Xi Jinping: What Does He Know and When Does He Know It?
The Biden administration sees opportunities for renewed dialogue with China. But when it comes to critical issues, what does Xi really know about the facts on the ground?
Beijing’s effort to influence Taiwan’s presidential election last month didn’t do much if anything to change the outcome or move voters to smile on the kind of reunification with the motherland Xi Jinping has on offer. Reclaiming the errant island is Xi’s self-proclaimed historic mission. With his latest try at swaying opinion in Taiwan having come a cropper, most observers would assume that China’s President would dig into what happened and why.
But a presidentially-directed post-mortem to figure out what worked or didn’t assumes Xi has a realistic view of events. Xi’s latest failure, only the most recent in a decade of abortive efforts to change the island’s future, suggests the contrary. It also raises a question. What does Xi hear, and more importantly, understand about Taiwan’s trajectory and his prospects to influence its course? Xi’s threat to invade in order to get reunification done is a worry. But so is whether he has a real-world view of the political facts on the ground.
Events in the election’s run-up as well as its results were hardly a surprise. Beijing used all its resources to channel its unhappiness with Taiwan’s victorious, independence-minded candidate Lai Ching-te. As in the past, the effort to intimidate—from provocative military exercises to warnings of “unification or else”— didn’t set well with Taiwan’s voters. After years of Beijing’s bullying and blandishments, Lai’s election again made clear their disdain for China’s embrace.
The appeal of Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which captured its third consecutive presidential term last month, isn’t new. Nor is support for Taiwan’s separate status. Pre-election polls showed half the country backs either independence or the status quo. Considering the historical trends regarding attitudes toward unification, the accommodating approach to China offered by the Kuomintang, the DPP’s opposition, appears an artifact of an era long removed from Taiwan’s preferences today.
As his self-proclaimed, historic priority, Xi’s failed approach to Taiwan obviously has implications beyond the unification issue. That China’s shopworn initiatives to advance his goal have been dead-on-arrival for years point to the likelihood that Taiwan is far from the only place where what Xi hears and reality are running on different tracks. That said, insights into Xi’s thinking are tough to come by, as are the details of who he talks to as well as what they tell him, or don’t.
Outside observers aren’t the only ones in the dark. The history of Leninist leaderships elsewhere in the world suggests the challenge is no less for the Chinese Communist Party’s top brass. Xi’s decision to can collective leadership and assume his Mao-like authoritarian role underscores the point. Whatever his minions’ titles, relationships, or skills in maneuvering the party’s corridors, information is power, and Xi has centralized that in his own hands.
Consider the role of Chen Yixin, the Minister of State Security. If anyone, Chen should have a grip on Taiwan’s realities. After all, he heads an espionage organization that has burrowed into its political world for decades. Chen shouldn’t have had any illusions about what China is selling or whether it would sway public attitudes, much less last month’s presidential vote. The question is: what did the Minister of State Security tell Xi about the facts on the ground?
Chen, of course, wouldn’t be the first spy chief who fudged findings his boss didn’t want to hear. And in dealing with the author of Xi Jinping Thought, the regime’s latest ideological scriptures, whatever intelligence reports may say, Chen knows only one of them can have the correct assessment of the spies’ dispatches as well as Lai’s win. A party journal made the point last month. Ignoring the voters’ latest rebuff of unification Beijing-style, it republished a speech Xi made in 2022 admonishing the party’s cadre to do a better job winning Taiwan’s hearts and minds.
Chen has his future to consider as well. So far, his relationship with Xi is producing results. The Ministry of State Security’s (MSS) star is ascending, as is Chen’s status. Considered one of Xi’s inner circle, Chen is out of the shadows and prominently placed among the Communist Party’s hierarchy. With its power expanding, MSS is raising its public profile. Added to its arrests of alleged foreign spies, MSS officers are sitting at government regulators’ elbows, investigating western businesses, and policing China’s economic security. Last month, for example, MSS warned market analysts against bearish forecasts that could scupper positive trends.
When it comes to Taiwan, MSS also is breaking new ground. While targeting Taiwan always has been high on its list of clandestine priorities, in January MSS published an unusual public statement following the presidential election. The statement unpacks China’s 2005 anti-secession law, detailing Beijing’s two-decades-old official warning on the perils facing Taiwan if it rejects peaceful unification. More to the point, it repeatedly singled out the malefactors who are leading Taiwan’s citizens astray.
The MSS statement makes clear China retains the right to pursue reunification through non-peaceful means, particularly if external forces join with the “very small number of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists and their separatist activities.” The language characterizing the size of Taiwan’s separatist ranks should be familiar. At the 2022 Communist Party Congress, Xi directed the same threat at foreign interference “and the few separatists seeking ‘Taiwanese independence’.”
How much more visible MSS becomes on Taiwan affairs remains to be seen. But given the ministry’s new prominence, Xi and Chen certainly have laid the groundwork for a more public role. Indeed, MSS appeared to put down a marker in its statement last month, concluding with a vow to fight “separatism,” along with a warning to its intelligence counterparts in Taipei to keep President Lai and his political party’s independence-minded ilk at arm’s length.
In the final analysis, what Xi knows, when he knows it, and most important, what he understands remain unanswered questions, and not just on Taiwan.
“You’re dealing with a Marxist-Leninist system where there’s one guy who makes all the important decisions. You want to have access to that guy,” Matt Pottinger, the Trump administration’s Deputy National Security Council advisor, remarked on the Podcast China Talk the other day. Pottinger was talking about the importance of presidential summitry. It’s a good bet a sizable number of Xi’s Politburo members would add their ‘amen.’
“The only way that you can really know things important to the United States are being communicated to the top is if the President is talking to his counterpart,” Pottinger concluded. “I don’t think that a lot of things that are communicated below that level are making it back to Xi Jinping.”
An extremely insightful piece. Keep them coming.