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Leaders | China’s next chapter

An obsession with control is making China weaker

but more dangerous
The Communist Party’s five-yearly congress will further tighten one man’s grip

Oct 13th 2022

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I t will be an orderly affair. From October 16th the grandees of China’s

Communist Party will gather in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for their
five-yearly congress. Not a teacup will be out of place; not a whisper of protest will
be audible. The Communist Party has always been obsessed with control. But
under President Xi Jinping that obsession has deepened. After three decades of
opening and reform under previous leaders, China has in many ways become more
closed and autocratic under Mr Xi. Surveillance has broadened. Censorship has
stiffened. Party cells flex their muscles in private firms. Preserving the party’s grip
on power trumps any other consideration.

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This is evident in Mr Xi’s response to covid-19. China’s initial lockdown saved

many lives. However, long after the rest of the world has learned to live with the
virus, China still treats every case as a threat to social stability. When infections
crop up, districts and cities are locked down. Compulsory movement-tracking apps
detect when citizens have been near an infected person, and then bar them from
public spaces. It goes without saying that no one thus tagged may enter Beijing,
lest they start an outbreak at a politically sensitive time.

Some hope that, once the congress is over, a plan for relaxing the zero-covid policy
may be unveiled. But there is no sign yet of the essential first steps to avoid mass
deaths, such as many more vaccinations, especially of the old. Party propaganda
suggests that any loosening is a long way off, regardless of the misery and
economic mayhem that lockdowns cause. The policy has failed to adapt because
no one can say that Mr Xi is wrong, and Mr Xi does not want China to be dependent
on foreign vaccines, even though they are better than domestic ones.

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Such control-freakery has wider implications for China and the world. At home Mr
Xi makes all the big calls, and a fierce machinery of repression enforces his will.
Abroad, he seeks to fashion a global order more congenial for autocrats. To this
end, China takes a twin-track approach. It works to co-opt international bodies and
redefine the principles that underpin them. Bilaterally, it recruits countries as
supporters. Its economic heft helps turn poorer ones into clients; its
unsqueamishness about abuses lets it woo despots; and its own rise is an example
to countries discontented with the American-led status quo. Mr Xi’s aim is not to
make other countries more like China, but to protect China’s interests and
establish a norm that no sovereign government need bow to anyone else’s
definition of human rights. As our special report argues, Mr Xi wants the global
order to do less, and he may succeed.

Rightly, the West finds this alarming. No despotic regime in history has had
resources to match modern China’s. And unlike the leader of a democracy, Mr Xi
can snap his fingers and deploy them. If he wants China to dominate technologies
such as artificial intelligence or drugs, public and private funds pour into research.
Size and single-mindedness can produce results: China is probably ahead of the
West in such fields as 5g and batteries. The more powerful its economy grows, the
greater its geopolitical muscle is likely to be. This is especially so if it can dominate
certain key technologies, make other countries depend on it and set standards that
lock them in.

This is why Western governments now treat Chinese innovation as a national-

security issue. Many are boosting subsidies for industries such as chipmaking.
President Joe Biden’s administration has gone much further, seeking openly to
cripple the Chinese tech industry. On October 7th it banned the sale of high-end
chips to China, both by American firms and by foreign ones that use American kit.
This will slow China’s advances in fields America considers threatening, such as ai
and supercomputers. It will also harm Chinese consumers and foreign firms,
which may ultimately find ways around the new rules. In short, it is too blunt a
tool.

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It also suggests that Mr Biden overestimates the strengths of China’s top-down
model and underestimates the democratic world’s more freewheeling one. Mr Xi’s

obsession with control may make the Communist Party stronger, but it also makes
China weaker than it would otherwise be. Throwing resources at national goals can
work but is often inefficient: American firms produce roughly twice as much
innovation for the same outlay as their Chinese peers, by some estimates. Having a
leader who hates to admit mistakes makes it harder to correct them.
Even as Mr Xi strives to make China a superpower, his and the party’s authoritarian
urges have isolated it. The great firewall slows the inflow of foreign ideas. Zero-
covid has curbed movement in and out of the country: Chinese scholars have all
but stopped attending conferences abroad; Chinese executives barely travel; the
number of European expats in China has halved. A less connected China will be
less dynamic and creative. And the government is aggravating China’s isolation by
making it less hospitable for foreigners to live or work in. For example, foreign
firms must make sensitive data they send abroad accessible to the state, which
often owns their main competitors. This is an incentive to do research and
development outside China. Finally, China’s dire human-rights record ensures that
it has few real friends, and limits co-operation with countries at the cutting edge of
technology.

Know your rival and yourself

That China is weaker than it appears is scant comfort. Even much weaker powers
can be dangerous, as Russia has shown under President Vladimir Putin. A more
isolated, inward-looking China could become even more belligerently
nationalistic.

The West’s best course is to stand up to China where necessary, but otherwise
allow collaboration. Restrict exports of the most sensitive technology, but keep the
list short. Resist China’s attempts to make the global order more autocrat-friendly,
but avoid overheated martial rhetoric. Welcome Chinese students, executives and
scientists, rather than treat them all as potential spies. Remember, always, that the
beef should be with tyranny, not with the Chinese people. It will be a hard balance
to strike. But handling the most powerful dictatorship in history was always going
to require both strength and wisdom. 7
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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "A new chapter"

Leaders
October 15th 2022

→ An obsession with control is making China weaker but more

dangerous

→ Liz Truss has made Britain a riskier bet for bond investors

→ Europe is growing complacent about its energy crisis

→ Emerging markets have coped with the rate shock surprisingly well

→ Joe Biden is too timid. It is time to legalise cocaine

From the October 15th

2022 edition
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