A. Wess Mitchell: Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Henry Kissinger. Chapters 1-3. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025.

 

Greatness of power does not and cannot denote illimitable power, which God prudently reserves for Himself. There is never only one great power, although there may be at times a great power greater than others. A great power whose power doesn’t measure up to another, or to some hostile combination of others, needs to think in order to survive, to formulate a “grand strategy”—one commensurate with, or better, superior to, their potential enemies’ political, military, and economic greatness. Or, similarly, for a not-so-great power, a coalition of equals may counterbalance a threatening great power. In implementing that strategy, statesmen will call upon diplomacy, an art that “finds its highest and most enduring expression not as an agent of abstract peace or as a mere handmaiden to military power, but as an instrument of grand strategy that states use to rearrange power in space and time and avoid tests of strength beyond their ability to bear.” Under such circumstances, diplomats can build “coalitions of weaker states” to counter threats from the greatest power of their time and place. Diplomats “manipulat[e] the critical factor of time in competition,” “rearranging power in space and time so that the state voids tests of strength beyond its immediate ability to bear.” Diplomacy’s “most important outcome is the constraint of power.” 

Mitchell laments that “diplomacy has become something of a lost art in the modern world,” having given way to the soldier with his weapons, the lawyer plying international law, and the banker practicing financial manipulations. For the United States, this was no real loss at all in the years following the collapse of the Soviet empire, when it was the greatest power in the world, although diplomacy had figured significantly in America’s successful efforts to coexist with, then ruin that empire. In the 1990s, “the role of the Pentagon and Treasury in U.S. foreign policy steadily expanded while that of the State Department shrunk apace”; “peace became the science of administration,” of “getting the right mix of institutions in place, backed by just the right amount of aid, overseen by the proper authorities.” With the quasi-peaceful ‘rise of China,’ that time is gone. The need for diplomacy has returned. Its return can be hindered by the assumption that “human societies can only find true safety—and honor—in a preponderance of military power”; another is the more recent illusion that “humanity is progressing inexorably toward a liberal utopia,” or a utopia of some other sort.

“This book offers a meditation on diplomacy through the prism of strategy, from antiquity to the modern era”—an effort at re-educating those who think about statesmanship, very much including American statesmen themselves, in the lost art. Unlike many diplomats, who often deprecate the importance of the other geopolitical arts in a foolish attempt to draw esteem to their own and to put themselves in charge of their country’s statecraft (the U.S. State Department during the Cold War comes to mind), Mitchell carefully demonstrates the limitations as well as the strengths of diplomacy. He does so with a series of examples drawn from history, beginning with the Spartan King Archidamus II. In mining historical accounts, he insists that “we have to see the world as decision-makers at the time saw it,” to deliberate along with them, in effect training ourselves to think like statesmen.

He also offers some general lessons, across time, regimes, and civilizations. Everywhere and always, diplomacy operates by means of negotiation, which “is to diplomacy what skill in arms is to war.” He cautions that “negotiation is not deception.” Once burned, twice shy: “Because states deal with one another repeatedly over long time horizons, the diplomat must operate in some degree of good faith.” Force and fraud only get you so far. In terms of outcomes, “what the soldier defends with arms, the diplomat defends with treaties,” which exist “to lock in advantages gained in negotiations or war,” as seen, for example in the Peace of Westphalia. Treaties sometimes last a long time, although for the most part that eminent statesman, Charles de Gaulle, was right to compare them to jeunes filles, saying, perhaps with a Gallic shrug, “They last as long as they last.” As treaties accumulate, bureaucracy becomes necessary to maintain state archives and to employ “scribes needed to retain knowledge of foreign places and past agreements,” enabling statesmen to maintain vigilance “in competition with other states.” 

Archidamus provides a template for diplomacy. He ruled Sparta from 469 to 427 BC, leading troops into battle on several occasions. In 432 BC, the war party in Sparta—never politically weak, as the Spartan regime was designed for making war—urged an attack on Athens, which had engaged in provocations threatening Spartan interests. Archidamus spoke against war, arguing that “the first step in war is to make sure of your own strength” and at this time, “if we begin the war in haste, we will have many days before we end it, owing to our lack of preparations.” A diplomatic approach is preferable. Mitchell identifies “the heart of Archidamus’ logic” in the speech as “the idea that states can gain an advantage over adversaries by using diplomacy to impose certain kinds of constraints.” First among these are constraints on “one’s own emotions,” which were running too high; “this is not a counsel of cowardice but of prudence.” Another advantage to be gained from diplomacy is timing. “Don’t engage when the enemy wants it; engage when you are ready.” In addition to constraining your own soul, diplomacy can constrain the enemy. “Gathering states to one’s own side or even rendering them neutral denies their support to an adversary…. By building coalitions, states isolate an opponent and thereby reduce his options for profitable aggression while reducing the range of dangers against which their own resources have to be deployed at a given moment.” And finally, “diplomacy attempts to put limits on war itself,” an activity which tends to run out of control, particularly out of the control of civilian rulers. War is a means to achieve political ends, the purpose of the strategy that should govern military action, first and always. 

