Why Xi Won’t Retire
Biden’s withdrawal from the U.S. presidential race may have hit a nerve in China.
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Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: U.S. President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race underscores Chinese President Xi Jinping’s lack of a retirement plan, the Wall Street Journal terminates a Hong Kong reporter as press freedom in the city suffers, and China’s floated plan to raise the retirement age draws immediate backlash.
Beijing Reacts Cautiously to Biden Withdrawal
The sudden withdrawal of U.S. President Joe Biden from the 2024 presidential race is a sensitive topic in China—where discussion of any leader voluntarily stepping down seems to stray into risky territory. Even before Biden’s announcement on Sunday, China removed an article calling for the U.S. president to step down, thanks to what could be read as coded references to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Xi is already more than a year into his third term, having altered the constitution in 2018 to allow himself to keep serving as China’s leader. The Chinese Constitution is a largely meaningless document, changed frequently to meet the needs of the political leadership. Xi’s regime has cracked down on efforts by reformists and lawyers to strengthen it, insisting on the supremacy of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) power.
However, the removal of presidential term limits represented a shift in CCP norms, which are far more important to the Chinese leadership. Xi’s continued rule has not only passed the 10-year limit established as the norm for leaders after Mao Zedong, but it has also taken him, at 71 years old, past the normal retirement age of 68—with no retirement date in sight or successor groomed to take over.
Part of the problem for Xi is that he has upended any chance of a peaceful retirement for himself. Being a so-called party elder was once a cushy gig; officials could remain wealthy, influential, and connected without the grueling routine of actual governance. But Xi’s targeting of retirees, including publicly humiliating his predecessor Hu Jintao two years ago, and his rolling intraparty purges make a peaceful retreat from power more difficult. There is no sign that anything but death with halt Xi’s leadership.
Chinese state media narratives seem unusually uncertain at the moment—at a time when there would normally be clear messaging following the country’s important Third Plenum last week. An attempt to frame Xi as a reformer seems to have flopped, attracting myriad criticism online. Meanwhile, Chinese chat groups have taken to calling the current economic climate the “garbage time of history,” citing unemployment, debt, and other challenges.
Xi’s relative lack of visibility at the plenum also sparked rumors about his health, adding extra sensitivity to any mention of the 81-year-old Biden’s age. Unfounded claims that Xi suffered a stroke or another serious event reverberated online—promoted by Falun Gong-linked sites in particular. The intense secrecy around Chinese leaders’ health tends to generate such rumors.
It’s politically impossible to acknowledge even minor illnesses affecting the president, thanks in part to Mao’s legacy; the first leader of the People’s Republic of China was given to displays of physical prowess to establish his authority, famously taking a swim in the Yangtze River in 1966 at 72. By the 1970s, his poor health and near-incomprehensible speech were a tightly guarded secret.
Today, the CCP leadership has its own dedicated health care system. When Xi disappeared for two weeks in 2012—probably due to a medical issue—the rumor mill turned rapidly. The same thing happened after he missed a speech last year during the BRICS forum in South Africa. Judging by his blanched look and unsteady gait during the trip, it was probably thanks to a short bout of illness.
As closely as Beijing watches Washington, there may be a warning for its political leadership much closer to home. Last week, Vietnamese Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong died at 80, prompting expressions of sympathy from Xi, with whom he reportedly had a strong relationship. Trong’s policies, including cracking down on civil society and reasserting party control, were similar to Xi’s—but so was his failure to establish a clear successor.
Any tumult in Hanoi in the next few weeks may cause tremors in Beijing.
What We’re Following
Hong Kong press freedom. The Wall Street Journal fired reporter Selina Cheng last week after she was elected as head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a professional union that fights for journalists’ rights in an increasingly oppressive environment. Other Western media organizations have put similar pressure on their employees in Hong Kong not to get involved in the struggle over freedom of speech.
Western media, with the notable exception of Bloomberg, have generally pushed back strongly against attempts to restrict reporting in mainland China. But thanks to the city’s traditional role as a financial center, reporters in Hong Kong seem to be subject to more managerial pressure, especially at business-orientated outlets.
