful exchange” on the issue of religious persecution in China. The official added, “You have more than a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz locked up in internment camps. You have Protestant house churches being burned down. You have Catholic sermons being monitored. You have Catholic priests and laypeople being abused. You have Tibetans who are undergoing a new wave of oppression. We have Falun Gong adherents who suffer enormously under the Chinese communist regime.”
Oct. 3
The State Department condemned the Hong Kong government’s “arbitrary arrest of more than 80 people” on Oct. 1. “By repressing peaceful public opinion, the Hong Kong government once again shows its complicity with the Chinese Communist Party’s evisceration of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms of its people … These arrests again underscore Beijing’s complete dismantlement of One Country Two Systems that the PRC promised to uphold.”
Taiwan
Sept. 25
The USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group concluded the biennial Valiant Shield exercise in the Philippine Sea, nearly 800 miles east of Taiwan. The exercise involved more than 11,000 personnel and 100 aircraft.
Sept. 26
The PRC-linked South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative tweeted that U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft EP-3E and P-8A flew as near as 47.81 nautical miles (about 55 miles) away from Guangdong Province. Taiwanese media reported that this was the closest distance on record for U.S. reconnaissance of China.
Sept. 29
Speaking at the Global Cooperation and Training Framework Event on Advancing International Development through Public-Private Partnerships, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft said, “As all of us gathered here today know, Taiwan and its government defend human rights and practice democracy. Taiwan is one of the world’s strongest economies, and is widely respected for its commitment to education, health, and civil liberties. Taiwan is a force for good for the world. The world needs Taiwan’s full participation in the United Nations system, particularly with respect to matters that affect public health and economic development. A United Nations without Taiwan’s full participation is cheating the world.”
Craft then drew a parallel between the PRC and the ROC, “The Communist Party of China, fearful of a free and open society, makes every effort to suppress Taiwan’s international profile. This became abundantly clear with the coronavirus, a life and death matter. When Beijing blocked Taipei’s attempt to warn the world that COVID-19 spreads from human to human contact. We all need Taiwan’s expertise and experience.”
Craft also tweeted, “Taiwan has a trusted friend in President Donald J. Trump, and an administration that champions the international role that Taiwan holds. Taiwan deserves the highest platform where it can share its remarkable innovation and expertise.”
Sept. 30
The American Institute in Taiwan announced that it and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States signed a “Framework to Strengthen Infrastructure Finance and Market Building Cooperation” to “facilitate technical exchanges and information sharing which will support and catalyze investments in infrastructure” on Sept. 17. The Framework will support “quality infrastructure in emerging markets, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region and Latin America.” Taiwan foreign minister Joseph Wu said that the initiative dovetails with Taiwan’s own New Southbound Policy, and added, “the Taiwan-U.S. cooperative partnership relationship has gone up another level.”
Oct. 1
Fifty U.S. senators sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer encouraging him to start the formal process of negotiating a trade deal with Taiwan. “Given their record as a longstanding economic partner and security ally, we highly encourage you to begin the formal process of negotiating a comprehensive trade agreement with Taiwan,” the senators wrote. “We are confident that a U.S.-Taiwan trade agreement would promote security and economic growth for the United States, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific as a whole.”
OUR TAKE
1. Recent U.S. actions against the PRC and efforts to grow ties with Taiwan affirm two key geopolitical forecasts we made previously.
In July 2019, we noted that the U.S. and China are waging “not just a trade war or a tech war, but a critical battle of ideology, value systems, and morality.”
And in our China 2020 outlook, we wrote, “Taiwan’s international standing will continue to improve amid growing Sino-U.S. rivalry. Taiwan could see unprecedented opportunities to gain diplomatic, military, economic, and intelligence support and cooperation.”
If the U.S. continues on its current trajectory with regard to the PRC, our forecasts will become even more tangible.
2. The U.S. is paying closer attention to CCP elite politics, as well as analysis of Party propaganda and open source intelligence as Washington strives to “accurately predict and characterize Beijing’s intent.” Businesses, investors, and other governments also need to recognize the value in tracking the aforementioned items to sidestep hidden risks and discover true opportunities in the “new cold war” climate.