Archidamus’ argument didn’t carry the day. The war party won; Archidamus himself led to attack (the first Peloponnesian War is named after him: the Archidamian War). And, as he predicted, the war lasted many days, indeed years.

Mitchell takes his first two major examples from pre-modern Christendom: fifth-century Byzantium and fifteenth-century Venice. Byzantium’s main rival was Persia. It also had enemies or potential rivals to the south: Arabs, Ethiopians, the “Vandals” of North Africa. A balance of power had been established. This balance was threatened by the rise of the Huns; modern Hungary gets its name from them because that is the territory in which their rule was centered. Beginning in the previous century, they raided, then invaded the Empire’s Balkan provinces. By the 440s, under the command of the military genius Attila, they swept down “the full length of the Balkans,” crushing the Byzantine army at Chersonesus. The balance of power in the region had been overturned, with Byzantium now facing dangers on three fronts, with a two-front war against Persia and the Huns entirely possible. Theodosius the Younger, who had ruled the Empire since 401, needed to call upon his substantial experience to meet the threat. 

Byzantium’s regime was no simple tyranny. An imperial council, consisting of civilians and military officers sat “at the top” of the ruling body. Many members of the council were also senators, in which the top official, the magister officorum, ran the imperial bureaucracy. There were also praetorian prefects, the quaestor, a legal advisor, and the city prefect of the capital city, Constantinople. However, these officials had to reckon with the cubiculum, the emperor’s personal staff. Numbering among these was Chrysaphius, a eunuch “who appears to have held a predominant role in the empire’s foreign policy from 443 onward,” having won Theodosius’ favorable attention, partly for his looks (he was “extremely handsome”) and, crucially, for his strategic sense, which was compatible with the emperor’s own approach. For decades, Theodosius had preferred to deal with the Huns “through diplomacy rather than force, whenever possible,” effectively buying them off with the gold for which his capital was so justly famous. He knew how to measure out his treasure because his 15,000-man-strong bureaucracy not only kept records and received foreign envoys but included a substantial and highly competent spy apparatus, its gleanings collected and analyzed back in Constantinople by persons who “would have had access to a large body of didactic Latin and Greek literature on history and war,” including such authors as Polybius, Arrian, and Tacitus. 

Chrysaphius’ preference for diplomacy over war grated on “key elements of the Byzantine elite” and from the imperial generals, many of them Germans, descendants of the Goths and Visigoths “who had settled inside the empire over the past few generations.” The pro-war faction also included Pulcheria, the emperor’s sister, and Church leaders, who suspected Chrysaphius of un-Orthodox opinions. All regarded diplomacy as “a form of feckless surrender to the barbarians”; centuries later, that elegant Machiavellian, Edward Gibbon, concurred. They wanted to attack the Huns, not to bribe them. 

The problem the victory-lovers confronted was that “Attila’s armies were larger, faster, and more lethal than the forces of earlier enemies that had emerged from the Eurasian interior,” their cavalry capable of outmaneuvering and out-shooting anything the Byzantine forces could muster. They had also mastered the art of seigecraft. Against “an enemy unlike the Eastern Empire or indeed Roman civilization had ever faced,” Theodosius “did not have a viable military option for securing his northern frontier.” And Attila did not lack ambition, intending not only to conquer Byzantium but also Rome and Persia. War was inevitable. But it might be delayed, the time gained used to build up “the empire’s overall position.” 

That is what Theodosius and Chrysaphius proceeded to do. In response to each Hun campaign against Byzantium, they negotiated treaties with Persia, giving both empires the chance to strengthen their fortifications against the marauders. For the Persians had their own more immediate Hunnic problem; the Hephthalites or “White Huns,” who may or may not have been physically related to the Western Huns, ruled a substantial empire to the east of Persia, in what are now Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan. The peace treaty between Byzantium and Persia would hold for more than six decades. This gave the Byzantines the chance not only to hold off the Huns but to pacify them “through exposure to, and assimilation into, Byzantine culture and economy”—as they had done with the Goths and Visigoths. Given their geopolitical encirclement, “the Byzantines needed to domesticate rather than dominate their opponents,” and their principal instrument for so doing was Christianity. 

“As pagans went, the Huns were not an easy lot to convert.” They had, after all, enjoyed signal military and political success while following their own religious practices, such as reading entrails and bones. And Byzantium “lacked the martial strength to pursue a religiously tinged military imperialism” in the manner of such future empires as the Ottomans, Spain, and the Muslims. Once again, diplomacy came to the forefront, guided by such prudential measures as “the use of foreign custom and even dress on diplomatic missions and willingness to accept non-Christian oaths at treaty signings.” Another instrument of attraction rather than repulsion was the Roman law, which gave Byzantium a stability barbarians (even the Huns) admired. “The crucial thing that Byzantine law could convey or withhold was legitimacy.” Rulers tend to want that; it makes ruling easier. And the results were visible. Constantinople’s “impregnable walls, broad pavilions, ornate palaces, churches, hippodrome, and baths made a profound impression on steppe visitors,” guided through “a carefully choreographed reception designed to emphasize the power, wealth, and majesty of Byzantine civilization.” Victory-loving, honor-loving foreign military officers also proved susceptible to splendid titles, which could be bestowed in exchange for peaceful behavior. After all, “only Christ’s vice regent, in the form of the Byzantine emperor, could make a cowherd a proper king.” All without forgetting the liberal but carefully designated handing-out of gold, patronage well informed by the empire’s foreign-policy well-read bureaucrats, in possession of information culled by its spies and diplomats. Attila put that gold to good imperial use, distributing it to his tribal chieftains, contenting them with his rule. And if he didn’t, Constantinople could distribute it directly to those chieftains, factionalizing Attila’s subordinates, turning them against one another or even against Attila himself. 

