Dr Ganesh Malhotra
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has succeeded in abolishing presidential term limits, a momentous political coup that paves the way for him to stay in power for years to come.
Nearly 3,000 members of China’s National People’s Congress voted highly controversial constitutional amendment through during a session at the Great Hall of the People – an imposing Mao-era theatre on the western fringe of Tiananmen Square.
Two other amendments designed to shore up Xi’s supremacy were also approved through the same vote: the addition of a political philosophy called Xi Jinping Thought to the constitution, and the creation of politically driven Supervisory Commissions tasked with investigating party members and civil servants.
The parliament’s chairman, Zhang Dejiang, told delegates it was time to get behind Xi’s push to make China great again.
Since taking power in 2012 Xi has used an anti-corruption campaign to bring down a succession of heavyweight rivals including more than 100 generals and admirals and six top party figures who were accused of plotting a coup. Here lies the extreme danger ahead for China. Unlike democracies, tight autocratic regimes cannot diffuse and scatter mass discontent. When society gets sullen or disillusioned in such systems, people’s anger will be directed at the person at the pinnacle and the edifice that props him up. Excess concentration of power is a high-risk strategy that could backfire and sow seeds of revolution against the foundational principle of the CCP rule. Posters have started popping up in college campuses across the United States proclaiming “Not My President.” Words directed not at Donald Trump, but at Xi Jinping.
The dual posters?-?in both English and Chinese?-?are part of a grassroots movement of overseas Chinese who are expressing their discontent with China plan for scrapping term limit for President, allowing Xi Jinping to potentially remain leader for life.
“Xi Jinping is abolishing term limits of his presidency through Chinese rubber stamp legislative body. It is time to let him know that WE DISAGREE,” the posters read, carrying the hashtag #IDISAGREE, a slogan that was blocked at weibo following the proposal’s announcement last week.
The campaign has set up its own Twitter account, which now has more than 5000 followers.
The students organizing this campaign have chosen to remain anonymous; worried about what sort of consequences would wait them back home if the Chinese government discovered their identities. The single most important driving force behind China’s growth in the past 30 years has been the check on the party leader’s power on the institutional level. It’s definitely not our wish that an unelected strongman become a de facto lifetime dictator.”
Term limits on office holders were written into China’s constitution in 1982 while Deng Xiaoping was in power as a reaction to the cult of personality that had developed around Mao Zedong. The campaign’s organizers say they are worried that the abolition of these term limits could “plunge us into another round of the Cultural Revolution.”
Back in China, any online dissent over the proposal has been heavily censored with only a few dissidents choosing to speak to foreign media.
All these developments are leading to imminent collapse of china. Collapse is likely to be expedited as unprecedented crackdown against opposition and disappearance of lawyers and human right activists is causing massive chaos in the Chinese hinterland.
China is finally reaching at a point and Xinjiang, Manchuria, Hong Kong, Tibet, Chengdu, Zhangzhung and Shanghai could turn into free nations after a Chinese revolution. There was banning of the fast during Ramzan. In last few years the Chinese government has issued several policies targeting Muslims in Xinjiang, that is likely to explode soon.
Tibet The Tibetan struggle may be the most peaceful ‘war’ on the planet, but that shouldn’t be taken as a sign of weakness. Moreover, the cause, headed by the Dalai Lama, enjoys sympathy of the broader international community. Ethnically and culturally, Tibetans have always been completely at odds with their Chinese neighbours.
In 1949 The People’s Liberation Army of China marched into Tibet to ‘improve’ the region. Its victory at the Battle of Chamdo in 1951 was meant to bring Tibetans into line, but a large-scale uprising took place in 1959, and tensions have simmered ever since. Recent protests have again turned violent and sometimes deadly, most notably in 2008 and 2012.
It is important to remember that the Tibetan Autonomous Region as defined by the CPC represents only a fraction of the territory claimed by a fully-functioning Tibetan ‘Government in Exile’ operating out of Dharamsala, northern India. Much of the modern Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan were historically part of Tibet proper, and are still primarily inhabited by Tibetans, this despite approximately 150,000 Tibetans joining the Dalai Lama in exile. They have all vowed to return.
Taiwan Technically, China is not at war with this ‘nation’ but that is only because Taiwan has never formally declared independence. As recently as March 2017 Taiwan’s Defence Minister talked of warfare techniques necessary to combat threats from mainland China. With hostilities in the South China Sea steadily increasing, and USA regularly using Taiwan as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with Beijing, developments in Taipei could yet be a major catalyst for change on the mainland.
A regime with as many built-in contradictions as the People’s Republic cannot endure and some kind of collapse is in the making. The red aristocracy will step-by-step and drip-by-drip, lead towards tighter controls and all-out totalitarianism. Can it thereby endure? Totalitarianism has always failed and same will be the case of China.
(The author is a J&K based Strategic and political analyst)
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