The Chinese Communist Party, Modernization, and Identity

In On Identity, his book from the late 1990s, the Lebanese French writer Amin Maalouf wrote of the ways in which modernity had largely been driven and owned by the West. This had consequences. “For the Chinese, Africans, Japanese, Indians and American Indians, as for Greeks, Iranians, Russians, Arabs, Jews and Turks,” he argued, “modernization has constantly meant the abandoning of parts of themselves.”

Non-Western countries, in effect, had to give up part of their identity to be modernized. Those that didn’t got stuck in nostalgia and backwardness. In the end, for many reasons, this ended up being a one-way choice: countries did it and survived, largely on the terms of others, or refused to, and waited to suffer the consequences.

When the full history of Chinese modernization is written (and, as this is still an act in progress, that won’t be for quite some time), it will need to recognize two crucial factors. The first is that modernization in China from the end of the Qing dynasty onwards proceeded with particular challenges in regard to balancing Chinese cultural identity with compromises made to ideas and forces from the outside world. Things need to be adapted to local conditions to survive in China. The second is that somehow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was the one entity, before and after coming to power in 1949, that had a viable answer on how to modernize on Chinese terms.

The Party, after all, took a modernizing theory from the West (Marxism), and applied it largely on its own terms to conditions in China, transforming Marxism from an urban-based revolutionary political movement to a rural one. Since 1978, we have seen maybe an even more remarkable “indiginization” of Western-sourced modernizing ideas – the adoption of capitalism and markets but in a China run by one party, where socialism still prevailed.

The endpoint of this is that in 2018, a sense of vindication, of some kind of victory for the Party, is palpable. That’s perhaps the most striking aspect of the Xi leadership. The CCP feels it has delivered a local form of modernity unlike anywhere else, which suits China despite taking so much from the outside world. Perhaps this helps explain the mystery of how, in such a complex, dynamic, and often fragmented society, Xi looks increasingly so assured and powerful. His style of leadership exemplifies this exultant sense of modernity finally coming to China on China’s own terms. Chinese people look at this and, pragmatically, enjoy the sense of confidence and security it brings, even if they care little for the minutiae of Marxism-Leninism, or, for that matter, the new Xi Jinping ideology written into the CCP Constitution last October.

One of the supreme ironies of the current situation China finds itself in is that the one thing it was often criticized and attacked for in the past – having a unique form of governance, where one party has a monopoly on power and follows an idiosyncratic ideology – has ended up being a source of strength. It is part of China’s identity, its sense of being exceptional and unique, that has maintained the current set up. In a strange way, it doesn’t greatly matter what the Party leadership around Xi says they believe; more relevant is the fact that they say these things in a way that is different from anyone else. The key thing is that they are exceptional. It seems Chinese people, broadly, like that.

This powerful link between exceptional identity and the Party is frequently, and perilously, overlooked. Interlocutors within the Chinese party system in the past used to admit with some candour that the set up was inefficient, often unjust, and prone to instability. But the unspoken follow up to this was usually something like: “But it’s our unique system, created by us, chosen by us.” The logic could be taken further. Chinese might have suffered in the Maoist era, but at least they were doing so at their own hands, rather than through the bullying and force of outsiders. That gave China a certain point of defense. Enduring social turmoil and chaos as happened in the Cultural Revolution might be despicable – but submitting to humiliation from foreigners was far worse.

The Xi era has seen identity politics in China like never before. There is jubilant expectation about finally being recognized by the outside world as a strong power. It doesn’t matter much that there are criticisms and fears about how China looks, what it is doing, and what its aims are. The main thing at the moment is the spectacle of uniqueness, power, and force that China’s leaders and its economy exemplify. And like people watching a drama in a theater, it doesn’t matter much what lies behind the acting and the posturing – the key thing is that the spectacle at least looks good.

Xi Jinping as a leader is the repository of all this symbolic power. He is a storyteller, and also an actor; the embodiment of a confident nation speaking on its own terms to a world that held the upper hand so much in the past (at least according to narratives of history within China over the last few decades), and now no longer seems to have that advantage. In the midst of this story, having a leader like Donald Trump in China’s most powerful competitor, the United States, is truly a gift that has fallen from heaven. In contrast to the disarray and discord of Trump’s own Republican Party in the United States, Xi can present the political organization he represents as remorselessly unified. CCP cadres have a story that they all believe in. That’s a massive advantage.

All of this helps to explain the sense of hubris and vindication emanating from Beijing now. And in recollecting the harsh experience of modernity largely on terms laid down by others up to 1949, it is rational and understandable that China is doing things the way it has, and feels the way it currently does.

Still, we have to remember one thing: Stories are just stories. In the end, there is always the delicate matter of what is true, and what is false. The brutal fact remains that, in 2018, for Chinese, and the outside world, the reality of Chinese power is still not apparent.