“In short, there was much more to Chrysaphius’s policy toward the Huns than the base appeasement alleged by his critics.” He deployed what we would now call ‘soft power’ (“religion, law, customs, gold”) “to keep a threat at bay that could not be handled on the basis of military force.” Chrysaphian dilatoriness rested on “the recognition that time changes things,” that tribes and rulers “come and go.” His chosen envoy, Anatolius, approached Attila with gifts and what a Byzantine observer called “gentle words,” the words Christians learn to use. “The outcome of Anatolius’s mission was an event that did not occur: another Hun invasion of Thrace.” Attila turned his untender attention to the west, toward Rome. After Theodosius died, Pulcheria had Chrysaphius killed, and the next emperor shifted to her make-war strategy, saved from his (and her) folly only because the brilliant Attila had also died. The Eastern Empire lasted far longer than the Western empire, “in part due to diplomacy.” While it “did not fill” the gap between political ends and available military means “on its own,” diplomacy served by “acting as a delivery mechanism for nonmilitary forms of power in the empire’s arsenal.” For its part, the bureaucracy preserved ‘institutional knowledge,’ as we now say, giving an emperor like Theodosius a counterweight to the military. Byzantium “shows what could be accomplished through the intelligent use of nonmilitary means to outwit or outlast martially superior opponents,” an aim “that would have been equally recognizable to Sun Tzu and Clausewitz.” This approach was adopted to Byzantium’s “one-time possession and protégé,” the Republic of Venice, a thousand years later.

When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, its close ally was unprepared for war, financially stressed, and threatened not only by the Ottomans in the east but Milan, allied with France, in the west. Even absent such a war, the Ottoman conquest threatened Venice, a commercial republic, with interference with its trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean. Confronting such prospects, the Venetian Senate authorized the diplomat Bartolomeo Marcello to give the Sultan twelve hundred ducats and assure him that Venice intended to abide by the peace treaty that the sultan’s father had signed. If the peace were confirmed, Venice respectfully requested the return of cargo ships seized in the war with Byzantium and “the return of such Venetian citizens as had not yet been decapitated.” In case the peace was not confirmed, the senators also moved to reinforce the Venetian colonies closest to Turkey. As for Milan, with which Venice had fought a series of wars beginning three decades earlier, such land wars were costly because Venice had no large army of its own and needed to pay mercenaries to prosecute them. 

The Senate was part of a set of Venetian ruling institutions that included the doge, essentially an elected constitutional monarch, the Council of Ten, “which effectively acted as the executive branch,” the Council of Forty, “which functioned as a kind of high court, and the Great Council, “which acted as a legislature.” This was not a democratic but an aristocratic republic; the officers came from “a tightknit circle of patrician families.” As a commercial republic, it had long maintained a banking network in foreign countries, eventually accompanied by consuls “to look after its economic interests.” The consuls knew the cities and countries to which they were assigned and regularly sent reports to the government, each a “full accounting of a foreign power’s political, geographical, and historical topography.” Such information was critically important not only for trade but also for political and military reasons, as Venice sat in what would soon become the Italy of Machiavelli, where “the idea of Christian universalism” had faded and diplomacy “was unabashedly secular in its aims,” the Italy that was a cockpit of rival city-states. However, diplomacy as practiced there was not entirely Machiavellian. As the contemporary Venetian diplomat Ermalao Barbaro wrote, an ambassador should “do, say, advise and think whatever may best serve the preservation and aggrandizement of his own state” while “win[ning] and preserv[ing] the friendship of princes.” Reputation mattered, and could not be upheld long-term by mere flattery and deception. 

The Ottomans signed the proffered treaty. Sultan Mehmed II also needed time—in his circumstance, time to “digest his most recent victim.” The Ottoman Empire also derived economic benefit by allowing the Venetians to continue carrying goods between the West and the East, at least until it had built up its naval and commercial fleet so that it no longer needed an intermediary. But the main diplomatic success was the negotiated end of the war with Milan.

