China has taken umbrage at U.S. President Joe Biden calling President of China Xi Jinping a dictator. Unfortunately for Beijing, however, the U.S. President is right.
At a fundraiser campaign on June 20, 2023, night, Joe Biden said Xi was embarrassed over recent tensions surrounding a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had been shot down by the U.S. Air Force over the East Coast. “That’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they did not know what had happened,” Biden commented.
The next day Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning called the comment by the U.S. President “extremely absurd and irresponsible,” as it went “totally against facts.” President Biden has subsequently made it clear that he will continue to stick to his opinion, though that does not mean souring relations with President Xi.
The administration that President Xi heads in China, however, fits all the definitions of a dictatorial form of government; by no means is it a democracy. Indeed, being President of China he is the head of the government, as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China he is the head of the ruling party and as head of the Central Military Commission he is also the head of the Chinese military. Thus, he wields absolute power; the way few other rulers in the whole world do.
Encyclopaedia Britannica defines dictatorship as “a form of government in which one person of a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations.” Dictators usually stay in power through the suppression of civil liberties. They may also employ techniques of mass propaganda in order to sustain their public support.
In China, the seven-member Standing Committee of the Communist Party wields great power, the members of the Standing Committee have elected Xi Jinping as the President of China for a record third time. Technically, the central committee of the CPC, with about 370 members, elects the General Secretary of the party who is the President of China; CPC being a cadre-based party the common people have no say in this.
As political observers have pointed out, President Xi Jinping has not been elected to his position through a competitive multi-party election and popular vote; which is the norm in practising democracies. So, what is wrong in calling President Xi Jinping a dictator? There is one political party that runs the government in China unchallenged and President Xi heads that party, wielding absolute power. That is what dictatorship is all about.
It is also a fact that President Xi has managed to stay in power by means of suppression of civil liberties. And the well-oiled Chinese propaganda machine has helped him to stay in power. The most recent evidence was the way the popular demand in China that he should step down raised in the wake of the untold human sufferings experienced in the country because of a draconian lock-down was suppressed. The protestors were called to police stations, questioned and harassed. The media in China, in any case, is not free and did to report anything.
The Chinese propaganda machine is reputed to be the strongest in the world and has been credited with creating the myth of an invincible China. Day in and day out, mouthpieces of the Communist Party of China and state-controlled newspapers and news agencies are engaged falsely in extolling the virtues of the party and the state. Criticisms are not allowed. This also helps President Xi to stay in power.
As a matter of fact, all communist countries are ruled by dictators. They call it the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ In practical terms, however, it is the dictatorship of the
communist party. The so-called proletariats, the working class, have no say in the running of the government and the party. Common people who belong to other sections of the society — the peasants, the small traders — are in any case a non- entity. The general secretary of the communist party is all-powerful, he runs the party as well as the government; unchallenged. He is the dictator.
Since the time of Lenin, the communist leader of Soviet Russia, certain terms have been coined to package the dictatorial form of government in a palatable form, like ‘democratic centralism.’ In theory it says that within a communist party all decisions are taken in a democratic form; maybe even through voting. Once a decision has been adopted, however, everyone within the party has to abide by that.
Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Prakash Karat, himself in an article has referred to criticisms of the concept of ‘democratic centralism’ being levelled from within the CPI (M). “Democratic centralism is accused of creating a hierarchical, centralized structure which stifles democracy and democratic functioning. The writ of the Polit Bureau and the Central Committee runs. The party members and cadres are to carry out the directives of the Central Committee. Contrary or dissenting views have no place to be heard or considered. A party based on democratic centralism enables the party leadership to disregard the opinion of the party as a whole. This creates a barrier between the people and the party.”
The Communist Party of China goes a step further, the constitution of the CPC as adopted in 2022 makes no pretence to set up even a facade of democracy. The CPC now wants to build the “people’s democratic dictatorship.” No one knows what is the exact meaning of this term, how democracy and dictatorship co-exist under the same umbrella, how dictatorship can be democratic. It is nothing but a euphemism for introducing dictatorship through the backdoor. In any case, the word “people’s” which is a part of the same phrase does not carry much meaning. The people of China do not figure in this scheme of things, both democracy and dictatorship belong to the ruling CPC.
Now if we leave the realm of theory and come down to the practicalities, the question may be asked: what are the manifestations of this so-called democracy under the rule of President Xi Jinping? Is there democracy in Hong Kong? On June 15, 2023, the European Union Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a resolution, condemning the deterioration of freedom in Hong Kong since the imposition by Beijing of a sweeping National Security Law in 2020. It urged the Hong Kong government to release and drop all charges against publisher Jimmy Lal along with other pro-democracy activists who had been arrested under the NSL. The resolution renewed the call of the Parliament on the EU to introduce targeted sanctions against officials, including the leader of Hong Kong John Lee, responsible for “the ongoing human rights crackdown in the city.”
Freedom and human rights are synonymous with the concept of democracy. In 2022, experts of the United Nations, in a critical report on violation of human rights of Uyghur minorities in the Xinjiang province of China, expressed “profound concerns over systematic human rights violations and their widespread effect on individuals and minorities in China’s Uyghur Autonomous Region.” This “cannot and should not be ignored by the international community,” they said, and repeated a call for the Human Rights Council to convene a special session on China. Following this, in August 2022,
U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in her report said the violation of human rights in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Violation of human rights in the Tibet plateau which has been under the illegal occupation of China since 1950 is an old story. Under the rule of President Xi, these violations have taken the novel form of weaning the Tibetan children away from their family, language and culture and forcing them to adopt the Han Chinese way of life. According to reports, schools imparting education in Tibetan language and culture are being closed down in the Tibet plateau and a large number of boarding schools have been set up where Tibetan children are admitted and taught only Mandarin and groomed in the Han Chinese way of life. It is a diabolical plan to finish off the Tibetans as a race and can hardly be expected from a government steeped in democracy.
The real nature of the rule of President Xi Jinping was exposed in 2018 when the rubber stamp legislature of China National People’s Congress lifted the two-term limit for the President of China to facilitate President Xi to continue for life in his post. As against this, Joe Biden of the U.S., who is now into his first term of four years as President, will have to go after the maximum tenure of eight years even if he is re- elected in 2024. That is because he is the President of the oldest democracy in the world. Per se, however, no one has any reason to take umbrage at being called a dictator as dictators can be benevolent too, say observers. But democracy is a superior form of government.