That is particularly worrying at a time when any reporting on China has become far more difficult than in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, let alone the pre-Xi era.
Xi Jinping Boulevard. In a remarkable display of sycophancy, Cambodia has renamed a major highway in the capital of Phnom Penh after Xi—a move the country hasn’t taken since the days Mao. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who last year succeeded his father, long-term autocrat Hun Sen, is close to China, which has strongly supported Cambodia amid the erosion of democracy in the last decade.
Cambodia sees China not only as an economic backer but also as a potential security backer—including against internal threats such as so-called color revolutions. Joint military exercises between Cambodia and China have raised the possibility of Beijing establishing a military base in the country—something that Phnom Penh has denied.
Tech and Business
Retirement backlash. The CCP has once again touched the third rail of social and economic reform: suggesting the idea of raising China’s relatively young retirement ages. In China, women can retire at 55 (or 50 in some manual labor jobs), while men can retire at 60. Communist states have a history of generous pensions, and the system worked well when most people died relatively young—and when new generations were replacing them in the workplace.
Neither is true nowadays: China’s life expectancy matches those of many developed countries, and its birth rate has plummeted. But the Chinese public remains fiercely committed to early retirement. The announcement after the Third Plenum that the government was considering ways to raise it prompted immediate pushback. At some point, there may be little choice, but the specter of social instability now means the authorities will likely back off the challenge again.
The government’s worries may be well placed: The disastrous collapse of a similar pension system in Russia in the 1990s—a period intensively studied in China—led to widespread political and social crisis.
China dodges CrowdStrike chaos. China lucked out last Friday, when a Microsoft Windows update disrupted systems worldwide that used CrowdStrike, a popular cybersecurity service. China has made an effort to use only domestic security software out of fear of Western infiltration, and Microsoft products sold in China use a separate system.
Chinese tech firms took the opportunity to further promote their products, since Chinese airlines and banks remained unaffected as others canceled flights. However, much of China’s infrastructure is still underpinned by Western software products. China has attempted to promote its own operating systems since the early 2000s, but most Chinese PCs still run on Windows—albeit often outdated versions.
Chinese state media has promised a takeoff of domestic operating systems this year; CrowdStrike could speed that up, if allowed.
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A Bit of Culture
Power and when to surrender it was a big question in pre-modern China. Claims that mythological ancient emperors readily gave up power to their successors were sometimes deployed against power-hungry current rulers. Discourse around the idea peaked in the fourth century B.C., during China’s great age of divided states and philosophies.
The Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi covered the issue in one chapter of his enigmatic collection of mysticism and politics, in which he discussed the legendary Emperor Yao (circa 2356-2255 B.C.) and his successor, Shun, attempting to give the throne to famous hermits.—Brendan O’Kane, translator
Zhuang Zi Chapter 28: “Abdicators”
By Zhuang Zi
Emperor Yao had wanted to abdicate and yield the empire to Xu You, but Xu You would not accept. So he tried to abdicate to Zizhou Zhifu.
“Make me Emperor?” said Zizhou Zhifu. “It’d be doable—but at the moment, I happen to be suffering from an obscure but worrisome illness. I’m too busy managing my illness to manage an empire.”
Supremely important as the empire was, he would not allow it—much less anything else—to harm his life. Only someone who has no use for an empire can be entrusted with an empire.
Shun, who succeeded Yao, wanted to abdicate to Zizhou Zhifu too, but again Zizhou Zhifu said, “I happen to be suffering from an obscure but worrisome illness. I’m too busy managing my illness to manage an empire.”
There is no greater instrument than the empire, yet he would not accept it at the cost of his life. This is one way in which someone who possesses the Dao differs from common people.
Shun tried to abdicate to Shanjuan.
“I stand at the center of all space and time,” Shanjuan said. “In winter, I wear hides and furs and linen in the summer. In spring, I plow and plan, my physique up to the physical toil, and in fall, I gather in the harvest, my body ready for the restorative rest. I rise with the sun and cease at sunset, roaming carefree between heaven and earth and contenting myself with my own thoughts. What use do I have for an empire? I’m afraid you really don’t understand me at all!”
Thus refusing, he departed for somewhere deep in the mountains—no one knows where.
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