The title of Tuesdays Frontline is slightly misleading. China, the United States and the rise of Xi Jinping It is much more about Xi, the Chinese president, than it is about the United States and China, and much more about China than the United States. That said, Xi would like nothing better than to be seen as interchangeable with the nation he has led since 2013.
Broadcast on GBH at 10 p.m., it will also be available on PBS appthe front line YouTube channeland the PBS Documentary Main Video Channel. Martin Smith, the episode's correspondent, wrote and directed it with Marcela Gaviria.
Xi, 71, is the first Chinese president born after the founding of the People's Republic. His father, a senior communist official, was purged and then imprisoned. During the Cultural Revolution, Xi was sent to the countryside, including to a labor camp. Despite this, he never seems to have lost confidence in the party. One of the most alarming aspects of his reign was his very public emulation of Mao Zedong, the instigator of the Cultural Revolution, and his legacy.
Rising within the party, Xi served as governor of two provinces and then briefly as party secretary in Shanghai. He then moved to Beijing, where, among other tasks, he oversaw planning for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Perhaps the most consequential global story of the last half century has been China's economic transformation. What is the biggest global story of the next quarter century or is it too long? is its political and diplomatic transformation. This transformation began before Xi came to power. We often forget that Deng Xiaoping, who encouraged Western investment and helped boost the Chinese economy, was the one who authorized the sending of tanks into Tiananmen Square in 1989. And the Great Wall of Fire, with its government controls on access to Western websites, dates back to the end of the year. 90s.
But Xi has dramatically accelerated both the authoritarian nature of Communist Party rule and the nation's assertiveness on a global scale. A million Uyghurs, an ethnic minority living in Xinjiang province, have been arrested. Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have been suppressed. There are now 700 million surveillance cameras in China. No, this number is not a typo.
That makes George Orwell sound like something from the Stone Age, says China expert Orville Schell, one of several talking heads heard on Tuesday's episode. Others include former national security advisers HR McMaster and John Bolton, New York Times correspondent Edward Wong (who is particularly good), and a few defenders of Xi and his policies, although their presence seems more like a reflection afterwards. Certainly, they do not present very strong arguments.
As for the rest of the world, China has cultivated wolf-warrior diplomacy, slammed its guns in the South China Sea, faced trade confrontations with the West (particularly the United States ) and growing belligerence towards Taiwan. Taiwan is where diplomacy and trade meet. Seventy percent of the world's computer chips, Smith points out, are made there, and 90 percent of the most advanced ones.
Donald Trump's return to the White House risks worsening relations. A more worrying factor is that Xi is not going away anytime soon. In what may be the most troubling act of his presidency, he ended term limits on the office. Since Deng, no Chinese leader has governed for more than 10 years. Mao ruled for 29 years. Could his appeal to Xi be even more a question of duration than ideology?
Mark Feeney can be contacted at [email protected].
