A Little Trouble in Big China?

 

Peng Shuai

Xi Jingping did not attend the recent environmental summit in Edinburgh. This is responsible of him: airplane fuel generates a lot of greenhouse gases, and no agreement reached at such meetings is ever acted upon.

But Xi has not left China for any reason for over a year and nine months. This suggests something else: that he is at risk of losing his position. 

When Mao Zedong died, he left Hua Guofeng as his designated successor. Reportedly, Hua lost his primacy to Deng Xiaoping while he was on a foreign trip. When the cat’s away … Xi may feel himself vulnerable to something similar.

My Chinese students long ago said there was a sort of social contract in China: so long as everyone kept getting more prosperous, nobody was going to shake things up. But there is no residual good will. The Chinese economy looks shaky; it looks as though a real estate bubble is bursting. On top of COVID and a string of natural disasters.

I have long thought China’s sabre-rattling also suggested some power struggle at the top. A retired Australian general notes that, if China wants to take Taiwan, they are pretty much obliged for strategic reasons first to take out the US bases in Okinawa, South Korea, and Guam. But if they do this, surely, as with Pearl Harbor, they are going to have a Big War, probably sucking in not just the US, but Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NATO. It seems to me improbable that they would risk it. Or risk trying to take Taiwan without it. The threats are for local consumption.

In possibly related news, former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli has been accused online by tennis star Peng Shuai of having forced her into a sexual relationship.

It seems unlikely that Peng would have dared to post this unless she thought she had some high-level protection. Accusations of corruption are a standard tool in Chinese power struggles; Xi Jingping has done this systematically. But the gravity of the sexual charge, against someone at such a high level, is unprecedented. 

Since he is retired, it seems unlikely Zhang himself is the real target; more likely someone who is his current sponsor or mentor. I do not know who that would be, but either way, it seems to speak again of a serious power struggle at the top.