Dialogue China Think-Tank BriefingTalking All About China NowIssue 128 – 4/1/2023Table of ContentsThe articles shared here do not necessarily reflect views of Dialogue China.I. Top ReviewsFrom the World of the Chinese Communist Party to the World of Xi Jinping: The Continuing Imperialization of China  II. Think-Tank Views“The East is Rising and the West is Declining” – The Shortest-Lived Political Slogan in the History of the Chinese Communist Party  III. Policy (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall)Maximum Mortgage Loan Periods of 100 Years? The Behind-the Scenes Fierce “Battle of (Political) Lines”Behind the Story of the “16-Year-Old Girl Who Ran Away to Escape Marriage and Who Was Forcibly Returned”: The Emergence of a Bottom-Up Strategy  IV. Politics (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall)Chinese Investment in the EU Energy Sector: Motivations, Security Threats, and Geopolitical Implications  V. Finance and Business (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall)After the Pandemic, How Close Are We To an Economic Recovery and To a Return of Normal Daily Life?Behind the Industrial Boom: How Long to the Rise of China’s Biopharmaceutical Industry?  Top Reviews From the World of the Chinese Communist Party to the World of Xi Jinping: The Continuing Imperialization of ChinaWang Dan – Radio Free Asia Commentary – 03/06/2023China’s “Two Sessions” [1]  – the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) – are now underway. If there are no unforeseen circumstances, Xi Jinping will be re-appointed PRC president, consolidating the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of his personal power. Although on the surface it appears that he has centralized all power in his own hands, Xi is still uneasy about the so-called “stormy seas” ahead.  Therefore, he is determined to go one step further to strengthen his personal dictatorship by making changes in the mechanisms through which power is exercised. Two developments in particular illustrate this. [1] The “Two Sessions” (兩會) refer to the annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress (the national legislature) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (the national political advisory body), held in succession every spring in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.  The first development is that on the eve of the “Two Sessions,” Xinhua News Agency announced that all senior leaders in the Politburo, the Secretariat, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the State Council (China’s Cabinet), the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Supreme People’s Court, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate – in short, all senior leaders at the central level – must submit written reports to show their loyalty to both the Communist Party Central Committee and directly to Xi Jinping. This is clearly a distortion of China’s mechanisms of governance.  First, according to the Chinese Constitution, the NPC is the highest organ of state power. One can reasonably say that the NPC elects the president and the president should report to the NPC Standing Committee. But the new regulations are clearly unconstitutional, and they are meant once again to highlight Xi Jinping’s supremacy and to make clear that the exercise of power and all decision-making is subject to Xi’s consent.   According to this new development, all four of the above groups (the Communist Party, the NPC, the State Council, and the CPPCC) must report to the “Communist Party Central Committee and Xi Jinping.” Although this seems to put the “Communist Party Central Committee” on an equal status with Xi Jinping, in fact some of the members of the Central Committee are drawn from the Politburo and the Secretariat. So this provision is in effect equivalent to requiring the Communist Party Central Committee to report to the Communist Party Central Committee! Is this not absurd? Furthermore, in China today the  NPC and the National Committee of the CPPCC are mere ornaments in terms of holding any real power. This is also true even for the so-called “Communist Party Central Committee.” That is, the Politburo and the Secretariat have now also become decorative flower vases and ornaments. The Communist Party world no longer exists. What now exists is the uncompromising world of Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping has become an unscrupulous emperor in all but name.  The second development is the widely rumored institutional reform. According to the current plan, some important functional departments, such as the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, and even the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, will be separated from the PRC State Council and placed directly under the Communist Party Central Committee. As noted, the so-called “central government” has already become an organ of the party. Under the direct authority of the central government means nothing else but under the direct authority of Xi Jinping. With such a major move, together with the strengthening of the reporting system, not only will the “Communist Party Central Committee” essentially be meaningless, but the State Council as well will be reduced to being one of Xi Jinping’s many offices, and the person holding the position of premier of the State Council will be, at best, merely one of Xi’s chiefs of staff. After the elimination of various civil forces, Xi Jinping’s progress in centralizing power has come to a stage whereby the original functions of both the Communist Party system and the State Council system have been eliminated and the regression toward the old imperial system has been further accelerated. There remains only the issue of determining Xi’s successor. Once that issue is resolved, the framework of the imperial system will finally be fully in place. There may be reluctance among some to believe that China has truly restored the imperial system. But I think the problem here is our understanding of the concept of a so-called  “imperial” system. An imperial system is not necessarily a system in which the highest leader of the country declares himself as emperor, but rather it is a highly centralized political institutional arrangement. In this regard, China today already has the institutional characteristics of an imperial system. When the State Council has become merely an office to handle confidential military and political affairs, when the Supreme Court only executes the judgments of the top leader through the Ministry of Justice, and when the military is accountable to only one person, Xi Jinping, what else can this be if not an imperial system?  