The Venetian envoy who negotiated that treaty was an Augustinian prior from Padua, Simone de Camerino. The Peace of Lodi was “a diplomatic masterstroke for Venice.” Not only did it end the war, guaranteeing Venetian rule over lands the republic had acquired, but it led to a treaty among the other major Italian city-states establishing “a twenty-five-year truce during which they pledged to respect the newly agreed borders, set limits on the size of their armies, eschew bilateral alliances, and come to one another’s if attacked.” The Italian League enabled Venice to concentrate its attention on the Ottoman threat by obviating the need to pay for a large land army, thereby freeing monies for the fleet it would need to protect itself against the Ottomans. With its West-East commerce guaranteed for now, Venice could recover economically, while it watched, in the subsequent ten years, as the Ottomans under Mehmed seized non-Venetian islands in the Aegean, Athens and other Greek city-states, Wallachia, Bosnia, and the northern and southern shores of the Black Sea. The emperor carefully avoided attacking the Venetian colonies, but it was impossible to suppose that they were not future targets. “Behind the facade of trade treaties, Venetian diplomats were waging a quiet but determined effort across the Mediterranean and Anatolia to undermine Mehmed’s power, gain influence over his decisions, and build alliances for the coming conflict.”

The republic’s ever-increasing revenues lent substance to the effort. Now “at its apogee as the financial powerhouse of the Mediterranean,” its currency “served as an international currency,” preferred to that of the Ottomans, who could not yet “produce coinage of the same quality.” Venice’s bribes were actually worth something. Not only did bribery recruit allies, it also assisted in recruiting enemies to harass the sultan on the far side of his empire and it paid for the fourteen assassination attempts against Mehmed plotted in the years 1456-1479. Venice’s most important ally became Uzun Hasan, who led a Turkoman confederation called the White Sheep, which spanned “a wide swath of territories across Armenia, eastern Anatolia, and western Iran.” The Venetians also approached Balkan Christian communities, restive under the Islamic yoke. All of these entities shared a common enemy in the Ottomans. All of them provided what Venice had always lacked and the Ottomans had in abundance: land troops.

Unfortunately for Venice, it could not mobilize the Italian League against the Ottomans, as its members, while maintaining peace with Venice, resented its commercial dominance, some continuing allied with France or with the German emperors who controlled some parts of Italy. And when the pope urged a crusade, an effort that might have united the Italians against the Ottomans, Venice demurred, judging such a venture too dangerous to undertake. 

In 1460, the Ottomans were the ones to attack. The Venetians pulled together a set of non-Italian allies consisting of Hungary, Albania, and the White Sheep. They lost, after a fifteen-year fight that marked “the beginning of the end of Venice as a great power.” The Peace of Lodi kept Venice safe from Italian rivals, but in 1494 France conquered the once-powerful city-state. That is, Venetian diplomacy preserved its independence for forty years after its protector, Byzantium, had fallen to the Turks, and it did in fact avoid conquest by a Muslim power. 

Mitchell thus identifies the strengths and limitations of Venetian diplomacy. Diplomacy successfully temporized. But it “could only do so much to mitigate her material deficiencies; for all its cunning, the republic remained a small cluster of islands off the Po Delta, backed by a handful of holdings on the Italian mainland, pitted against an Ottoman land and sea empire that stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates.” To survive, it would have needed to “unit[e] Renaissance Christendom” against the Turks, and that wasn’t happening. Further, to do so would have been equally fatal to its status as a great power, for in bringing together the Christian powers against the Turks, Venice would ruin its commerce with the Ottomans, “on which her great-power status depended.” The “middle position between Christendom and the Turks” made Venice suspect to all. “In retrospect, it is obvious that a small maritime city-state with limited resources would eventually be eclipsed by the large, centralizing empires coalescing on either side of it.” Venice lacked what today’s writers call “strategic depth,” and the alliances its diplomats did cobble together as a substitute for such depth could hold only so long.

In Venice, Mitchell concludes, “we see diplomacy begin to take on something like a modern form, as an enterprise by the state for the state, carried out by accredited professionals on a standing basis.” In modernity, diplomacy has tended to commerce and to information gathering, thereby strengthening the modern state. Venetian diplomatic techniques, soon imitated by its neighbors, “ultimately spread to become the template in Europe and across the world, down to the present day.” At the same time, “Venetian diplomacy ultimately demonstrated beyond any doubt the limits of what can be achieved in international politics without the backing of adequate military power.” At least to some extent, Machiavelli is right to prefer being feared to being loved, although Mitchell also notes that Venice wasn’t much loved, either. In his next pair of chapters, France and Austria, he considers the diplomacy of two thoroughly modern, centralized states that wielded considerable military power.

 

 

 

 

John Ma: Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024. 

 

The ancient Greek polis or ‘city-state’ only seems familiar to us, having read the historians, philosophers, and playwrights who flourished within them (well, mostly in Athens, which didn’t always allow its philosophers to flourish). But readers of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges’s La Cité Antique have glimpsed the alienness of the polis, how entirely unlike modern states, especially modern liberal states, it was. In our time, the open society continues to have its enemies, but in antiquity there were no open societies. Enemies were rival poleis, rival empires, and rival factions contending with one’s own regime no regime asserted liberty in our sense of the word, that is, personal liberty held against the state. No polis justified itself by securing, or at least claiming to secure, natural rights held by individual persons. Whatever regime a polis might have had, it was exclusive. The ancient regime also exemplified religion in the original sense of the word: the binding of the people to divinely inspired laws given to that polis. Religious liberty as we think of it was unknown, even if a few philosophers asserted freedom from religion. 

