The unexpected death of former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang raises questions regarding Xi Jinping’s hold on power and his willingness to eliminate rivals.
The removal of former leader Hu Jintao from the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, and the removal of the foreign minister, defense minister, many generals, and many lesser officials suggests that Mr. Xi is tightening his hold on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He may be successful in the short run. But it will not work in the long term.
There are three major vulnerabilities of the CCP.
First, the lack of its legitimacy is due to the failed ideology of Marxism-Leninism. The dependence upon an imported Western ideology, Marxism-Leninism, means that, at root, the CCP’s ideology of Maoism is an illegitimate polity for China. This has the potential to cause a legitimation crisis in communist China that causes its overthrow or evolution into a neo-Confucian polity in accord with China’s historical political culture that defined imperial China. As a product of Western intellectual thought, the CCP lacks even the legitimacy of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), whose leaders were foreign, Manchu rather than Han, but who ruled in accord with China’s dynastic ideology, what is at the root of China’s permanent ideology. Thus, the Qing Dynasty was able to maintain power despite its foreign nature, prodigious unrest, and foreign interventions.
Second, the CCP is vulnerable because of its abhorrent and contemptible leadership and the accelerated misrule of Mr. Xi. It possesses odious rulers who have forced China to endure decades of misrule. Seventy years of misrule and wars against the Chinese people have led to scores of millions killed by the CCP and the recognition by the Chinese people that the regime rules for itself, not for the people.
Third, the Party’s legitimacy is at risk because of the emerging Chinese civil society. Civil society is a composite of individuals and organizations independent of the government that advance the interests of citizens and reflect their will. They build social trust and shared values, making states with dense civil society networks more prone to being democratic. Classic examples of civil society are churches, Boy Scouts, and social groups like the Shriners. Chinese civil society offers an alternative and more legitimate ideology for China’s governance.
Developing social, including social media, religious, and cultural life in China provides a foundation for a different ideological and political governance for the country. The CCP’s rule would be undermined to the point where a viable alternative—with elite and mass support—is possible through the growth of allegorical cultural associations that criticize the CCP obliquely through references to Confucian and Daoist beliefs, literature, and philosophy.
Each of these avenues offers the possibility of successfully overthrowing the CCP. Each should be evaluated and compared, and elements of each might be complementary and harmonized to produce an outcome one avenue alone could not accomplish. Three major points are relevant.
First, strategically, the most effective strategy to defeat the CCP’s ambition and preserve U.S. national security interests is to target its demise—but that also presents new challenges for the United States. The CCP’s legitimation crisis is at hand. It failed. The Chinese people know it, the Party does, and Mr. Xi sees the truth.
Second, by accurately identifying the CCP’s weaknesses, policies may be developed that assist its fall and permit the United States and its allies to prepare for its demise. Understanding and applying the lessons of history, for example, why the Qing Dynasty survived its major crises, permits a broader understanding of the illegitimacy of the CCP.
At the same time, the United States must understand U.S. limitations in causing the CCP’s fall from power. The ideological crisis of legitimacy, the increasingly paranoid rule of Mr. Xi, the ever-tightening circles of fear among the Party leadership, and the development of Chinese civil society provide important paths to the fall of the CCP. Accordingly, while the fall of the CCP is not likely to be the result of actions that the United States can compel, a study of this issue contributes to the identification of policies to advance them to produce an outcome as favorable as possible to U.S. interests.
Third, in the realm of political warfare, just as the Chinese regime targets the United States and its key allies, targeting the CCP by rejecting its legitimacy and openly planning for a post-communist China is an appropriate U.S. response. It demonstrates a resolve to Mr. Xi and the leadership of the Chinese regime that the United States will fight in the realm of political warfare. It also signals that it is determined to cause its downfall. In turn, this places the Party under pressure due to decades of abuse of the Chinese people and economic and social problems now surfacing.
In essence, targeting the CCP is supremely important for the United States and offers the possibility of the Chinese regime’s overthrow without resorting to kinetic war. There should be vocal, continuous discussion regarding the form of the CCP’s demise, its rapidity, and its mechanics. However, it will require a focus and determination that the American people have not seen from the Biden administration.
Now is the time to work to overthrow the Chinese regime. If the Biden administration will not advance this objective, then it falls to the Chinese diaspora, allies, and people of goodwill around the world to advance that end.
