THE Chinese president, Xi Jinping, is facing fierce internal opposition to his policies as he prepares to take the world stage at a triumphant military parade this week to mark the end of the Second World War.
As China’s economy runs into trouble, there is “a fierce struggle beyond imagination” against him inside the Communist party, according to the People’s Daily, its flagship newspaper.
It appears to have burst into the open following the annual conclave of the party’s grandees at the beach resort of Beidaihe.
This is normally an occasion for lobbying and compromises forged over banquets and on seaside walks, after which the leaders emerge with understandings over policy later communicated through the state media. This year, by contrast, there was a resounding silence.
Chinese journalists privately believe something went wrong for Xi at the meeting, which coincided with growing unease about Chinese economic management.
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Stock indexes lurched up and down as party bureaucrats tried to control share prices, while a surprise devaluation of the national currency shook global trade.
Censors banned Chinese editors from telling their public the full story about the stock market crash, fearing the ire of 90m small investors, who now outnumber the party’s 87m members.
The Global Times, a hardline newspaper, blamed its favourite villain, saying the western media wanted to see the end of China’s political and economic model and thus exaggerated things. “They reckon that an economic crisis will lead to national chaos,” it said.
Yet it is China’s own media that has revealed the extent of the resistance to Xi inside the party. This month an extraordinary sequence of articles in the People’s Daily — the voice of the Communist party’s central committee since 1948 — criticised retired cadres for wielding patronage behind the scenes.
It was a clear reference to the former president Jiang Zemin, 89, and to people connected to his successor in 2002, Hu Jintao. Some are identified with a faction linked to Hu’s power base in the Communist Youth League, a group that includes the prime minister, Li Keqiang.
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Last week somebody in Beijing briefed foreign journalists that Li could take the fall for the economic trouble.
Those media hints were mild compared with an article that was given prominence by the People’s Daily and reproduced across other media outlets.
Written under the pen name of “Guoping” — thought to signify a high-level commentary group — it said Xi’s reforms to the economy and his drive against corruption had met “immense difficulties”. “There is a fierce struggle beyond imagination against the reforms,” it declared.
Bureaucratic inertia, greed and resistance by vested interests in China’s big state-owned enterprises were all singled out by commentators interpreting the piece.
Its greatest significance, however, lay in its acknowledgment of something inner circles in Beijing and dissidents in Hong Kong have talked about for more than a year: fear and loathing of Xi in the party’s own ranks.
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“Chinese politics at this level is a zero-sum game and there’s deep worry about how much power this guy [Xi] has accumulated in his own hands,” said a source in Hong Kong with elite connections.
“They all fear he’s going to turn into another Mao and never leave power. There is a sense that they are turning on each other and nobody is safe.”
Some of the party’s 250-strong central committee disapproved of the purge of Zhou Yongkang, the former security boss and rival to Xi, who was given a show trial and a life sentence for alleged corruption.
Others were appalled when the party’s internal discipline department seized Ling Jihua, who was private secretary to the former president Hu, drew up a list of charges and expelled him from the party.
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The net is also closing around a key power broker, Zeng Qinghong, who still has a coterie of supporters.
When Xi welcomes luminaries such as Vladimir Putin to the podium on Thursday to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, however, he will exude his usual air of regal calm.
Involving about 12,000 troops from China’s People’s Liberation Army and 1,000 from other nations, the parade will be a show of might that Beijing and Moscow both know how to stage to perfection.
Just as Putin — having his sixth meeting with Xi in less than a year — faced a number of prominent no-shows at his own Second World War victory parade in May, the Chinese leader may be disappointed by the list of those attending.
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The leaders of Britain, America and France — though China’s wartime allies against Japan — will not be there, although Chinese officials said Tony Blair would be present.
How sick is China?, Business
Stock market dreams dashed
When Gui Chenxiong assumed control of his mother’s stock market portfolio in March, he had high expectations, writes Tom Pattinson in Beijing.
“She has been playing the market for years,” said the 33-year-old salesman seated in a coffee shop in Beijing’s fashionable Sanlitun district. “Last year she made £3,500 in four months by trading her stocks.”
Chinese shares have repeatedly nose-dived over the summer but, like all gamblers, Gui remains committed to his dreams of riches. “Right now we have to remain in the market to try and get the money back we lost.”
The number of millionaires in China doubled between 2010 and 2015, thanks in part to the stock market. Speculative traders drawn from the ranks of bus drivers and dinner ladies shared in the bonanza. Not all are as phlegmatic as Gui.
“I’ve lost £2,000 this month and I quit,” said Yang Kang, 26, an IT retailer. “You have to have some serious luck to stay in this market long enough to actually make money from it.”
Liu Jing, 36, was less worried. “I still feel positive that our market will rise again,” she said.