In this magisterial study, Columbia University professor John Ma unfolds the history of the polis with particular attention to how its rulers adapted themselves to the pressures of war and factionalism. He defines a polis as a small territory (typically about 300 square miles), ruled by adult male citizens, with an overall population that included slaves, freeborn foreigners, women, and children, all excluded from share in that rule. Although the citizens owned property, their rights to their property were defined by their fellow citizens, or in a tyranny, by the one ruler. “The polis defines itself as commonwealth (koinon), a community (koinonia) of citizens, a constitution (politeia)”—that is, by “the terms that Aristotle explicitly deploys to describe the rise and the essence of the polis in his Politics.” Throughout, Ma inclines toward Aristotle’s understanding of Greek politics (albeit with some qualifications), emphasizing the prudential ways in which it was ruled, while acknowledging the religion-bound character of the polis somewhat in passing.

But if “Aristotle witnessed” the emergence of the polis, why did it emerge? And why did it endure so long, if at least in attenuated form, from 350 BCE to 400 AD—into the Roman empire?

Ma begins with the prehistory of the polis. He emphasizes that there was “no clear path of development,” no historically inevitable march, during this time; things might have turned out differently. And in any case, reliable information is hard to find, limited as scholars are to archeology and poetry.

From 1400 to 1200 BCE, the Late Bronze Age, lands bordering the Aegean Sea featured “palace-entered polities” which controlled large territories and populations, essentially as estates. Rulers determined who would use the land, for what purposes, practicing what Ma delicately calls “the mobilization of labor” for fortifications, places, hydraulic works, and monuments to themselves and the gods. These were warrior polities, “monarchical, hierarchical, bureaucratic”—in many ways “the antithesis of the later form of the polis.” Departing from Aristotle, Ma denies that “the polis grows out of the primitive ‘tribal’ structures”; tribes actually came into being at the same time as the poleis did; these were “interlocking processes.” This could occur because smaller communities existed among the palatial estates as “clustervilles” that stood ready to rise up and expand, asserting self-rule, after the estates collapsed.

It is only in the late eighth century BCE that the poems of Homer and Hesiod “provide sustained political statements about communities, values, and action.” By then, societies ruled by the aristoi or “best men” and by the basileis or kings (a title descended from the palatial and post-palatial power holders) become visible. These “lordly elements often found themselves in tension with “a strong, explicitly sense of community and public interests.” Rulers remained warlike; “glory and honor [were] obtained by killing and stripping opponents, or by obtaining plunder.” In peace, there was feasting, leisure, luxury, all carried out “in an unflinching theater of distinction.” The lords modeled their lives on the lives of the gods, justifying their rule as saviors of the people from enemies (including enemy gods) and therefore entitled to near-godlike status—ordering religious rituals and judging disputes. Ma warns against confusing these communities with feudalism, which exhibits a relatively stable hierarchy. Warlike competition and the “social reciprocity” of lavish feasts made them far more contested than the feudal states of Christendom. Moreover, the king had no serfs or peasants paying rent to him; he was a landowner ruling a household which included slaves. And he needed to pay heed to the activities of the councils, in which the community met, engaged in religious rituals of their own and upheld a “sense of the common good.” Kings competed with one another in war, parleyed in feasts, but also needed to exhibit “the sense of obligation toward the community.” “Collective opinion” mattered, although the councils themselves met only at the behest of the king. “The world of the Homeric epics is about the city: the community finds its expression in a nucleated built environment, defined by walls, sharing public spaces”—a human artifact that is the setting for norms, obligations, and community power that enforces these things, and which symbolizes them. “This was not yet the polis,” but the materials for the polis are visible.

To study the polis, one must first turn to the middle of the eight century BCE, when “the first documentary record” of the use of the word appears in the community of Drēros. “The Drerian officials hold power on terms decided by the community, according to permanent, public, known, and stated rules” which have religious sanction; no king convenes the assembly. Among those things ordained by assemblies are tribes; that is, tribes are political institutions, governmental forms, a means of organizing the population. “The working of state institutions probably required the distribution of the population into such groups to ensure an openly fair sharing of power.” Other groups—dining groups (for example, the famous Spartan messes), drinking groups, phratrai, or “brotherhoods,” genē —now appear, and even militaries are reorganized, with ordinary soldiers sharing the spoils of war along with the heroes. War is now understood as rightly waged for the benefit of the community, the defense of that community against foreign powers in conflicts over territorial borders along with political dominance or freedom. Politicians therefore begin to speak of union as clearly as they do today, searching for commonalities uniting town and countryside, town dwellers with farmers. The polis was not only a real place but an “imagined community.”

