Spring 2019 Issue 59

Beginning in late 2017, Xi Jinping found himself facing a new and daunting foreign policy challenge: The Trump Administration had adopted an openly confrontational policy towards China. This unfolded with a barrage of U.S. actions, such as naming China “a strategic competitor” and adopting successive rounds of tariffs, among other actions. This article analyzes China’s diplomatic response to the shift in U.S. policy, as reflected in China’s approach to the United States as well as to other countries. It argues that China did not adopt a confrontational strategy of its own. Rather, Beijing’s response focused on avoiding confrontation and preventing escalation with the United States, including by deferring major internal debates about the need for a new diplomatic strategy. Towards the rest of the world, Beijing took steps to stabilize its immediate Asian periphery and ties with Europe to limit its exposure to confrontation with Washington; it looked for opportunities to expand its presence and influence (especially in places where the United States had stepped back); and it invested further in ties with countries, notably Russia, that share China’s desire to constrain U.S. power.

Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, there have been major structural, legal, personnel, and policy changes to the CCP’s approach to domestic security. Xi has created new institutions, such as the Central National Security Commission and the National Supervision Commission, to improve coordination among the various agencies of the coercive apparatus and to tighten discipline and anti-corruption efforts within the party-state. The People’s Armed Police has also been restructured. Significant turnover of personnel has occurred within the domestic security agencies (including the leadership of both the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security), partly due to efforts to remove officials associated with Zhou Yongkang, former head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. Meanwhile, a number of new laws on domestic security and the expansion of tech-based approaches to social control, such as grid management, represent attempts to strengthen the CCP’s ability to police contention within Chinese society. Finally, there has been a major shift in the CCP’s security strategy in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, resulting in heightened international scrutiny and attention. This article reviews these developments and their cumulative effect on domestic security in China under Xi Jinping.

How do we explain the radical shift in the Chinese Communist Party’s policies in the frontier region of Xinjiang, where more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are now interned in prison-like re-education camps? Based on a close reading of official sources, this article explores the evolution of China’s mass internment strategy and the key policy-drivers, institutions, and actors in Xinjiang policy over the last decade. It argues irrational fears of instability and dismemberment are driving the party’s unprecedented securitization and transformation strategy, with top party leaders convinced of the failure of ethnic accommodation and of the urgent need for increased inter-ethnic “blending” and “fusion.” Under Xi Jinping, Xinjiang has emerged as the party’s incubator for a more assertive and coercive form of nation-building and cultural re-engineering. The result is a surface level calm that hides deep social and psychological anxieties while at the same undermining cultural diversity and social trust.

Xi Jinping’s speech marking the 40th anniversary of reform and opening on December 18, 2018 recapitulates the substantial ideological and policy changes he has initiated since coming to power in late 2012. A comparison of this speech with speeches by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao on the 20th and 30th anniversary of reform and opening respectively reveals significant differences in terms of ideological rhetoric and substantive policy issues. Whereas the speeches by Jiang and Hu adhere to the basic ideological and policy guidelines established by Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping’s speech underscores his personal authority and political vision. Most significantly, Xi’s speech emphasizes the supremacy of Communist Party centralized and unified strongman rule and China’s bold and expansive role in international affairs. The uncompromising tone of his speech suggests that it is unlikely that Xi will make substantial changes to his domestic and foreign policies despite the strong headwinds both domestically and internationally.

The ongoing trade feud with the United States, combined with an internal economic slowdown and the party’s tightening grip on the economy, presented China’s private sector with unprecedented challenges as President Xi began his second term in 2018. Beijing has responded to the frustrated private sector with promises of substantial tax cuts and an expansion of credit, together with a pledge to further deepen structural reforms and to double down on spurring indigenous innovation. What will Xi’s second term mean for the private sector? Some worry that he will further roll back the market-oriented reforms; a more hopeful scenario is that the hostile international environment and the mounting domestic pressures will counteract any anti-market trends and provide the party’s reform-leaning politicians with a rare opportunity to push forward market reforms and to create a true level playing field for the private sector.