Fear of a Soviet-style collapse keeps Xi Jinping up at night

Amid the festivities, state media have avoided mention of another milestone. Communists had been in power for 74 years in Moscow at the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. The Chinese Communist Party has now surpassed “big brother”, as it once called the Soviet Union. At the time of the Soviet collapse, the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 was a recent memory. With ruthless resolve China’s party crushed opposition and kept itself safe from the shock waves emanating from Moscow.

Now in his speeches Mr Xi frets about how officials’ vigilance has been weakened by years of prosperity, raising the dangers of Soviet-style decay. Even after a dozen years in power, during which he has carried out purges of potential rivals from the party’s senior ranks and waged relentless ideological campaigns to ensure the absolute loyalty of its nearly 100m members, Mr Xi appears far from satisfied.

The past few years have been tough. First came the chaotic abandonment in 2022 of Mr Xi’s “zero-covid” policy. Since then there has been an anaemic economic recovery which, in the past week, has prompted a desperate attempt to revive growth with a bold stimulus. Amid the gloom reminders of the Soviet collapse have kept coming up in speeches, the media and party meetings. The purpose has been to caution officials to be on their guard against long-term, ongoing dangers.

Say no to nihilism

At the end of 2021, around the 30th anniversary of the Soviet collapse, party officials began convening internal meetings around the country to air a five-part documentary about it. The series railed against “historical nihilism”, party-speak for criticism of the horrors of Stalinism and Maoism. It accused the Soviet leader, Nikita Khruschev, of setting the trend with his “secret speech” of 1956 denouncing Stalin’s personality cult. This “ignited the fire of nihilism”, intoned the narrator. From then on, the documentary implied, the Soviet party was living on borrowed time. The viewings continued for weeks at government offices, state-owned firms and on campuses.

In October 2022, at a five-yearly party congress, Mr Xi hinted at the anxiety that the Soviet collapse still causes among China’s elite. “We must always stay alert,” he told the gathering, “and determined to tackle the special challenges that a large party like ours faces so as to maintain the people’s support and consolidate our position as the long-term governing party”.

The phrase “special challenges of a large party” has since become a leitmotif of party propaganda, much of it referring to the experience of the Soviet party, the only other big one that China truly cares about. Since the party congress numerous books have been published with those words on the cover, including at least three this year. Academics have churned out papers on the topic. In July state television broadcast a two-part documentary on avoiding collapse, with part one on the special-challenges theme. Once again, grassroots officials organised viewings for party members.

Mr Xi has also kept on using the special-challenges term. It was the subject of a classified speech he gave in January 2023 to the party’s Central Committee. Part of it was published in March this year. “As the party grows larger, some may form small cliques or factions or engage in behaviour that undermines party unity and fighting strength,” he said. “A fortress is most easily breached from within. The only ones who can defeat us are ourselves.” Most analysts agree that there are no obvious splits in the party today, but their possible re-emergence clearly worries him.

In August Mr Xi mentioned Soviet history again. The occasion was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Deng Xiaoping, who launched China’s “reform and opening” policy in the late 1970s. He praised Deng for “resolutely opposing the turmoil” in China in 1989 “against the background of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and dramatic changes in Eastern Europe”. He quoted Deng as saying: “No one can crush us.”

In the vast body of literature that China has produced since the 1990s on the Soviet collapse, a shift in emphasis has occurred under Mr Xi. Deng’s supporters used the Soviet Union’s fate as a way of pushing back against ideologues in the party who saw his economic reforms as a betrayal of Marxism. Similar dogmatism, they argued, had wrecked the Soviet economy, fuelling public discontent that hastened the country’s fall. In essence, this was the message of Deng’s “southern tour” of early 1992 that re-launched his reform programme.

Mr Xi appears more fixated on the Soviet party’s loss of ideological and organisational discipline. This is evident in the huge effort he has made to rebuild the party at the grassroots, to beef up its presence in private firms and to enforce total obedience to his commands among party members. After the Soviet collapse Deng and his immediate successors abandoned talk of political reform but still tolerated limited experiments, such as allowing small NGOs to help victims of injustices. Mr Xi has crushed civil society. Chinese academics make clear why, arguing that Western-backed NGOs played a role in pushing the Soviet party over the edge.

Mr Xi’s propagandists prefer not to dwell on a problem that is common to autocracies: how to ensure a smooth transfer of power when a leader steps down or dies. In 2010, two years before Mr Xi took over, a book published in China—“The Truth About the Soviet Union: 101 Important Questions”—included analysis of its succession strife. During Communist rule in Moscow, it said, the choice of leaders was determined by “brutal internal power struggles, decided by a handful of elders behind the scenes or even resolved through party coups”.

Mr Xi appears not to have drawn lessons. He has shown no interest in grooming a successor and has changed unwritten rules to allow himself to rule for as long as he likes. The eventual transition to a post-Xi China may evoke memories again of the Soviet Union’s turbulent history.

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