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“Ours is a big country,” Chinese ruler Xi Jinping said in his 2023 New Year Address. “It is only natural for different people to have different concerns or hold different views on the same issue.”
Xi, who has consistently demanded “absolute” obedience to himself, essentially admitted growing disunity in China.
It is clear, even from the same paragraph in the address, that Xi really is not okay with “different views.”
“Going forward, China will be a country that draws its strength from unity,” he declared. “When the 1.4 billion Chinese work with one heart and one mind, and stand in unity with a strong will, no task will be impossible and no difficulty insurmountable.”
In the Communist Party’s system, disunity is tantamount to instability. Late last year, there was no hiding instability. There were, for instance, the extraordinary protests that began in late November at “iPhone City,” the Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, over COVID-19 controls and the even more dramatic demonstrations that spontaneously occurred across China after the Nov. 24 fire in Urumqi. Chinese people in the latter set of disturbances demanded Xi and the Chinese Communist Party “step down.”
Xi in his New Year speech was almost certainly referring not only to these mass incidents but also to elite disagreement in the party. There are signs of worsening discord.
There have been, for example, apparent changes in domestic policy regarding control of tech companies, regulation of bank lending and Xi’s “common prosperity” program, but the starkest reversal relates to COVID-19 measures. In his work report, the nearly two-hour speech to the party at the 20th National Congress on Oct.