The laws now “strive for universalizing force and comprehensiveness, with far-reaching authority within society.” In Ma’s view, this is no longer only religious but rational law, with categories of crime set down in a logical way, including crimes against the polis itself, and with considerations of “how far the law should stay unchanged, how law itself can be changed” in an orderly way. The ‘rule of law,’ as distinguished from the rule of persons, gives rise to a distinction between the law and rulers’ decrees, with the greater authority going to the laws. Laws also bolster attempts at political administration, including the administration of finances. Collection and expenditure of revenues become orderly, too; “the polis was hence a form of political economy.”

“The most important and durable aspect of the consolidation of poleis and their interaction is the pattern of mutual, self-aware recognition [of other poleis] as peers.” Poleis competed with one another in games in which athletes represented their communities. They erected shrines and held festivals attended by foreigners, as seen in Pindar’s poetry.

In the following centuries, poleis increasingly prospered, offering the stability that led to increases of population and of settlements. They also inclined toward egalitarianism, if not yet toward democratic regimes, having in many instances replaced the arbitrary rule of “the best men.” True, “the demos, the commons, are never simply the whole community,” but neither are they the elites. The aristoi of course challenged, or attempt to adapt to, these egalitarian trends, often by replacing “aristocracy of birth” with “various forms of competition” intended to establish superiority on the ground of innate strengths of body and (especially) of soul. This ensured the continuation of warlikeness and displays of wealth. But elite ‘pushback’ seldom stayed “the appearance of public institutions and rules for power-sharing, the clear location of legitimacy of power in communal interests and universally applicable rules, communicated to the whole community which they concern”—a communication, it might be added, made feasible by the small size of the poleis. While “in the story of the polis the rich will always be with us, the crucial question, however, is that of the place, and the nature, of these wealth and power elites, once the communities take the developmental path of strong integration that characterizes the polis.”

Tensions between the many who were poor and the few who were rich (with ambitious would-be ‘ones’ waiting in the shadows, hoping to seize upon disorder and exalt themselves above both) led to conflicts over regimes. As described by Aristotle, regimes consist of rulers, ruling institutions or offices fashioned for their purposes, a way of life, and a purpose or set of purposes for the polis. “One solution to the travails of integration was to consolidate strongly a small group of stakeholders chosen on grounds of birth and especially wealth, and to exclude the rest of the population of the territory” from rule—an oligarchic regime, as in Sparta and Crete. In these poleis, “the restricted group” of rulers must “present itself as the whole community,” often by making a “claim to divine or heroic descent.” “The other, diametrically opposite path was to structure the polis through wide inclusiveness, by the integration of a large segment of the adult male population as citizens, in strict distinction to noncitizens, namely foreigners and especially the enslaved”—a democratic regime, as in Athens. It, too, claimed divine sanction, as when the founder of democracy in Athens, Solon, declaimed: “Our polis will never perish by the destiny of Zeus or the will of the happy immortal gods—for such is the great-hearted guardian, might-fathered daughter,” Athena, “who holds her hands over us.” Thanks to her, eunomiē, literally good-lawness, “makes all things orderly and adjusted, and often lays fetters upon the unrighteous.”

Enter the “classical” polis, seen from 480 to 180 BCE. It did not begin auspiciously. What Ma calls the “Hundred Years’ War” between Athens and Sparta does indeed resemble Europe’s Hundred Years’ War between the Plantagenet and Valois dynasties, both conflicts drawing neighboring states into the fighting as allies. With the advantages of territorial and population size, Athens began as the hegemon, the lasting traces of which may be seen in “the astonishing ensemble of marble buildings on the Akropolis”—symbols of religio-political authority. In effect, the Athenians had imitated the Persian empire the Greeks had united to defeat.

Sparta eventually won the war, thanks to financial aid from that empire, enjoying hegemony for the next thirty years only to collapse in its turn, having overstretched. Both Athens and Sparta provoked resistance from smaller poleis, forming coalitions against their oppressors, as “the mounting costs of raw power politics doomed imperial aspirations.”

These vicissitudes did not break the poleis, however; they reinforced it as a state form. Within that form, Athens famously continued to exemplify democracy, Sparta oligarchy, with various mixtures of those regimes seen elsewhere. In Athens, democracy without any substantial bureaucracy made for “immediate responsive[ness] to popular decisions,” decisions demagogues attempted to sway. As seen in Socrates’ trial, these decisions included judging, not only lawmaking and policy. “The assumptions between democratic practice and its institutional logic were well understood by critics of democracy: Plato attacks the very epistemological basis of mass decision as a principle in his fictionalized portrayals of Socrates.” Not only philosophers but the wealthy felt the pinch, as the latter bore heavy financial burdens.

Sparta saw oligarchy, “the rule of the few, the better, the rich.” Whereas corruption of the people in Athens took the forms of rhetoric/demagoguery and sophistry from itinerant teachers, the Spartan rulers corrupted the people the old-fashioned way: with money and patronage. Like most oligarchs, the Spartan politeuma or ruling body presented itself as aristocratic/virtuous, claiming to bring “order balance, self-control, and even justice” to the polis. “The few wielded power on grounds of merit,” the few claimed, inasmuch as the rich were too rich to be corrupted or greedy and too smart to make bad decisions. By contrast, “democracy could be portrayed as irrationality and madness.” Oligarchs struggled and often factionalized over the question of whether to require equality among themselves or to establish a hierarchy of merit.