Think-Tank Views “The East is Rising and the West is Declining” – The Shortest-Lived Political Slogan in the History of the Chinese Communist PartyDCTT Briefing Editorial Board – DCTT Briefing – 04/01/2023Since the inception of China’s reform and opening policy in the 1980s, Beijing has been pursuing Deng Xiaoping’s “hide and bide” (hide your abilities and bide your time) policy and Jiang Zemin’s “keep a low profile and get rich” policy. After its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, China’s rapid rise to prominence was due to its full-scale takeover of Western manufacturing. However, since Xi Jinping came to power, wolf warrior diplomacy has gradually replaced the “hide and bide” policy, and in 2021 Xi Jinping proposed the theory of “the East is rising and the West is declining.” What is Xi Jinping’s intention with this slogan? Why have doubts about this recently begun to emerge within China? Dialogue China spoke to a number of scholars and experts to try to decipher the situation today. When the COVID pandemic broke out in Wuhan at the end of 2019, the Chinese Communist Party sealed off the city of Wuhan internally – with its population of more than 10 million.  At the same time, Xi Jinping covered up externally the fact there could be human-to-human transmission of the virus, leading to the rapid spread of the epidemic globally and causing a huge disaster to the entire world. Ignoring the secondary disasters and human tragedies caused by the city lockdown, Xi Jinping believed that China had taken the lead in the world, asserting that China’s control of the epidemic reflects the superiority of the socialist system. He thus put forward the slogans of “the East is rising and the West is declining” and “our world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century.” The slogan “the East is rising and the West is declining” first surfaced on January 7, 2021, when Zhou Ye, deputy director of the Organization Department of the Party Committee of Fudan University, published an article stating that Xi Jinping had proposed the slogan “the East is rising and the West is declining” at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party in October of the previous year. And on January 15, 2021, Chen Xinxin, general secretary of the Political and Legal Committee of the Communist Party of China, conveyed the gist of Xi Jinping’s 2020 speech, suggesting that “the East is rising and the West is declining” is the general theory. On February 25, 2021, He Bin, Communist Party Secretary of Qilian county, Qinghai province, conveyed the spirit of Xi Jinping’s speech at a meeting of Communist Party cadres, saying that “the West is strong and the East is weak” is history, and “the East is rising and the West is declining” is the future. Thereafter, at a multigroup conference of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March 2021, Xi Jinping announced that “China can look directly in the eyes of the rest of the world.” Why did Xi Jinping propose this slogan? According to Princeton China Initiative Executive Director Chen Kuide, Xi Jinping was eager to gain domestic momentum after the formidable pressure from the 2021 U.S. trade war.  The Communist Party’s control of the pandemic could be used by Xi Jinping to prove the legitimacy and superiority of the socialist system, helping him to stabilize the country and consolidate his ruling position. Xi Jinping therefore came up with the phrase “the East is rising and the West is declining” to strengthen his confidence in governing. According to an article by scholar Zhang Jie, Xi Jinping’s “flat view of the world” originated from his very low self-esteem and inferiority complex, while “the East is rising and the West is declining” is representative of his vain hopes arising from his inferiority complex. It is an indisputable fact that after losing the support of the West China’s economy is in decline. “The East is rising and the West is declining” is a delusion. Xi Jinping mistook the coming sunset of the Communist Party of China for a vigorous sunrise. Indeed, Xi Jinping did not have long to be complacent. In Europe and the United States, widespread inoculation of the COVID vaccine began in 2021. Coupled with the rampage of the Omicron variant at the end of 2021, Europe and America achieved herd immunity in a matter of months and they were able to emerge from the pandemic and resume normal economic activities. From this we can see another side of China. Internally, the painstaking zero-Covid policy damaged the economy, caused a health-care crisis, and led to a decline in GDP and the collapse of the real estate market, leaving large numbers of people with no means of livelihood. At the end of 2022, the Chinese Communist Party suddenly lifted all pandemic controls without warning, resulting in a shortage of doctors and medicine, many deaths, and boiling over public discontent. China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy had led to global isolation, a precipitous drop in exports, a mountain of empty containers sitting idle in ports, export controls on over 639 Chinese entities in the United States as of today, and Europe and Japan successively joining in with microchip sanctions against China. In the face of these internal and external difficulties, the accuracy of “the East is rising and the West is declining” slogan was called into question. In September 2022, Fu Mengzi, vice president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, pointed out in an article that the trend whereby “the East is rising and the West is declining” was slowing down, and the status quo, with the West remaining strong and the East remaining weak, would be difficult to change over the short term. Then in February of 2023, Yao Yang, director of Peking University’s School of National Development, and Zhang Yuyan, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said at a public forum that it is a fact that the West will be strong and the East will be weak for the medium to long term and it will indeed be a challenge for China to surpass the West in the next 10–15 years. According to Princeton China Initiative Executive Director Chen Kuide, due to his own limited thinking, Xi Jinping has mistakenly projected a temporary phenomenon as a long-term historical trend. Xi Jinping is incapable of understanding or thinking about the past in a comprehensive or dialectical manner, let alone making the correct historical judgments. The current challenges are not the anti-Xi voices in China but rather to find a way to give Xi Jinping an honorable way out of an impasse of his own making. In a situation of internal and external difficulties, “the East is rising and the West is declining” has become a big joke. In a certain sense, the very idea of “the East is rising and the West is declining” is