Chapter 2
In: China under Xi Jinping
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Abstract
With Xi Jinping Thought (XJPT) now incorporated into the Chinese Communist Party’s Constitution, many questions have been raised on how this alters Party ideology, if at all, and what consequences this may have on the direction of the Party and the future of the nation. Derided in the West as ‘a personality cult without the personality,’ XJPT is often dismissed by Western observers because it appears to lack charisma of China’s greatest ideologues, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and contains much less ideals that motivate or cultivate the development of a national ethos. International observers miss the point on XJPT, however, by insisting on comparative analysis that merely offers to explain how XJPT is different, if not inferior to existing political philosophies or previous Chinese political theories. We often want to compare XJPT as an ideology to other ideologies and find where it fails to meet our standards. Instead, we first need to examine XJPT without comparison to understand its purpose and effects before making value-laden normative statements. This also refers to making comparisons in general. How Xi is different or similar to Mao, how XJPT is different or similar to Confucianism, Marxism, or Western political traditions; these are unimportant at this stage of analysis. Once we acknowledge it as a novel paradigm, we can begin to understand its purpose and goals. This chapter proposes that XJPT is actually a novel, highly syncretic paradigm for the purpose of regime maintenance that acts as unifying and totalizing discourse leading the Chinese people into the 22nd century. This paradigm carefully curates domestic support and legitimacy through totalization of Party members and the Chinese people in order to achieve a triumphalist vision of China.