Xi Jinping effectively vanished in July and the first half of August. Some China watchers speculated that his unexplained absence was a sign that he was losing his grip on power. But he has since reappeared and been very visible again. At the end of last month, he visited Tibet, then indulged in a high-profile, back-slapping meeting with Vladimir Putin and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tianjin. He capped off his busy fortnight with the 3 September military parade in Beijing and a second meeting with his star guest Putin, this time accompanied by Kim Jong-un.
So, a great triumph for the neo-Maoist leader and the new Axis of Evil? Not so fast. The lessons to draw from these three events are a sight more nuanced. Here are five take-aways from Xi’s last few weeks.
1. Xi’s visit to Tibet was peculiar. It lasted just 24 hours. He inspected People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in Lhasa on 21 August, the 60th anniversary of Tibet’s founding as an autonomous state. He went home the next day. On his last visit in 2021 he stayed for four days.
There is renewed speculation about Xi’s health. In Tibet he looked ponderous and unsteady on his feet
Even more curious was his absence from a visit to the biggest infrastructure project of his regime: the $165 billion Yarlung Tsangpo dam, now under construction, which will be the largest dam in the world. These kinds of projects are not only economically significant but provide plenty of opportunity for Xi’s political and military supporters to sing his praises. Normally a visit to a project of this importance would be a must for a General Secretary.
Instead, the visit to the dam was made by Xi’s greatest political enemy, Hu Chunhua. Hu is the deposed reformist ‘crown prince’ who was once seen as a potential next general secretary of the Chinese Communist party, until he was thrown off the politburo’s standing committee by Xi in 2022.
Yet three years after his humiliating demotion, Hu has made a surprise reappearance at the front line of Chinese politics. The PLA Daily even led with his name on its front page. After his time in the wilderness, is Hu back on the ‘crown prince’ track? Maybe.
2. The Shanghai meeting between Xi, Putin and Modi was not all it was cracked up to be. Western media seemed taken with the idea that India was now in alliance with China and Russia. Nothing could be further from the truth. Modi is an alpha-male ultranationalist (not unlike Donald Trump) and he is fixed on the idea that India is the emerging dominant world power. He could well be correct. Based on current projections, India, which will have double China’s population by the end of the century, will become a bigger economy than either China or the US.
For Modi, the meeting could be seen as putting two fingers up to Trump’s tariff threat if India does not stop buying oil from Russia. But it does not mean India is rolling over to China. As I wrote in these pages last year, whereas Russia needs ‘a big-brother China relationship, India sees itself as the equal of China. A subservient role would not work’.
When asked whether India sided with the West or with Russia, the external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has said: ‘I think we should choose a side, and that’s our side.’ Noticeably, Modi did not hang around for Xi’s 3 September military parade. Instead, he flew to Japan, a country with which India conducts joint naval exercises aimed at the naval containment of China. In Tokyo, he signed a deal to use Japanese, not Chinese, high-speed trains.
3. There was a long delay in announcing who was going to be the parade marshal on 3 September. Usually, it is a job done by a full general and head of the Central Theatre Command, whose job it is to defend (or control) Beijing. This time the role was given to a junior lieutenant general. The rumour is that Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the general who is supposedly leading the move against Xi behind the scenes, has taken personal control of the Central Theatre Command. In a demonstration of strength, Zhang moved the 82nd Group Army – the main PLA unit that put down the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989 – into central Beijing before the 3 September parade.
Placements at the parade also seemed to hint at shifts in power. General Zhang was on the front row with the politburo standing committee members. Even more intriguingly, state television gave a long camera pan on the arrival of Wang Yang, a former standing committee member once discarded by Xi, who is now tipped as a possible next CCP general secretary or premier. Chinese TV is always up to date on who politically is in or out.
4. Although Chinese and western media bigged up the number of foreign dignitaries (26) who attended the military parade, the numbers were down on the 44 who attended in 2015. Ten years ago, attendees included Tony Blair and the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. No such grandees this time. Far from China being stronger, as many in the West have concluded, it is more convincingly argued that China is more isolated now than at any time since the 1980s.
5. The 3 September celebrations also renewed speculation about Xi’s health. In Tibet he looked ponderous and unsteady on his feet. Likewise at the parade. In addition, comments were made about his puffy and reddish complexion. Some have speculated that this is characteristic of liver disease. It is a diagnosis compatible with his reputation as a heavy drinker.
But the most revealing takeaway of all from the last month comes from America not China. According to reports, Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defence, has in recent weeks been trying to set up a telephone call with General Zhang. Why would Hegseth call for a meeting with the vice chairman of the CMC rather than with his political counterpart, the defence minister Dong Jun? Perhaps US intelligence has an idea about who is increasingly the real power behind the throne in Beijing.
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