one of the reasons for China’s current predicament, making the West ever more wary of China. This statement resonates with that of Wu Qiang, an independent political scientist in Beijing. In Wu Qiang’s view, Fu Mengzi’s comments, as vice president of a think-tank under the Ministry of State Security, indicate a change in the official judgment about China’s international security situation. Chinese officials are gradually realizing that Xi Jinping’s “the East is rising and the West is declining” is flawed and the Western democratic world still has an overall advantage. “The East is Rising and the West is Declining” emerged during the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party at the end of 2020, flourished in 2021. and died in 2022. Comparable to child’s play, this is perhaps the shortest-lived political slogan in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Finally, in terms of policy recommendations, Chen Kuide believes that Western governments are now thoroughly awake to China and on the path of a correct dialogue. Although there are some differences between the two major political parties in the United States on certain domestic policies, policy toward China is generally in alignment. The Democratic Party may not appear as hardline on China as the Republican Party, but the Biden administration has actually implemented policies that are tougher and more damaging to the Chinese Communist Party than those taken by the Republican party in the past. In particular, the Biden administration has been very successful in forming alliances with the Western world, bringing China under siege by all mainstream countries throughout the world, and containing the Communist Party to the greatest possible extent. Chen Kuide hopes that the Western governments will strengthen their alliances and cooperation and they will continue on their current path.Policy (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall) Maximum Mortgage Loan Periods of 100 Years? The Behind-the Scenes Fierce “Battle of (Political) Lines”Zhao Yanjing – Aisixiang Net – 02/16/2023Why Read This? Recently, there has been a wave of early loan repayments in the Chinese property market. As a result, some banks have closed their online early loan repayment portals, and it now can take up to six months to queue offline. Widely circulating on the Internet is a screenshot of a bank offering a “mortgage loan of up to 100 years.” Even more alarming is the fact that this is a warning about the local debt crisis backed by land finance. The author believes that the key to rejuvenating the economy is not debt but rather credit. Local debt does not have a clear line of responsibility like that of the central government, and it is easy for local governments to overdraw on the credit of the central government. He believes that we should find ways to reduce the risks instead of rolling over local bonds.（Read The Original Text）Policy (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall) Behind the Story of the “16-Year-Old Girl Who Ran Away to Escape Marriage and Who Was Forcibly Returned”: The Emergence of a Bottom-Up StrategyJiao Changquan – China Rural Studies – February 21, 2023Why Read This? Recently, a report about a 16-year-old who ran away to escape marriage and was forcibly returned aroused widespread public concern. Many people have questioned whether arranged marriages still exist in today’s China, and some have even condemned such occurrences not as arranged marriages but rather as human trafficking. The social consequences of the gender imbalance affect the entire human race. It is not only men who will bear the social consequences, women too will also suffer the negative effects. That is, the advantages of the marriage market (fewer women and more men) do not necessarily translate into actual advantages in married social life.（Read The Original Text）Politics (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall) Chinese Investment in the EU Energy Sector: Motivations, Security Threats, and Geopolitical Implications Miguel Otero – Iglesias – National Politics Scholar – 02/26/2023Why Read This? In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the amount of Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU, giving rise to national security concerns in many European countries. This paper assesses the investment motivations, security threats, and potential geopolitical implications of the acquisitions of State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), for example. The paper also analyzes energy geopolitics in the new context of renewable energy, pointing out that the influence of international capital relations has become a new level in energy intercommunications, and the geopolitical influences may also lead to future indirect national security issues as well as to European Union security issues.（Read The Original Text）Finance and Business (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall) After the pandemic, How Close Are We to an Economic Recovery and to a Return of Normal Daily Life?Xie Jiu – Sanlian Life Weekly – 02/08/2023Why Read This? During the past three years of the pandemic, especially in 2022, China’s economic growth rate has fallen to an all-time low, presenting great challenges to stabilizing growth. In the short term, China’s economy needs a higher rebound rate to stabilize the overall situation. However, if there is too much emphasis on the short-term growth rate, the former growth patterns, such as relying on real estate and infrastructure investment, may re-emerge. The real challenge today is to maintain a balance between short-term growth and long-term transformation.（Read The Original Text）Finance and Business (Public Opinions inside The Great Firewall) Behind the Industrial Boom: How Long to the Rise of China’s Biopharmaceutical Industry? Zhang Congzhi – Sanlian Life Weekly – 03/06/2023Why Read This? Because of the COVID pandemic, many people have become familiar with various types of vaccines, all of which fall under the umbrella of biopharmaceuticals. This industry first sprang up in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Compared to chemical pharmaceuticals, the biopharmaceutical industry does not have a long history, but it has long been regarded as the future of the pharmaceutical industry. China’s biopharmaceutical industry began even later than that in the West, but within only a decade or so, China’s biopharmaceutical industry has changed China’s position in the global pharmaceutical industrial chain, moving the country from a low-end imitator and supplier of raw materials to becoming a competitor in the global market for innovative drugs.（Read The Original Text）

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