BEIJING (AP) – An avalanche of changes launched by China’s ruling communist party has shaken everyone, from tech billionaires to schoolchildren. Behind them: President Xi Jinping’s vision of making a more powerful and prosperous country resurrecting revolutionary ideals, with more economic equality and stricter party control over society and business.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has called for the party to return to its “original mission” as China’s economic, social and cultural leader and carry out the “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation.”“.
The party has spent the decade since then silencing dissent and tightening political control. Now, after 40 years of growth that transformed China into the world’s factory but left an abyss between a rich elite and a poor majority, the party promises to spread prosperity more evenly and pressures private companies to pay social welfare and support Beijing’s ambition to become a global technology competitor.
To support its plans, the Xi government is trying to create what it considers a healthier society by reducing children’s access to online games. and ban “sissy men” who are considered insufficiently masculine from television.
Chinese leaders want to “direct the constructive energies of all people in a laser-centered direction selected by the party,” Andrew Nathan, a Chinese policy specialist at Columbia University, said in an email.
Beijing has launched anti-monopoly and data security measures to tighten control of Internet giants, including e-commerce platform Alibaba Group and gaming and social media operator Tencent Holdings Ltd., which appeared too large and potentially independent.
In response, its founding billionaires have struggled to show loyalty by promising to share their wealth under Xi’s vaguely defined “common prosperity” initiative to reduce the income gap in a country with more billionaires than the United States.
Xi has not yet given details, but in a society in which all political terms are examined about their importance, the name revives a propaganda slogan from the 1950s under Mao Zedong, the founder of the communist government.
Xi revives the “utopian ideal” of early communist leaders, said Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “But of course, big questions have arisen because that will hurt the most creative and lucrative parts of the economy.”
Alibaba, Tencent and others have pledged tens of billions of dollars to job creation and social welfare initiatives. They say they will invest in the development of processor chips and other technologies cited by Beijing as priorities.
The party’s antitrust enforcement and crackdown on how companies manage customer information are similar to Western regulation. But the imposition of abrupt and heavy changes makes one notice that Beijing is threatening innovation and economic growth, which is already declining. Nervous foreign investors have earned more than $ 300 billion in stock market value from Tencent and billions more from other companies.
“I hope that over the next year or two we are likely to see a very rocky relationship between the political elite and the business elite,” said Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at the Guanghua School of Business at Peking University. a report.
Chinese officials say the public, consumers and employers will benefit from higher revenues and greater regulatory oversight of corporate giants. Parents welcome the curbs announced last month that limit children from 18 to three hours of online play a week and only on weekends and Friday nights.
“I think that’s a good rule of thumb,” said Li Zhanguo, the father of an eight-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl in central Zhengzhou city. “Games still have some addictive mechanisms. We can’t count on children’s self-control. “
The crackdown reflects the party’s efforts to control a rapidly evolving society of 1.4 billion people.
One million members of predominantly Muslim ethnic groups have been forced to enter detention camps in the northwest. Officials deny allegations of abuse, including forced abortions, and say the camps are used for job training and to combat extremism.
A surveillance initiative called Social Credit aims to track all people and businesses in China and punish violations ranging from dealing with business partners that violate environmental standards to garbage.
“Our responsibility is to unite and lead the whole party and people of all ethnicities, take the baton of history and work hard to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi said when he and the other six members of the new The party’s Standing Committee first appeared in public in November 2012.
The party’s Central Committee shifted its economic emphasis “from efficiency to equity” in late 2020, a researcher from a Beijing think tank in Caixin, the leading business magazine, wrote in August. of China.
The party went from “initial prosperity for some to” common prosperity “” and “from capital to labor,” wrote Luo Zhiheng of the Yuekai Securities Research Institute. He said leaders place emphasis on science, technology and manufacturing above finance and real estate.
Prominent economists have tried to reassure employers.
“It is impossible to achieve common prosperity” by stealing from the rich and helping the poor, “Zhang Jun, dean of Shanghai’s Fudan University School of Economics, told The Paper on Aug. 4.
The 1979 launch of market-style economic reform under then-leader Deng Xiaoping sparked predictions abroad that China would evolve toward a more open, possibly even democratic, society.
The Communist Party allowed a freer movement and encouraged the use of the Internet for business and education. But leaders reject the changes in a dictatorship of a party that copied its political structure from the Soviet Union and closely watched the businessmen. Beijing controls all media and tries to limit what the Chinese public sees online.
As the economic boom of the previous decade fades, “Xi sees himself as the only person capable of recreating momentum,” said June Teufel Dreyer, a Chinese policy specialist at the University of Miami.
It seems that party members who are concerned about reforms may weaken political control have decided that China’s rise is permanent and liberalization is no longer necessary, said Edward Friedman, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
That means “anti-totalitarian elements of the reform agenda could be pushed back,” Friedman said in an email. “This is what Xi is doing, as manifested in his attack on the so-called gay and female culture as a supposed threat to so-called manly militarism.”
An August 29 comment by an obscure writer, Li Guangman, described “common prosperity” as a “deep revolution.” Writing on the WeChat messaging service, Li said financial markets “would no longer be a paradise for capitalists to get rich overnight” and said the party’s next goals could include high costs of housing and health care.
The comment was republished on prominent state media websites, including the ruling People’s Daily newspaper. This raised questions about whether Beijing could deviate in an ideological campaign with echoes of the violent Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when some 5 million people died.
Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, a newspaper published by the People’s Daily, known for its nationalist tone, responded by criticizing Li’s comments. Hu warned in a blog post against returning to radicalism.
“The Cultural Revolution was a period of chaos, deliberately triggered by Mao because he felt comfortable in the chaos,” Nathan said.
“That’s pretty much the opposite,” he said. “It’s an effort to create a well-structured ordering.”
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AP researcher Chen Si in Shanghai contributed to this report.