A well-written, succinct insight into the internal context in which Xi Jinping steers China towards global dominance. Australia's inept response will inevitably lead to profound economical and even cultural humiliation. Most interesting was the way in which Xi is shoring up his position by cleansing and then using the Party to abet and then take a slice of the entrepreneurial profits. How long can this all continue - anyone's guess. It would be fascinating to know more about Xi Jinping, the man and his family. Richard McGregor mentions briefly that for all the purging of corruption, Xi's family have been generously profiting. Will this be the ultimate backlash or will it be ignored? ( )

President Xi Jinping of China is a man often depicted as having rooted out his enemies, silenced his critics, and made himself leader for life with as yet no apparent successors. He’s presented as a towering presence with a personality cult unrivalled since the time of Mao, and just as much a fixed and immovable object.

In Xi Jinping: The Backlash, Richard McGregor, a Fellow at Australian think tank the Lowy Institute, suggests Xi’s future is rather less certain. Newly made enemies at home may now outnumber even his enemies abroad.

“As long as China’s economy remains reasonably healthy,” says McGregor, “he can count on sufficient support to retain his hold on the system. But the anger towards Xi is potent nonetheless.”

This short Penguin Special is in part an update to the former Financial Times China bureau chief’s The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (2010), a revelatory examination of the Chinese Communist Party’s inner workings that’s now found on the shelves of every serious student of contemporary China.

In Backlash he brings this commentary into the Xi Jinping era, describing Xi’s re-instatement of Mao-style purges, perpetual ideological education, and tests for loyalty. Since becoming Party general secretary in 2012 and China’s President in 2013, Xi has not only reversed many small steps that had been taken toward a more open society, but exerted Party control even further than before.

But in doing so he has made many enemies, from low-key reformers who had quietly campaigned for modest advances, such as tiny steps towards a fair and independent legal system, to the families and networks of the rich and powerful, even down to village level, that his high-profile anti-corruption campaign destroyed.

Xi made his position clear at the opening of the Party Congress in October 2017 “‘Government, military, society and schools, north, south, east and west—the Party is the leader of all.’”

McGregor also quotes dissident Gao Hongming, on exactly what this means. “‘Under the absolute leadership of the Party,’ Gao wrote, ‘the people are nothing; the state is nothing; the constitution is nothing; the law is nothing. The Chinese judicial system is [the] Communist Party.’”

Others would argue that this has always been the case, and foreign engagement with China has long been based on carefully looking the other way, on acknowledging the Party’s misdeeds but playing down their scale, or on claiming that engagement is mitigating the Party’s influence and helping “peaceful evolution” to change the whole country for the better, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Foreign businesses have long put up with breaches of contract, restricted market access, theft of intellectual property, and more. But under Xi, Party cells have not only been inserted into even the largest enterprises, Chinese and foreign, but these cells now have a louder presence, participating in decisions at boardroom level and demanding their influence be publicly acknowledged.

“Companies as diverse as the cosmetics giant L’Oréal to Walt Disney and Dow Chemicals in China now all have party committees and display the hammer and sickle on their premises,” McGregor points out.

But whereas in the past companies would hide their dissatisfaction this is now sometimes being openly expressed. Had this slender volume gone slightly later to press McGregor would no doubt have had much to say about the Party’s recent interactions with America’s NBA over free speech tweeting, and Apple Computer over sales of a police monitoring app.

Foreign business enchantment with China is fading and that presents a threat to the continued economic growth Xi’s survival requires. When he ran Zhejiang Province, Xi was supportive of the private enterprises that made it one of the wealthiest in China, but McGregor thinks that Xi sees private companies as merely tools to strengthen the economy to the point at which it can run without them. Marxist claims that private property will be abolished and private companies turned over to the workers are once again frequently heard.

However, McGregor thinks it was Xi’s 2018 removal of term limits, making himself President-for-life, that began the foreign backlash, although this had perhaps become necessary for his own safety.

“Xi,” says McGregor, “has left himself with a perilously narrow off-ramp from office. Even with all the political and physical protection his current position offers, if he were to ever step down he knows that he, or at least his family and his close allies, would be vulnerable to being locked up by whomever came after him.”

So perhaps his end will eventually be preceded by more widespread purges, and he will hand-pick a successor who will protect his family, much as Mao Zedong supposedly anointed Hua Guofeng: “With you in charge, I’m at ease.”

McGregor doesn’t say. But anyone reading this book will afterwards be far better placed to make their own forecasts. ( )