Vijay Gokhale: ‘We deal with China as a threat when it is a threat, and an opportunity when it is one’

On Chinese President Xi Jinping’s leadership trajectory

It would be difficult for anybody to say they know Xi Jinping although he has been in politics for four decades. He has always stood below the radar and that is one of his strong points. A hallmark of his political career is that after the end of the Cultural Revolution, when many leaders were rehabilitated in Beijing, he chose to serve in provincial appointments and rural counties instead. That is where Xi stayed from 1983 until 2007 when he came to Beijing.

He cut his teeth at the grassroots of Chinese politics, he stayed away from overtly taking sides with any faction and therefore, when he came to Beijing in 2007, he came as a relatively unknown figure. But he was very much in the spotlight for five years during the second term of the then General Secretary of the Communist Party Hu Jintao. Again, during these five years, there was no misstep, he essentially stuck to the party line, showed loyalty to Jintao and contrasted his own actions with the actions of another rising star, Bo Xilai, also the son of one of Mao Zedong’s close aides. Bo eventually became so threatening to the party that when it came to choosing Jintao’s successor, Xi became the automatic candidate. Xi kept his personality hidden and it is only when he assumed the office of General Secretary in November 2012 that the various facets of his personality began to unfold.

On how the fall of the Soviet Union weighed heavy on Xi’s mind

If you think he has tried to control the party for consolidating personal power, then that is only a partial understanding of the man and the leader. We need to understand the context in which he assumed the top job. After 20 years of reform since 1990, many good things had happened in China, including spectacular economic growth and dramatic improvement in the lives of the people. But it was also becoming evident that the policies had a darker underside, essentially the weakening of ideology and discipline within the party as money power took over. Also, corruption rose with economic growth.

By 2012, although to the outside world China was performing spectacularly amid the global financial crisis, the Chinese leadership knew very well that deeply troubling developments would impact it politically as well. Assuming the top job in this situation, Xi was very well aware that these problems were likely to dilute the Communist party’s grip on power and eventually if the grip weakened beyond a point, the party itself would slip from power.

Therefore, the speech he gave in January 2013 within months of assuming power, comparing what happened to the Soviet Union in 1990 with the situation in China in 2012, is very important. He made two or three very critical points. The first was to point out that denying history would mean a rot in the party and that Nikita Khrushchev’s criticism of Stalin was when the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s real political authority began to weaken. If you could criticise Stalin, then the Soviet people asked why they could not criticise any other people.

The second important point he made was that when the Soviet Union was on its last legs, the Red Army, which was supposed to be the party’s army, did not come to its support. Therefore, it was important to rebuild the institutions within the party, including strengthening of the party’s control over the People’s Liberation Army. If this did not happen, then the party’s military wing and its protector could turn against each other. The third important point was that while reform brought a lot of prosperity to the people, he still thought it was necessary for a certain group to hold the party and the country together. If he had not addressed these three key factors, then the party might have collapsed on his watch.

He reinforced the centrality of ideology in the Communist Party by contrasting Marxism, Leninism and Chinese socialism with Western democracy and suggesting that Western values were not only not conducive to the Chinese environment but were designed to bring down the Communist Party and, therefore, to weaken the Chinese people. He felt that the gradual decentralisation of authority had led to various Central and provincial leaders pulling in different directions and that this eventually was not good for the party. So a whole new set of rules was brought in to reinforce the central leadership. Lastly, he resorted to a tactic that many of his predecessors had resorted to, which was to use anti-corruption measures as a means of dealing with political opponents, rivals or those who were very powerful in the military forces or in the security apparatus.

On ‘Xi Jinping’s Thought’ becoming compulsory reading

Mao Zedong, who was China’s first leader, never subscribed to the Leninist approach that revolution had to begin in the cities and among the workers. In fact, he said that the revolution would begin in the rural parts of China and that the party leader was deemed important enough to enter into the lexicon of ideology. Hence, Mao introduced the whole idea. Subsequently, all Chinese leaders wanted to emulate that and tried to include their ideological contribution to the party’s constitution, like the Deng Xiaoping theory. After Mao, only Xi could do that.

If you really go to the core, his message is that China needs a centralised, unified leadership under a dominant leader because he has pledged to take China closer to the centre of the world stage, which is double-speak for “we will replace the US as the global hegemon by 2049 or at least we shall attempt to do that.”

On Xi using historical analysis to serve the party  and his ambitions

All history is political irrespective of where you live in the world. Every dynasty in India and abroad essentially used history to legitimise itself. So, to that extent Xi is doing no different from what every other political system has done. What is important, however, is that he has used a certain historical narrative which predated the Communist Party – that China was humiliated by outside forces and its greatness and its leadership of the world was diminished as a result. That sense of humiliation and deprivation that the Chinese people felt was skillfully appropriated by the Communists to suggest that only they could restore the Chinese to their rightful place in the world. Xi now has both the economic heft and the military muscle to move towards that objective.

When he talked about the Soviet Union’s collapse, pointing out how the party sowed the seeds of collapse by denying its own history, the subtext was clear. There is no need to question the past, it has already been settled in various historical resolutions of the party and, therefore, reopening past wounds will actually damage the party with no real political change.

On the Sino-centric view that only considers the US its equal

We are going to see a more assertive and aggressive China. When you have a $18 trillion economy, particularly one that is heavily dependent on external trade and import of resources and energy, you do want to exercise authority and power. But beyond that, I think there is and always has been a subterranean concern within China about the determination of the West to subvert the Communist Party and to bring China back in a weakened state into the liberal Western or global order, converting China into a Western-style democracy. The 2020s are going to be a decade of heightening competition and rivalry across the board between these two great powers while the world is certainly becoming multipolar, India being one of those poles.

Audience Questions

On China as a threat or an opportunity

We must not look upon the rise of China as a disaster for us and for the rest of the world. It has provided an alternative in terms of technology, in terms of financing and in terms of equipment, which has broken the Western chokehold on the rest of the world. On the other hand, the Western pushback also introduces a sense of balance. As the Chinese economy is substantial in terms of markets, investment and technology are an opportunity for us as well. We deal with China as a threat when it is a threat and we take China to be an opportunity when it is an opportunity.

On the contest between India and China

ln a globalised world, there are no exclusive backyards, only shared spaces. The key question is how does India protect its strategic interests in those shared spaces. In a globalised world, technology has taken us now, in terms of weaponisation, even to outer space.