Axel Berkofsky (Ispi): “The Xi-thought is everything and nothing, nothing more than everything. Youth unemployment is a dangerous element, the protest in Beijing is exceptional”.
“Economic growth and prosperity” in exchange for ‘silence’, the guarantee that there will be no challenges “to the governance of the Chinese Communist Party”. It is the “agreement between the CCP and the Chinese people” on which the strength of the Party-State was based with the worry of internal stability in a China with over 1.4 billion inhabitants, which insists on the ‘Zero Covid policy ‘, with serious repercussions for the economy and the lives of millions of people. In a China that is heading towards the XX National Congress of the CCP with Xi Jinping, who is about to consolidate his excessive power with a third unprecedented mandate as leader. This “agreement is not collapsing”, but it no longer works well “if an authoritarian regime can no longer create material prosperity” and is “in trouble”. Axel Berkofsky, professor at the University of Pavia and Co-Head of the Asia Center of the ISPI, reasons with Adnkronos on the future of China pending the opening of the expected political event in the Dragon, where protests were recorded yesterday with Xi, that leader whose “thought” is “everything and nothing, more nothing than everything”, and who will most likely “rule for life”.
“China has a very large middle class and not everyone is suffering immediate economic decline, but the big project is in danger”, says Berkofsky, stating that he does not see an “immediate governance crisis”, but not excluding this ” possibility “also because” internal political stability depends on economic growth “and” China too, if it does not change course, could go into recession, perhaps not officially “. The expert insists on “youth unemployment”, on the ‘Zero Covid’ policy which “for the first time created significant unemployment especially among young people”, an element “dangerous for the Chinese regime”, and on what he considers a ” potentially dangerous phase “. He underlines how “exceptional” is what the international media reported yesterday about the protest in Beijing with banners against Xi (“dictator and traitor of the nation”), against the ‘Zero Covid’ policy, for “reforms”. “Exceptional” also for the mass surveillance that is a reality in China, not only because it arrived a few days before the Party Congress.
A protest, immediately ‘contained’, in an Asian giant in which Xi will probably “rule for life”, who “considers himself as Mao” and which for now has not raised ‘heirs’, even if Berkofsky – underlining how for the Chinese leader there is no lack of disputes with factions that would only wait to ride “weaknesses” and currents that “are not entirely satisfied – invites you to wait for the conclusion of the Congress and that ‘rite’ that sees the leaders of the Party enter the Great Hall of the People, in order As in 2017, Xi will in all likelihood be the first – as secretary general reconfirmed for the third time – but it is on who follows him that the observers will focus. “There are names circulating, but nothing concrete, nothing transparent”, observes the analyst.
Among the names to keep an eye on as possible new entries in the Politburo Standing Committee, the Washington Post indicated that of Hu Chunhua because, who grew up in the same faction as the Communist Youth of Premier Li Keqiang, if he were to join the Standing Committee it would be a signal of the will to balance the power of Xi’s super loyalists. The Post also reported Chen Min’er, very loyal to the Chinese leader, Ding Xuexiang, very close to Xi, and Li Qiang, a close ally of Xi, who – according to Berkofsky – could continue (without heirs) to “politically eliminate rivals” .
His thinking, Berkofsky observes, is made up of “slogans and nothing else”, like that of the “great renewal”, the “Chinese dream”, whose “last act is reunification with Taiwan”. “There is no real content, it is a continuation of the tradition of Chinese domestic politics”, he highlights, recalling how the slogan of Taiwan’s “reunification” is far from reality for an island – de facto independent – that the Chinese Communist Party he never ruled, “not even for a day”. And how Taiwan “has nothing to do with the ‘great renewal'”, which instead wants to “put everything in the same category” in the context of a thought that – he reiterates – “is everything and nothing, but nothing more than everything because we don’t know anything. “
Made of “slogan” to “make sense of his third eternal mandate” and to “sell the so-called Xi-thought (taught since school) in Chinese society without giving details” because “if you add details people start asking”. It is all a “bubble of nonsense rhetoric” by a leader who – the expert highlights – takes steps from “threats on Taiwan” to “geopolitics” that “will have a very negative impact on the Chinese economy” in a giant Asia where “rapid economic growth has always created the foundation for the Party’s claim to power”.
Source-www.adnkronos.com