SHANGHAI—The Chinese Communist Party has a “Trump problem.” No—not in the sense that Donald Trump’s protectionist trade ideas send shivers down its spine, even though they do.
Rather, the party is grappling with a similar force that swept Mr. Trump to his position as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president, and that fuels rabble-rousing politicians all across Europe: populism.
As the Chinese economy drastically slows, threatening jobs, it empowers the populists on the Communist Party’s fringe—neo-Maoist dreamers and ideologues who believe that their leaders aren’t doing enough for the poor and dispossessed.
The neo-Maoists, of course, aren’t running away with their party, as Mr. Trump is doing. They don’t even have a formal voice but exist as a disparate group with firebrand writers and orators, and websites that popularize their messages like Utopia and the Red Song Society.
Nevertheless, Communist Party elders are clearly shaken, just like the stalwarts of the Republican Party—and leaders of established parties from the U.K. to Finland who are all fending off threats from politicians claiming to speak for the underdog. We’ve just seen a variant of that dynamic in the Philippines, where Rodrigo Duterte, a populist law-and-order candidate, is on the verge of clinching the presidency.
The criticisms of the neo-Maoists have long resonated among the disaffected working classes and through the rank and file of the party itself. The core of the complaint is the polarization of Chinese society with economic growth disproportionately benefiting the wealthy elites at the expense of the workers.
There’s even an antitrade component to the neo-Maoist platform: They resent the competition that arrived after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and threw open its doors to foreign companies.
The Communist Party is vulnerable to charges similar to those leveled against the Republican establishment: that it’s grown too out-of-touch, too beholden to vested interests, too ossified and corrupt.
One other parallel: The argument that some in America make—that the Republican Party brought a calamity upon itself by toying with some of the more radical ideas and behaviors that underlie Trumpism—finds a strong echo in China today.
Party leader Xi Jinping, who is also China’s president, is flirting with political language, imagery and symbols that for some Chinese evoke the darkest aspects of Maoism, including the personality cult that was the defining symbol of the decadelong Cultural Revolution, which began 50 years ago this month.
For the neo-Maoists, it is music to their ears, literally. They love singing the old Mao songs from the Cultural Revolution like “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman” and “I Am a Little Member of the Commune.” So do a lot of ordinary Chinese people, who similarly pine for what they perceive as the purity of Mao’s day.
For this crowd, a true prophet was the former party secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, who was seen as a rival to Mr. Xi and who made himself popular by encouraging “Red singing” on public squares in his megacity before his downfall.
All this puts Mr. Xi in a bind. He wants to use Mao as a symbol of nationalist strength and patriotism to inspire the nation in difficult times.
The neo-Maoists, on the other hand, want to enlist the chairman in their populist message—an emblem of hope for the downtrodden. In other words, they want to play Mao against the party leaders.
Actually, Mr. Xi is in a double bind: The steps that he must take to fix the economy, like closing down inefficient state enterprises, will make joblessness worse and fuel populist opposition. Not surprisingly, neo-Maoists are strongest in parts of China where the economy is in deepest trouble, including the northeast rust belt.
The Communist Party has always been nervous about the neo-Maoists; it brands them a “leftist deviation.” Authorities have shut down a few of their websites.
Jude Blanchette, a Beijing-based researcher who has studied the neo-Maoist phenomenon, calls them an “opposition party-in-waiting.”
What’s Mr. Xi to do? He certainly doesn’t intend to surrender his party to the populists, as the Republicans have done with Mr. Trump.
Instead, Mr. Blanchette says party elders “want to drive the agenda lest it gets away from them.” That includes the most draconian anticorruption push in the party’s modern history and rolling education campaigns to drill Marxism into the party’s 88 million members.
At the same time, the government is putting more money into social welfare and worker-retraining schemes, while going very slowly on factory closures.
Mr. Xi’s nationalism goes down well with the masses, too. Television images of warships patrolling the South China Sea, and warplanes circling the East China Sea, keep spirits high.
For the Communist Party, the “Trump challenge” is real. Like the Republicans and party establishments in other nations, the world’s largest political organization is finding itself forced into reinvention in a new age of populism.http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-faces-its-own-version-of-trumpism-1462876428
Xi Jinping’s stance on China’s economy laid bare: By Zhou Xin in South china morning post, May 11, 2016
President sets out in 20,000-character transcript his most comprehensive thoughts on the future of the Chinese economy, with special emphasis on structural reform
An explanation of President Xi Jinping’s hallmark economic policy, in his own words, was published in People’s Daily yesterday – just one day after it printed an interview with an unidentified “authoritative” source repudiating China’s debt-fuelled growth policies.
