Beyond The Lines | China’s Great Leap Backward — with Covid characteristics

Xi Jinping’s new year address, by now, serves as a weather vane that helps the world read the Chinese tea leaves in the year ahead. It isn’t surprising since what Xi thinks today, China does tomorrow. The most remarkable features of Xi Jinping’s new year address on the eve of 2023 were the sobering down of a previously shrill reunification pitch on Taiwan, and the use of a conciliatory tone to address China’s recent domestic upheavals on Covid-linked protests. In a departure from earlier speeches, gone was the aggressive headlining of the term ‘reunification’ to foist China’s desire to end Taiwan’s autonomy. Instead, a sobering line highlighted Taiwan as an ‘aspiration’ in which ‘compatriots on both sides of the Strait will work together with a unity of purpose…’ Does that whataboutery mean China has postponed its reunification goal? No, in fact, it merely recalibrates its narrative towards annexing Taiwan. And the reason emerges from a closer home that needs ‘reunification’. Unlike early 2022, Xi’s year started with fighting immediate domestic fires that are potentially tricky. So, when the inscrutable premier responded to domestic protests saying that it was natural for different people to hold different views on the same issue one might have been excused for believing they were attending a democratic convention. Except, it was not. For Xi Jinping to have used an inclusive tone for his domestic audience was more an acknowledgement that the threat lay closer home than an actual embrace of diverse voices. The power trip In roughly five decades, China appears to have come full circle and embraced Mao Zedong in the new age. In doing so, its approach towards strategic issues has been shaped by its deep-seated inferiority complex in relation to the global powers of the times and a desire to be recognised as a significant global power. Let’s examine. Between 1958 and 1962, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward policy resulted in the deaths of 45 million people, making it the biggest mass murder in modern history. But the West was still coming to terms with its own pogroms of the Second World War. Meanwhile, China was creating its own narrative: Mao invited senior French politician François Mitterrand to a China tour in 1961. A witless Mitterrand visited China and declared: “The people of China have never been near famine.” The Chinese narrative worked and the massacre of millions was conveniently ignored. Why? Because China was an exotic landmass in faraway Asia and not in Europe. Thus, the West didn’t care. President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger didn’t care because China didn’t threaten them. The Great Leap Forward was a project aimed to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that China had a better economic development model than them. Mao wanted to produce more steel than England, and best its record as an industrial nation. Historian Frank Dikötter, author of Mao’s Great Famine, writes that Mao believed in building a progressive China by herding the entire country into giant communes. People had their homes, land, and livelihoods taken away from them. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. China wanted to establish the communist model as a superior one compared to the US-backed Taiwanese democracy in the neighbourhood. China conducted limited attacks against Taiwan in 1958. It was time to demonstrate China’s desire to assimilate Taiwan. Four years later, China flexed its military muscles against India in a war in 1962, to show it wasn’t inferior to either the US or the Soviet Union. It was a race Mao was running against the rest. A race that ended in disaster. Cut to 2020. Time for the Race again. The Great Leap Backward of 1960s and 2020 While the world reeled from the pandemic, China appeared to have managed the crisis better than others. While thousands of deaths in democracies made governments look ineffectual, China’s mass testing, quarantine management, and overall control over the rampaging virus looked marginally superior. The race looked favourable: Xi was winning. Out came the threats and guns between 2020 and 2022. India, first in 2020, followed by Taiwan — just like in the era between 1958 and 1962. China returned to its Great Leap Forward to outmanoeuvre the powers of the time. Then — it was the Soviet Union, the US and industrially, the UK. Now — the US and, regionally, India. The narrative too, returned. For instance, in 1959, Lord Boyd-Orr, former director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, declared that Mao’s government had “ended the traditional Chinese famine cycle” amidst criticism that Mao’s government was killing millions. China used gullible senior appointees from multilateral agencies to sell their narrative. In 2020, as Covid struck, China found a fawning supporter in Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of WHO. Thereafter, Beijing used the media to spin a narrative of competent Covid governance in 2020 while noisy, cantankerous democracies fumbled and struggled to deal with the pandemic. In the early stages, there wasn’t an informed way to deal with the virus, and thus most governments were at sea. China’s authoritarian methods worked briefly in that scenario and prolonged shutdowns were easier to implement in an authoritarian ecosystem. China was obsessed with becoming the world’s biggest power, trader and marketplace. A section of the media that fawned over China would remind democracies how a repressive system ‘worked’. The obsession with zero Then began the obsession with the race to zero. Xi faced global criticism during the initial outbreak of the virus and thus became obsessed with maintaining zero fatality numbers for a long time. More importantly, it fuelled his ego. His power trip was beginning to take flight. According to a Johns Hopkins University report, until June 2022, China had only one death per 100,000 people, compared with three hundred per 100,000 people in the United States. Like