(Preview) Made in China 2025 and What Comes Next; EV Price Wars; The EU and Its China Dilemmas; Xi and His Rivals
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Hello and welcome to Sharp China. I'm Andrew Sharp and you are listening to a free preview of today's episode. So final note here, Thomas says, I just finished the Hu Yaobang biography by Robert Suttinger, which I thought was a great read on inter-party politics in the Mao era, especially in the 1980s.

One of the things I'm unclear about in modern Chinese politics is these interparty politics and what rival factions still exist and who could be considered rivals to Xi Jinping. Has he really been so successful in concentrating power that the, quote, CYL faction of Hu Jintao is no longer relevant and no other serious contenders remain after the death of Li Keqiang to the extent he was one? He puts in parentheses,

Did the downfall of a number of key figures in the PLA signify that this might have been a rival faction to

in the CCP after everything I have read, I can't imagine she has eliminated all rivals. So I would be interested to hear who you think his current rivals and rival factions are, who could develop to be rivals, and even who has been a rival in recent years. So I will... That's a very good, very hard, and in many ways unanswerable question. So I will take it from a little different perspective, which is...

For many years, the framework that analysts use for factions in CCP elite politics, you had the Youth League faction, Communist Youth League faction, which was Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang. And then you had the Shanghai grouping, the Jiang Zemin faction. And there is no question that

With Xi's ascendance, he started in late 2012 as general secretary. He became president in 2013 at the NBC. And I know this Apple book talks about as soon as he became president, he went after Apple. But that misses the point that actually the president title is basically irrelevant. It's general secretary. It's the title that matters. So he became general secretary in November 2012. The

several years through his prosecution of the corruption crackdown, he effectively neutered the Jiang Zemin and the Communist Youth League factions. And, you know, when it comes to Communist Youth League, he went so far as to there once was a Communist Youth League university

whose name was changed. And all big universities in China, they have a big rock out front that has like the... Somebody has written, and I think it was Hu Jintao, but I'm not sure, but somebody has written in their Chinese calligraphy the name of the school. They scraped it off. Oh, wow. So yes, those factions are non... Like if people still talk about like, oh, the Youth League faction or the Shanghai faction,

They're gone. They're not. Can I ask? So, yeah, go ahead. How were they neutered? Were people removed from the party? By arrests, by demotions, by going after family members of retired officials who still had influence, by making sure that retired officials were put basically in their place so they understood that if they just sat there quietly, didn't intervene, that they

their interests would be protected. And if they didn't, then they would have problems or family members would have problems. I see. Um, and so, but it's a black box of a system and it is incredibly competitive and brutal. And I think people still underestimate and don't under, don't appreciate the brutality of the system and the who y'all bong biography, which is excellent. I think would, it's one of those things that would help understand that. Um,

is, of course, there are always going to be rivals who are fighting for promotions and fighting for positions and fighting for favor. And so the question then is, okay, what are their new factions? Are there certainly rivals below Xi? Is there anybody who could be seen as a viable replacement for Xi Jinping right now? And

It is hard to see who that is. There is a current sort of surge of rumors going around. And as best I can tell, once again, it stems from Falun Gong linked accounts. And you may see it. It's... I am...

just going to put it out there because I know that people are talking about it and pushing it on overseas media sites and on YouTube and on Twitter, which is this idea that Zhang Youxia, who's the vice chair of the Central Military Commission, who supposedly is close to Xi, has actually taken power. I think it's BS, but it goes back to this question of there's got to be rivals and there's got to be someone gunning for Xi's job. I hesitate to bring it up because I

I think it's not credible. No, I'm glad you did because I had seen it too, but I'm hardwired now to sort of side-eye that stuff. Well, I mean, again, it's a little early this summer, but every year by July, August, you get something, right? Every single July, there's one of these cycles. This is a little early, but...

And maybe someday it'll be true. And, you know, maybe, you know, just too jaded because you sort of go through the cycle so many times. But it is relevant to the to the to the excellent question, I think, which is, you know,

there are, of course, rivalries. And again, there are, you know, you've seen certainly with the crackdown on the PLA and some of the generals who've gone down and some of the top officers, you know, they were sort of seen as, well, they came out of Fujian, right, where Xi came out. So supposedly, you know, there's this Fujian group, right? You've also got talk of this Shandong group because Xi Jinping's wife, Peng Liyuan, is from Shandong. And so there's a Shandongbang, like a faction there that people are getting promoted. And

I think just by the nature of elite CPC politics, there are inevitably going to be these self-sabotaging

sort of, I don't want to say self-organizing, but there are people who, you know, because it's so competitive, you are always looking for patrons and supporters for to advance your own career. Yeah. And so that, that no one should be surprised by that, but it does not look like from the outside, at least that there's anything like what we saw around sort of the rival that, that, that Johnson in the Shanghai groupings and like the, the communist youth league faction. And so, um, but it's a black box. And so,

ultimately I think the final answers will probably end up being surprised by what happens. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I mean, because sorry for the long answer, but no, it's a good answer. And it's a good question from Thomas. So thank you for sending the email. Um, and I struggle with it because there are, uh,

pretty steady stream of rumors about threats to Xi. Because you can't be proven wrong. It's titillating. It gets eyeballs. And if you're running a YouTube channel, you want more views. If you're running a Twitter... Yeah, there's more on YouTube lately. I've seen a lot of stuff on YouTube. But the Twitter incentives too are the more people read your tweet, the more ad revenue you get, right? So the incentives are not at all about creating true, good, factual information. It's all about getting people to read your stuff, whatever crazy claim you're making.

Yeah. Well, and by the same token, it does seem implausible that in a country as big as China, with as many varied interests and even the party itself, that there wouldn't be rivals who do have problems with Xi Jinping. You look at the PLA, I'm sure there are lots of people in the PLA who have problems with Xi Jinping. And so the question is how seriously to take any of it. And, you know, you look at you look at the Mao and how he dealt with

who he considered to be rivals, which are his successor, the people he thought or people assumed he had appointed as his successors. And, you know, Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao are two examples who both met very bad ends. And it is, I think, you know, once we get a person who looks like she thinks they are or a group or a handful of people who look like she thinks they could be his successors,

then I think the politics get even more fractious and contested. But so far, there's nobody that you can point to in the leadership that would look like she thinks they're going to be or she wants them to be his successor.

So generally speaking, since she has taken power, how much of his behavior has been animated by concerns about threats to that power? I mean, I think, again, I don't know. I will speculate that I think in any of these systems like this, you only get where you are and stay where you are by being paranoid all the time. So I think that, and you see...

you know, like the central guard bureau, which protects you and the top leaders, you know, replaced the head several times. You see, you just, you just never, you're just, you can never be complacent. Okay. Yeah. Right. And that certainly would be the lesson if, if for example, the, you know, the CPC, you know, and CCP was when he was vice president in the, what was it? The 17th party Congress period, you know, he was in charge of party history. I mean, he's,

Apparently, while versus the party history, he's going to understand all the possible and, you know, look back in imperial history, all the ways people plotted against the emperor, plotted against the leader. Look at Soviet history. I mean, you aren't in this system and running this system without being incredibly paranoid and ruthless.

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