Xi's 'opaque' system: As factions fight for power, 'no one dares showing opposition to great leader'
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00:00U.S. media is reporting that former Chinese Foreign Minister Ching Gong is now working
00:04in a lowly publishing job, quoting former U.S. officials.
00:08Once Beijing's ambassador to Washington, Chin was seen as a Xi Jinping loyalist, but
00:13disappeared from public view in summer 2023, just five months after being named foreign
00:18minister.
00:19He was later formally removed from the position and had not been heard from since.
00:23This once again raises the specter of high-ranking Communist Party officials disappearing under
00:28Xi Jinping.
00:29And for more on this, I can bring in Jean-Philippe Bége, political scientist and researcher
00:33emeritus at the CNRS and the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris.
00:39Good morning, Jean-Philippe Bége.
00:41This appears to be a sharp fall from grace for the once-favorite Ching Gong, but he does
00:45appear to be still at liberty.
00:47So what can we make of this?
00:49Well, it's very difficult to know.
00:51First of all, we're not absolutely sure that he is working at this publishing house.
00:55But on the other hand, disappearances are something quite common in China.
01:03You know, under Mao, many leaders disappeared, and then it was announced that they had been
01:10either jailed or executed.
01:13But no one did know about them at that time, because the West wasn't interested.
01:18Then it happened very often to dissidents.
01:22People who are usually human rights lawyers, for example, and other political dissidents
01:29very often disappear, and then they reappear a few months later, and they are submitted
01:36to trial.
01:37And the last thing, which has been quite frequent under Xi Jinping, are Communist Party leading
01:44cadres who are put under what's called shuang gui, which is a parallel justice system of
01:53the Communist Party.
01:54Usually they disappear for a few months, and then the news, the piece of news appears to
02:01say that they have made serious violation of discipline.
02:05Then they go back to the Department of Justice, and they're tried under the normal justice
02:15system and are usually sentenced to either life imprisonment or very heavy prison sentences.
02:24We thought that it might happen with Qin Gang.
02:27Apparently, this is not the case.
02:29But it tells a lot about the absence of transparency of the Communist Party system under Xi Jinping.
02:38And as you said, disappearances of high-ranking party officials, it goes back decades in China.
02:43But Xi Jinping himself has been particularly ruthless in eliminating people that he sees
02:48as rivals in his rise to power and maintaining power.
02:52But Qin was somebody who was in his favor, which was much to the annoyance of other cadres
02:58in the party.
03:00Is this move one of Xi Jinping's himself, or do you think it might have been imposed
03:03by outer forces within the security state?
03:06Well, this is very difficult to say, because we don't have any reliable information on
03:12the disappearance of Qin Gang.
03:15It was a surprise, because he was promoted in early 2023 and then disappeared five months
03:23later, whereas he had been on a helicopter career.
03:27So of course, we all thought that maybe it was imposed by the inner party struggle.
03:35This is very difficult to decide.
03:38So if Qin Gang is actually working in a publishing house, it might be that he has been protected
03:48by the higher ranking, by the leadership of the party, because there were many rumors
03:55to say that he had a mistress in the United States, that he had been corrupted.
03:59In this case, he would have been shuang gui, and then sentenced to a life sentence.
04:06But this is not the case.
04:07So it's very difficult.
04:09Of course, you know, although Xi Jinping appears to be in command completely, there are inner
04:14struggles inside the party.
04:16And we might know in a few months that the Qin Gang affair was more complicated than
04:23we thought.
04:24And Qin Gang, of course, a former Chinese ambassador to Washington, he was one of the
04:29earliest examples of China's aggressive so-called wolf warrior diplomacy.
04:35But that has since been scaled back a little bit by Beijing.
04:39Is this also a suggestion that cleaving too close to a party directive can ultimately
04:44be costly if the line later changes?
04:47Well, this is very difficult to say, because, you know, the relationship with the United
04:52States have, in fact, been better since last year.
05:01But I'm not sure it's linked to Qin Gang.
05:05And I'm not sure that the disappearance of Qin Gang is a sign of more opening towards
05:10the United States.
05:11Actually, it would be the contrary, because the fate of Qin Gang shows that the system
05:17is even more opaque than ever.
05:20So I'm not sure this is a very good signal sent to the United States.
05:27If you can't really understand what's happening in your partner's politics, it's very difficult
05:33to have a more, how to say, a more healthy relationship with it.
05:37So I think there are many factors which explain why the Chinese scaled back their discourse
05:47about the United States.
05:48But I don't think it has to do very much with Qin Gang.
05:52And the Chinese Communist Party is pretty much governed by a paranoid style.
05:57There are, as we mentioned, a long history of high-ranking party members disappearing,
06:03being arrested, being tried and so on.
06:06Also Xi Jinping's long-standing anti-corruption drives has eliminated a number of people.
06:12And there have been arrests and disappearances of people in civil society, including very,
06:17very low-ranking protesters during the Covid protests in Shanghai.
06:22Do you think that this style that dominates the Communist Party, is it ultimately damaging
06:27to both the party and China as a whole?
06:30Well, of course, you could say that it is damaging in the long run.
06:35But immediately, it's a very handy way to get rid of your would-be opponents.
06:45Since Xi Jinping has come to power in 2012, there have been much more crackdowns on civil
06:53society and also, as you said, on corruption inside the party, which means also on Xi Jinping's
07:00eventual rivals.
07:03So in the long run, I'm sure it is damaging not only to the party, but of course to the
07:10whole of China.
07:13But for the moment, we don't see any light, any way of going out of this kind of exercise
07:22of power.
07:23Xi Jinping's power is threatened by various contradictions.
07:30Of course, we don't know much about the party's inner struggle, but history shows that there
07:35have always been factions fighting for power.
07:39So the response of Xi Jinping is having a crackdown and having everybody obey his rule.
07:47Apparently, this works, but it works until we know that something else has happened and
07:52that opposition might be developing inside the party.
07:56But this is still very opaque and no one dares show its opposition to the great leader.
08:03Thank you very much for that, Jean-Philippe Berger of the CNRS and Sciences Po in Paris.