Mao in the early 1960s, Xi faced mounting political opposition at home. In response, Xi employed ruthless purges and tightened his grip — just like the chairman five decades ago. Modern-day business icons like Jack Ma, investor Guo Guangchang (called China’s Warren Buffet), and real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang went missing from public view. In the 1960s, senior leader Deng Xiaoping didn’t agree with Mao’s policies and was purged. In October 2022, Hu Jintao, the former Premier, was forcibly escorted out of the party conference in full public view. There is no news on Jintao, just like what happened to Deng years ago. The parallels are striking. Xi had removed all challengers. All, but one. Fighting Covid of 2022 with Methods of 2020 By 2022, the world economy opened up and countries, through means of advancement in Covid-focussed medical care and vaccinations, learnt to live with the virus, especially the Omicron variant. China, on the other hand, was fighting the Covid virus of 2022 with its methods of 2020 — which, in a Covid world was akin to taking on a 20th century tuberculosis with a mediaeval mindset. But then, to an authoritarian China obsessed with the race to zero, shutting down the country was the sole method known to stop Covid. The Covid situation in China was going down a slippery slope — Sinovac vaccine hadn’t worked well, and Xi’s obsession with demonstrating superior medical capability meant an obstinacy to recognise a ticking time bomb. In May 2022, when the WHO’s director general said that China’s zero-Covid policy was unsustainable, China trashed him, saying that he should refrain from making irresponsible remarks. The economy went downhill as people stopped going to work, offices were shut and businesses closed down. More than 460,000 businesses sank in the first quarter of 2022, and unemployment reached 20 percent. But Xi didn’t care. There was another reason: For Xi, the national congress in October was set to elect him for the third time. Unlocking the country would have unleashed forces against him on the streets. Gerrymandering status quoists he had cobbled never opposed him out of fear of both Xi and uncontrolled anarchy. Ego and election trumped economics and efficacy. Unhappiness, deaths and protests Domestically, a mounting unhappiness over shutdowns affected people’s lives for three years. Protestors burst onto the streets across the country. To quell the opposition would have portrayed him as a mediaeval monarch, and the swelling number of mortalities wouldn’t have helped either. By November, China had lost control over the virus. A residential fire in Urumqi on 25th November 2022 broke people’s patience. Barricades placed to control movement during lockdowns ironically prevented rescue efforts and caused delay resulting in deaths. The new wave of protests worried Xi. Restrictions were loosened. Immediately, the failure of China’s Covid management exploded on Xi’s face. Death rates ballooned. Between 8th December and 12 January 2023, China reported 59,938 Covid-caused deaths. This was its first update on the death toll since the lockdown was lifted last year. The unofficial numbers are likely to be much higher, given China’s reluctance to share data. Peking University studies found that 64 percent of the population were infected — which meant 900 million, as on 11 January 2023. More than half of Beijing is affected. At least 91 percent of Gansu province is down with the virus. Worse is feared. The new lunar year will mark the travel of millions of Chinese to their hometowns. A massive surge is around the corner. More worryingly, the rural areas, unlike urban centres, do not have adequate medical facilities to deal with a catastrophe that isn’t likely to end soon. Beijing’s bubble burst in early 2023, just like in 1962. Deaths across the nation forced Mao to change tack. The failure didn’t faze him, and instead he unleashed the ‘cultural revolution’ on the country. Then, Zhou Enlai declared after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, “Our constitution allows people to have freedoms of speech and assembly. Chairman Mao tells us frequently that in order for the leadership to correct mistakes, the revolutionary masses must have the freedom of petition and strikes.” In 2023, Xi declared after the failure of Covid had resulted in an economic meltdown and continued deaths, “It is only natural for different people to have different concerns or hold different views on the same issue. What matters is that we build consensus through communication and consultation.” Mao’s words are back six decades later. The world had come full circle. What the future holds Around 1.5 million people could die from Covid in the next few months in China. Like in the 1960s, the eventual numbers might even be fudged. Will the growing opposition turn into a colour revolution? Unlikely. But it could slow down Xi’s plans on strategic issues. It will be interesting to see how he responds. A wily Xi, with his New year’s statement, has begun by adopting a reconciliatory line. For starters, he will look to put the economy back on track, though it won’t be easy. Alongside, he will look to curb an enthusiastic band of protestors (read ‘purge them’). Xi banks on the fact that the average Chinese today is far better off than their predecessors. Thus he might not care about political stakes if jobs are back. The average citizen would also not care if Xi’s aggression against Taiwan or India is held back for the first part of 2023. Xi will eventually plan to resume his Great Leap Forward, once he has leapt over the fires at home. Another year of economic meltdown, on the other hand, will smear Xi’s strategic goals with Covid characteristics. The writer is the author of ‘Watershed 1967: India’s Forgotten Victory over China’. His fortnightly column for FirstPost — ‘Beyond The Lines’ — covers military history, strategic issues, international affairs and policy-business challenges. Views expressed are personal. Tweets @iProbal Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.