China Straddles Menacing Superpower and Economic Saviour

The Janus-faced nature of Xi Jinping’s The far east was again on display in 2015. In September, a dour-looking Xi reviewed soldiers and ballistic missiles in a military parade in China to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory Day, that marks China’s victory more than Japanese aggression in The second world war. A month later, a beaming Xi rode beside Queen Elizabeth within the royal carriage as Pm David Cameron talked up Chinese language investment in the United Kingdom. These competing views of China like a menacing superpower or as an economic saviour dominated much of the dialogue in 2015.

Yet behind the headlines and the official pomp and wedding ceremony, Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) still tighten the screws on a high-tech system of mass monitoring and thought reform targeted at eliminating any critical sounds and views. If state controls are like a ‘giant cage’ in China, the pubs are closing in under the CCP’s new strongman.

In 2015, the Party locked up not only tens of thousands of ‘corrupt’ authorities, but also harassed, detained and imprisoned thousands of ordinary citizens in the name of ‘ideological security’.  May saw the detention of more than Two hundred lawyers after high profile lawyer and activist Pu Zhiqiang was indicted on trumped-up charges of ‘inciting ethnic hatred’ as well as ‘picking quarrels as well as stirring up trouble’.

The campaign to eradicate ‘Western values’ continues unchecked in Chinese universities. Several academics have been punished or even pushed out for holding dissenting views.

There was an announcement of a new set of disciplinary rules within October. They make it unlawful for CCP members to openly question policy or ‘defame the nation, state leaders or the Party’. Those outside of the CCP are even more susceptible.

State power is increasingly directed at ‘target populations’: teachers, lawyers, authors, ethnic minorities, NGO activists, artists and others who dare to question Party policy or stand up for the victims of abuse. John Kamm, Director of the Drunk driving Hua Foundation, estimates that one within 1000 Chinese citizens tend to be singled out for close observation by the Chinese police.

In 2015, The far east drafted three new laws that will provide security authorities with unprecedented powers to monitor online and offline activities across the country. The draft Counter-Terrorism Law calls for the development of facial recognition software and a national database on criminal suspects (among other methods) to combat a vaguely defined threat of ‘terror’. The National Protection Law and Draft Internet security software Law require telecommunication and internet service providers to store and share all data located on their servers with Party government bodies.

When fully enacted, these laws will provide the CCP with both the legal authority and specialized means to trace any supply of information to its point of source and punish those considered ‘criminal’.

Another plan issued by the State Local authority or council seeks to create a nation-wide ‘social credit score system’ by 2020. This massively driven project will gather private data on all Chinese citizens in order to calculate a comprehensive measure of personal merit. It will consist of data such as internet as well as shopping habits, popularity amongst peers and run-ins with the legislation.

These ‘citizen scores’ will be made public, permitting colleagues, companies and even Celebration state organs to determine a good individual’s worth for a selection of services. Chinese officials insist the system will strengthen trustworthiness and sincerity in society. Others rightfully fear an additional erosion of privacy as well as equality before the law, because citizens jostle over their ratings and those with low marks are earmarked for nearer scrutiny.

In urban centres, Party officials continue to roll out an extensive ‘grid management’ system that splits communities into geometric zones. It assigns CCP members complete responsibility for maintaining sociable order and harmony in their grid. The concept has generated several patents and over 8000 academic papers over the last decade, with some offering the possibility of complete visibility via digital communication technologies.

In more remote regions — like Tibet and Xinjiang — the Party is dispatching tens of thousands of ‘village-based work teams’ to monitor as well as garrison minority communities as well as to support social stability.

Is this sort of ‘balance maintenance’ work compatible with the need to reinvigorate economic reform? China’s economic miracle of the 1980s as well as 1990s was built on the degree of social chaos and political decentralisation. With economic development at a 25-year low, the Party must confront the consequences of its excessive control.

Xi Jinping has praised the CCP’s desire to control everything from ecology and resources to culture and thought as ‘total national security’. However, this may ultimately prove incompatible — otherwise detrimental — to the agenda for ‘thoroughly deepening reform’ outlined at the Party’s 3rd Plenum in 2013.

If the end is actually nigh for the CCP — as China expert David Shambaugh and others insist — the actual cracks will emerge from within. An increasingly intrusive and insecure elite stratum fears its own individuals more than it does any outdoors influences.

China tightens its security screws is republished with permission from East Asia Forum