Whatever regime it established, the polis itself remained and strengthened as attempt at achieving hegemony by one polis or another floundered. In a sense, the polis became the new ‘hegemon,’ universalizing itself throughout Greece in what Ma calls “the great convergence.” “The poleis were all militarized (aligning militiamen, elite troops, and even their own fleets), heavily fortified, and endowed with a strong sense of identity, interests, and continuity.” They were “remarkably successful at playing the long game and achieving freedom”—that is, autarkia or self-rule—in the Hellenistic period. To resist the power of the larger poleis, the smaller ones formed leagues, “uniting autonomous cities within common decision-making processes and institutional frameworks to produce highly effective shared goods on the social, economic, and political fronts.” Disputes between poleis could also be arbitrated by third parties, in “a network of peer-polity interaction.” The Macedonian conquests (350-280 BCE) removed the possibility of hegemony from individual poleis, but the poleis adapted to the foreign hegemon, retaining “a strong sense of identity, interests, and continuity,” backed by sufficient military force to make “the constant exercise of force” against them unsustainable. Moreover, Macedon wasn’t the only empire in the Mediterranean world, a the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Seleukids of Syria, and others competed for influence, enabling the poleis to play them off against each other.

As poleis increased in number, so did regimes of ‘the many’—some of them democracies, others ‘mixed regimes,’ as Aristotle calls them. Ma attributes this to the increasingly peaceful atmosphere of the great convergence, an atmophere in which the military prowess of oligarchs and monarchs could not thrive because it became less eneessary. “Negotiations and compromise” among and within poleis became the norm, a norm better suited to popular self-government. Politics itself became less sharp-edged, as disputes over regimes faded or, to put it in Ma’s more academic prose, “as a consequence of decoupling of claims to excellence from political domination, association and groups vied for distinctiveness without centrifugality.” Civic life became more political in Aristotle’s sense of the term: reciprocal, a matter of ruling and being ruled in turn. Elites didn’t disappear; they adapted to popular rule by serving the public good as defined by ‘the public’—serving in office and loaning money to the polis during their terms of service, exhibiting evidence of good character in their public dealings, and submitting to public scrutiny of their actions while in office.

But then a new and more formidable empire forced its way into the Aegean. By the middle of the second century BCE, the Romans had established their empire in the region. Ma asks, “What did Roman control change in the polis?” And “to what extent did polis culture shape the forms taken by the Roman conquest, and subsequently, by the Roman empire?” The answers turn out to be quite interesting because neither conquest nor empire were simple, straightforward things.

With the Hellenistic period’s Macedonian hegemon broken and the regional Aetolian and Achaian leagues gone, “the poleis recognized that the axis of the world had tilted.” Embassies to Rome were dispatched. Some Greek politicians dragged their feet while others hastened to cozy up to the apparent masters of the new world order. For its part, the Roman Senate did not press matters too closely. Rome had defeated the major Aegean powers but hadn’t really attempted to conquer Greece. As a result, “local ‘liberty” continued under a haze of “negotiation, litigation, boundary-pushing, and consultation.” Ma calls this the “Indian Summer” of the polis as “civic freedom was paradoxically an integral part of Roman provincialization.” It might be added that this was nothing new in ancient imperial practice. Cyrus the Great didn’t mind sending the Israelites back to Jerusalem, didn’t mind if they ruled themselves with their own laws, so long as they paid him tribute while doing so. Ancient empires were impressive in size but not so impressive in their capacity to centralize full political authority over their subjects. Their subjects often were not entirely subjected.

“It is clear that Roman provincialization in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor coexisted with the general freedom of the island poleis of the Aegean.” This included the perpetuation of more or less democratic regimes there, no longer pressured by “the big regional leagues,” which of course had been centered much closer than Rome. Nor did the prestige of the gentlemen decline, as they continued to support the democracies monetarily. Democrats needed oligarchs and oligarchs needed democrats: politics, ruling and being ruled, continued. And some Romans were impressed; “this world offered a model for Cicero.” “It is worth remembering that the debates of the second century BCE polis, rather than simply ‘Hellenistic philosophy,’ influenced Roman political thought.”

“Local freedom meant litigating out a situational space of freedom, a bundle of organized privileges within the flow of Roman power,” a matter of “constant hard work” for the rulers of the poleis. Increasingly, Greek politicians “equated freedom with friendship of Rome.” This is what Polybius had feared: a gradual, ‘creeping’ sort of imperialism, a movement from Roman hegemony to Roman empire over Greece. When Athens finally rebelled against Rome in 86 BCE, it was too late. It was Cicero himself who asserted Roman oversight of Athenian finances while proclaiming Athenian freedom: “Never mind—at least they think they have autonomia.“

In Cicero’s time, Rome itself saw regime change, from the republic to monarchy. “Under Caesar and preponderantly under Augustus, colonies of Roman veterans were installed in the Peloponnese, the norther Aegean, and in Asia Minor.” That is, monarchs, having come to power by military means, prudently saw to it that the soldiers who had boosted them into rule were dispersed and rewarded, well away from the capital city, enhancing Roman influence in the imperial territories. Nonetheless, once again the poleis proved resilient, as their Roman overseers began to adopt the Greek language and “Greek civic ideologies and images.” if the polis requires self-rule to be a polis, self-rule did persist.

