BEIJING—One morning in mid-January, about 120 of the Communist Party’s top disciplinarians gathered to hear Chinese President Xi Jinping chart their priorities for the new year. After a three-year anticorruption sweep in which some 750,000 party members were punished, Mr. Xi now had another demand: enforce unswerving loyalty to preserve “the party’s centralized unity.”
A number of officials were penalized in recent months for internal dissent—described as political deviance—while Mr. Xi called on cadres, academics and journalists to demonstrate allegiance to the central leadership. Last week, on Mr. Xi’s orders, the party told its 88 million members to study Mao Zedong’s 1949 guidelines on party work style as a matter of “political discipline.”
Mr. Xi’s clout is set to be tested over the next two weeks, when roughly 3,000 lawmakers meet in Beijing to go over his economic blueprint for the next five years. Among them are officials resentful of the president’s attacks on vested interests, and technocrats concerned that Mr. Xi’s ideological campaigning could stifle much-needed reforms for China’s growth model.
This year’s National People’s Congress, which starts Saturday, comes as China’s slowing growth and volatile markets have unnerved investors and spurred worries about the management of the world’s No. 2 economy.
China’s annual legislative session is largely a ceremonial affair, though behind closed doors it can be the stage for contentious policy debates and power struggles. In 2012, inner party discord broke through the surface when then-Premier Wen Jiabao publicly rebuked Bo Xilai, a regional party chief seen as a contender for top office, foreshadowing Mr. Bo’s downfall.
Mr. Xi’s full-court press for political orthodoxy suggests that his priority, in his fourth year as leader, is to secure the allegiance of a party unsettled by his anticorruption shake-up and China’s deepening economic woes.
An early sign of Mr. Xi’s crackdown on internal party dissent came in October, when the party adopted a new rule against the “improper discussion” of national policies.
Within weeks, the chief editor of a state-run newspaper in the restive western region of Xinjiang was fired for contradicting official policies on terrorism and religious extremism. The deputy party secretary for Beijing was later dismissed for violations including “improper discussion of central party policy,” according to the party’s disciplinary agency.
In February, the governor of Sichuan, one of China’s most populous provinces, was removed from his post for disloyalty and dishonesty to the party—becoming the first high-ranking party official to be dismissed in recent years without being accused of corruption. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
Mr. Xi appears to be responding to the economic distress that has shaken faith in his administration by signaling zero tolerance for officials who resist Beijing’s directives. In the process, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has acquired significant muscle. Some say it has never been more powerful.
“There’s a growing effort to use the party disciplinary-inspection apparatus as a tool to impose greater central control,” said Carl Minzner, a law professor at Fordham University who studies the Chinese legal system.
Mr. Xi isn’t the first Chinese leader to use the CCDI for shoring up political legitimacy. The party has long barred opposition to its four cardinal principles—the upholding of socialism, democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the party, as well as “Mao Zedong thought” and Marxism-Leninism.
In recent decades, the party has used corruption instead of political offenses as the main justification for punishment of senior officials. That was a response to the 1989 pro-democracy protests that were partly driven by public anger over graft, according to Ling Li, a visiting professor on Chinese legal history at the University of Vienna. This allowed Chinese leaders to wage political battles without exposing internal discord, she said.
Under Mr. Xi, such discretion has faded. The CCDI says the new rule on “improper discussion” targets cadres who eschew internal consultations while criticizing party policies elsewhere, and was added after the agency found serious cases of political deviance during its antigraft work.
“We found that the damage done by political indiscipline is far greater than that caused by corruption,” Luo Dongchuan, a senior CCDI official, told reporters at a Jan. 15 news briefing.
The new rule “is a more recent tool to rein in local resistance and defiance, perceived or real,” said Fu Hualing, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “But the heavy-handed approach to silence criticism may also backfire.”
Party disciplinarians now also act as ideological arbiters. The CCDI has said it is increasing enforcement of “political discipline” in universities and colleges, with checks on teachers who “make improper comments in classes.”
Prominent voices have emerged against the clampdown. In a blog post recently, the top editor of the party-run Global Times tabloidcalled on Chinese authorities to show greater tolerance for dissenting opinions. A similar message from an outspoken Chinese real-estate mogul, who is also a party member, was quickly quashed online.
Disciplinary officials denied censoring contrarian opinions. Xiao Pei, vice minister at the Ministry of Supervision, which oversees discipline across the Chinese bureaucracy, said the party welcomes constructive criticism. However, he said at the Jan. 15 briefing, “The fundamentals are that the entire party must adhere to the central leadership and protect the party’s unity—this is the boundary.” http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-puts-loyalty-to-the-test-at-congress-1456853257
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