Chinese Communist Party (CCP) specialist at the University of Hong Kong and author of numerous books, Willy Lam, who covered the Tiananmen Square movement in 1989 for the Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post, from whom he resigned in 2000 to protest against censorship, is one of the finest analysts of the mysteries of power in Beijing. Increasingly threatened because of his freedom of speech, since the takeover of Hong Kong by the Chinese central government in the summer of 2020, he engages with L’Express in a foresight exercise, while Xi Jinping comes to be awarded a historic third term at the end of the 20th CPC Congress. According to Willy Lam, very concerned for the future, it is highly likely that an ever more powerful and repressive Xi Jinping will remain in power for life. And that he attacks Taiwan between 2027 and 2032. Interview.
L’Express: Unsurprisingly, Xi Jinping was nominated for a third term at the end of the 20th Congress of the CCP. He also imposed his men in the “holy of holies”, the permanent committee of the Politburo, made up of seven members. Can we speak of a total victory for him?
Willy Lam: This is a very big victory for Xi Jinping, much more important than what the specialists had predicted. Xi Jinping now has control of the other six men (besides himself) on the Politburo Standing Committee. All are members of his faction or very close to him. On the other hand, all the members of the faction resulting from the Communist Youth League, more reformists, were dismissed: Prime Minister Li Keqiang, and Wang Yang, the president of the consultative conference of the Chinese people.
According to party tradition, one of the qualifications to become prime minister is to have previously served as deputy prime minister. But this is not the case of the future Prime Minister Li Qiang. All this could be very bad news for the country, because we only hear one voice. It is the advent of one-man rule, a partial return to the days of Mao Zedong. Therefore, if Xi Jinping makes a big mistake, no one will dare to contradict him. China is a very big country: it cannot be run by one person. These announcements are very disturbing.
What kinds of mistakes can Xi Jinping now make?
It is quite possible that he will make a big mistake, like Vladimir Putin with Ukraine, by launching a war against Taiwan. The most likely would be that he does so during his fourth term, from 2027 to 2032. The probability seems very high to me. At present, the gap between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the US military is still very large. But Xi Jinping is convinced that by his fourth term, he will be able to develop enough weapons, aircraft carriers, combat groups or missiles to defend China against the United States and Japan – Tokyo has effect clearly indicated that if Beijing starts a war against Taiwan, Japanese forces could join with American forces to defend the island. So it’s a very dangerous situation.
The fact that the party includes for the first time in its charter its opposition to the independence of Taiwan is a very bad omen. It is almost a pledge to the nation to act against Taiwan long before 2032.
So the conservative line has imposed itself?
Yes exactly. And it also affects the economy because in the old system there were a few Western-educated technocrats like Liu He, a graduate of Harvard University, who favored certain reforms. But the one who has been Xi Jinping’s economic adviser in recent years has apparently failed to make him accept his liberal ideas. His replacement He Lifeng – he entered the Politburo and became Deputy Prime Minister – is much more conservative. He spent most of his career in Fujian, where he got to know Xi Jinping very well, but he never had any training abroad, and I doubt he speaks English. He got this job mainly thanks to his good personal relationship with Xi Jinping.
During his opening speech at the 20th CPC Congress on October 16, Xi Jinping mentioned many conservative policies. For him, ideology and national security, which includes fighting party enemies both inside and outside China, have become top priorities. And to achieve these goals, Xi Jinping is willing to make sacrifices. The “zero Covid” strategy is the best example of this. Everyone knows that it is very harmful for the economy, but Xi Jinping has shown no intention of wanting to back down. He repeated that the battle against Covid-19 was a “people’s war” (supposed to demonstrate the superiority of the Chinese system). Add to this the desire to have a self-sufficient country, control of the economy by the party-state, and the ambition of “common prosperity”. All these conservative policies will be carried through. And no one will push the much more liberal reforms and the policy of openness initiated in his time by Deng Xiaoping.
Can the rise of China continue in this context of the reign of ideology, which weighs on economic growth?
Xi Jinping wants to make his country a superpower by 2049, the year of the centenary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China. But it will be difficult, because the economy is doing very badly, it lacks foreign currencies, American dollars. And the United States and its allies will continue to impose export restrictions on chips and components for China’s high-tech industry. All these elements could therefore hinder Xi Jinping’s dream.
The whole question is whether the Chinese have the capacity to achieve major technological advances, including in the military field.
Is it possible that Xi Jinping remains president for life, as authorized by the Constitution since 2018?
I expect him to step down as party general secretary in 2032, when he turns 79. After which, of course, he could continue to hold the position of chairman of the central military commission, as Deng Xiaoping did in the 1980s and 1990s – a position that allowed him to be the country’s leader without might as well be the number one in the party. He could thus, by taking up Deng’s solution, continue to lead China as long as his health permits.
Xi Jinping has continued to restrict the freedoms of society since he came to power at the end of 2012, will he continue to tighten the screw during what promises to be a long reign?
Yes, without a doubt. In fact, the Covid-19 lockdowns were continued because all those color codes – yellow, green and red – on cell phones [NDLR : qui autorisent ou non l’accès à certains lieux en fonction des zones et des personnes fréquentées précédemment], have become an additional weapon in the service of the state control and surveillance apparatus, as well as a tool against dissidents. A dissident cannot, for example, go to Beijing, a red indicator prohibiting him from taking the plane or the train.
What event could bring down Xi Jinping?
Most likely, in my opinion, is that it’s related to Taiwan. There is certainly a lot of dissatisfaction among the population concerning the economic policy of the Communist Party: the unemployment rate among young people has reached 20%. But the monitoring and control mechanism is very strong and effective. So I don’t think there will be a rebellion or large-scale demonstrations in the country.
Xi Jinping has still not appointed a successor. When will he do it, do you think?
He is in no hurry to appoint a successor, since he thinks he still has at least ten years of power ahead of him. He could, I think, do it in his fourth term. If he applies the 68-year retirement age rule for his successor, his successor will have to be from the seventh generation, those civil servants born in the 1970s. But at this stage, we don’t see anyone from the seventh generation to really impose itself in the political arena. The question of the successor will constitute a very difficult institutional problem for Xi Jinping.
Appointments to the Politburo Central Committee violated an unwritten rule that stated that one could not be promoted from the age of 68…
Xi Jinping never respects any rules or regulations. He thinks he can make the rules and regulations himself. Another proof of non-compliance with the unspoken age limit rules is the fact that General Zhang Youxia, one of the 25 members of the Politburo, vice chairman of the central military commission, is allowed to stay in post for another five years when he is 72 years old, because Xi Jinping needs him to lead the People’s Liberation Army.
The former president Hu Jintao was evacuated from the congress hall : how do you interpret this incident?
We can only speculate on this event, which has not been explained. My interpretation is that Hu Jintao was extremely unhappy with the appointments to the central committee, the Politburo, and the Politburo standing committee. I think he must have let Xi Jinping know, and that the latter did not appreciate it at all. The fact that security guards took him out of the room was indeed intended to humiliate him. But it is also the symbol that the CCP Youth League faction [dont Hu Jintao fut le dirigeant] has been eliminated. And this is a very bad signal for the party, because never before has a former general secretary been removed from a congress. All of this is very worrying.