Xi’s explanation – a 20,000-character transcript of a speech that occupied two pages in the newspaper – was the most comprehensive elaboration of the president’s thinking on the Chinese economy’s past, present and future and its role in the global economy since he became the country’s leader more than three years ago.
Xi made the speech in January to principal ministerial and provincial officials.
Mysterious Chinese state media article on economy aimed at ‘officials and market players’
“I need to be clear, the supply-side structural reform we are talking about is not the same as the supply-side economics school in the West,” Xi said.
“[We] must prevent some people from using their interpretations [of supply-side reform] to promote ‘neo-liberalism’,” he continued, drawing a line between his policy and those of Ronald Reagan of the United States or Margaret Thatcher of Britain in the 1980s.
China’s supply-side reform was more than “an issue of tax or tax rate” – it was a slew of structural measures to seek innovation, prosperity and well-being.
Xi said some Chinese officials did not understand the point of supply-side reform.
Reviving China: can ‘Xiconomics’ help mainland’s economy the way ‘Reaganomics’ boosted US?
“I highlighted the issue of supply-side structural reform at last year’s central economic work conference, and it triggered heated debate, with fairly good endorsement from the international community and various sides at home,” Xi said.
“But some comrades told me that they didn’t fully understand supply-side reform … I need to talk about this issue again.”
Xi said the concept could be implemented by “cutting capacity, reducing inventory, cutting leverage, lowering costs, and strengthening the weak links”.
“Our supply-side reform, to say it in a complete way, is supply-side structural reform, and that’s my original wording used at the central economic work conference,” Xi said.
“The word ‘structural’ is very important, you can shorten it as ‘supply-side reform’, but please don’t forget the word ‘structural’.”
China heading for big economic policy shift, says mystery ‘authoritative’ source in People’s Daily
The key problem for the Chinese economy was “on the supply side”, though China could not afford to completely neglect managing demand.
China could not rely on “stimulating domestic demand to address structural problems such as overcapacity”, he said.
“The problem in China is not about insufficient demand or lack of demand, in fact, demands in China have changed, but supplies haven’t changed accordingly,” Xi said.
He gave the example of Chinese consumers shopping overseas for daily products such as electric rice cookers, toilet covers, milk powder and even baby bottles to show that domestic supply did not match domestic demand.
China’s consumer inflation holds steady as analysts say Beijing may halt further monetary easing to boost economy
Xi’s emphasis on supply-side change was part of a global trend, said Li Yang, a former vice-president at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.
“The economic problems cannot be solved by demand-side policies. Macro economies around the world, including China’s, are changing toward supply-side policies, paying attention to the real economy, structural factors, and eyeing innovation as the major driver,” Li said yesterday.
Guessing game: who is mystery ‘authoritative figure’ claiming major shift in China’s economic policy?
Xi’s comments, in many ways, resonated with an interview with an “authoritative” figure in People’s Daily on Monday who rejected debt-fuelled growth, suggesting Xi’s policy team supported this view.
In his speech, Xi cautioned bureaucrats against repeating mistakes in the management of the country’s economy.
“Capital investment, production safety, stock market management and internet finance regulation all require high skills, and with any misjudgment, imprudent choice or lax supervision, there will be problems or even big problems serious enough to affect social stability,” Xi said.
‘Skyrocketing’ debt at state firms among biggest challenges facing China’s economy
“In recent months, a slew of major accidents happened regarding production safety, the stock market and internet finance, ringing alarm bells one after another,” Xi said.
“You shouldn’t pay your tuition in vain, you have to learn from mistakes and avoid making the same mistake again and again.”
Xi said while China was the second-biggest economy in the world, its economy was “big but not strong” and faced “outstanding problems of unwieldiness, puffiness and weakness”.
“The main symptom is limited innovation, and that’s the Achilles’ heel of China’s [macro] economy,” Xi said.http://www.scmp.com/print/news/china/policies-politics/article/1943469/xi-jinpings-stance-chinas-economy-laid-bare-he?_=1462940068959
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