Chinese communist officials are making major policy decisions and even public pronouncements that suggest unease about the potential for domestic political friction, China watchers say.
“I think he’s worried about his own domestic political standing,” former Australian defense ministry adviser Patrick Buchan said of Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. “Furthermore, what he’s worried about is any outbreak of a pro-democracy or anti-CCP sentiment, which further adds to fuel to his own domestic political [stress] in the party.”
That assessment came apropos of Xi’s decision to unveil national security legislation pertaining to Hong Kong that local dissidents and U.S. officials regard as a historic move to dominate the former British colony. The move could come at significant costs for China’s economy, but Chinese communist officials raised the specter of protests against the central government in Beijing when unveiling the decision.
“Using Hong Kong to infiltrate and sabotage the mainland touches on our bottom line,” National People’s Congress standing committee vice chairman Wang Chen said while outlining legislation that would extend the mainland government’s control over the territory. “It is absolutely not tolerable.”
Buchan, who is now a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, regards that as an unusual expression of trepidation about public opinion. It comes just weeks after a senior Chinese diplomat insisted that there are “inseparable ties” that bind the Chinese Communist Party to the hearts of the Chinese people. A senior British lawmaker believes that the party’s “internal reputation has been very severely damaged” by the regime’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Many people in China are already talking about issues arising from the deaths of many of their compatriots and fellow citizens that is undermining the trust they have in the CCP,” Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the United Kingdom’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said Friday in a televised interview. “So, no doubt, this exercise of power, this demonstration of force is really actually proof of weakness and internal fear.”
Yet other Western officials and analysts disagree about the party’s sense of unease, in part due to a sense that Chinese officials use public pronouncements to manipulate U.S. policymakers — the expressions of anxiety, according to this line of thinking, are used to discourage American officials from putting more pressure on the regime.
“The country is so locked down, and they’re so capable of influencing the population that I don’t think that’s the case,” said retired Air Force Gen. Rob Spalding, who worked at the White House National Security Council under President Trump before joining the Hudson Institute. “They are trying everything they can to get us to not cut off Hong Kong because they want to have their cake and eat it too.”
The Chinese Communist Party has one of the most advanced surveillance systems in the world, making any outbreak of protests on the mainland as difficult to envisage as it is intolerable. Yet the protests in Hong Kong, which has been wracked by a political crisis related to Beijing’s attempt to control the city, remains “a threat to Xi’s power and the Communist Party’s legitimacy” in their eyes, according to some observers.
“Whether that means they’re actually worried about a direct protest spreading, I think it’s less so,” a European source said. “It’s more about this, winning the public narrative. And the fact that they see Hong Kong as a Chinese city, yet there are protests on the street protesting the Communist Party — for them, that’s unacceptable.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing ahead with the threat to revoke the special legal status that made Hong Kong such a valuable piece of China’s economy, raising the question of why communist officials would court that backlash if they don’t feel vulnerable.
“It’s likely that he’s feeling pressure inside the party,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Dan Blumenthal said. “Highly likely. And the greatest indicator of that is how big the crackdown is inside China right now.”
Blumenthal acknowledged that Xi has devoted significant effort to “coup-proof” the party and ensure that he controls the levers of power, but he and Buchan agree that Xi is on alert for grumbling within and without the party.
“If you allow any dissent, in their mind, it spreads quickly,” said Buchan, the Australian analyst. “Xi is on a high wire at the moment.”