But it persisted in increasingly attenuated form. “The statues of Roman emperors joined the statues of the gods in temples,” their images appeared on Greek coins, and the “ruler cult” flourished, expressing “a communal understanding of dependency before Roman power” and upon the peace it secured. Indeed, “the emperor decided directly on the very existence of a polis as a corporate, recognized entity with institutions.” The emperor appointed provincial governors empowered to issue laws and policies and enjoying judicial authority as well. Greek cities participated in the punishments meted out by the courts, guarding prisoners and providing “the facilities for executions in the arena as gladiators or by wild beasts.” The emperor also imposed taxes, with the responsibility for their collection imposed upon the poleis. “The cities thus acted as instruments in their own exploitation.” With these progressive tightenings of rule, “we are not quite seeing bureaucracy at work, but a routine regular attention from the center, generating the concrete manifestations of the state.”

The empire still functioned by the process of city petitioning and Roman response to the petitions, so a significant taste of political rule remained. “Even in the Roman empire, the polis never quite forgot its origins as a state, a self-ruling community. On the Roman side, petition and response “allowed the empire to show itself repeatedly, consistently, as a field of rationality, legal-mindedness, and responsiveness,” as “a political rather than an administrative entity.” “Viewed coldly, the Roman empire appears as the end of the line for civic autonomy,” but the Greeks, throughout their history, have seldom viewed things coldly. And, as Ma insists, for the Romans, the poleis‘s “internal political and social order had to be preserved, in ways centered on the continuity of public goods” in order not to kill the golden-egg-laying geese. Thus, “for all the modifications, simplifications, and developments brought about by Roman power, the political life of the Greek city-state remains recognizable from earlier times.”

Still another regime change took place with conversion of Constantine to Christianity in the third century AD. Gradually, Church bishops replaced not only the existing priests, destroying or repurposing the temples, but also “took over some of the roles of the civic elites”—representing a polis before the emperor, for example. More importantly, the division between the regime of the emperor and the regime of the church wiped out the religio-political character of the polis, as Fustel de Coulanges saw and as Machiavelli deplored. Between Empire and Church, “the status of citizen (politēs) disappears, replaced by a concept of mere inhabitant.” By the sixth century, “the ancient city faded out of recognition.”

Ma mistakenly takes Aristotle to be an institutionalist, simply, overlooking one of the elements of his idea of the politeia or regime, the Bios ti or way of life. But Ma does not himself ignore that element, pointing to the festivals, associations, and “public performances” in the poleis, as well to the continued importance of public opinion. The public opinion that directed the way of life of the polis was in turn shaped by religion. “The polis was what the polis did, and what the polis did was to worship and honor the gods, through ritual events and material manifestations.” It is true that it is Fustel, not Aristotle, who emphasizes this feature of the polis, but Aristotle’s account is also a defense of philosophy, an activity not always in accord with political religion. The prophetic religion, Christianity, which had suffered persecution along with philosophy so long as the ancient civic religion prevailed, dealt with that religion by pushing it aside. Yet insofar as it then took on civic responsibilities, too, the prophetic religion in turn opened itself to philosophic scrutiny and political tensions. Difficulties persisted.

Looking back at the polis, Ma admits, as Marxists insist, that the polis had ‘contradictions’ within it, notably the contradiction between the few who were rich and the many who were poor. But he also observes that these contradictions register the diversity of the polis; such tensions occur in an organization of any substantial size. “The polis, as a koinon or participatory community of citizens, is different in nature from predatory extractive states” inasmuch as “revenue-raising activities are directly purposed toward the solidaristic provision of public goods…through investment or redistribution.” It is indeed a ‘commonwealth.’ It typically offered some protection for rich and poor alike. As Benjamin Constant remarked, it was not a liberal state in the modern sense, protecting the rights of individuals against the state. As a ‘closed’ society, it did not welcome foreign immigrants. An of course it rested upon slavery, which enabled citizens the leisure to engage in politics in the first place. But one must ask, what ancient society was not exclusive (except for the empires, which ‘included foreigners by conquering them) and slave-owning? The polis achieved political liberty for many of its inhabitants, which is more than can be said for any type of community previous to it, or of many that followed it.

 

Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. Volume III. October 2017-January 2020. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2020.

Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. Volume IV. February 2020-May 2022. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2022.

 

Having set down the fundamental principles and practices of his ideology as enunciated in speeches and other documents in the first four years of his rule, Xi elaborates on those principles and practices in statements issued during the subsequent three years, with emphasis on the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese regime. [1] He is especially vigilant with regard to possible sources of intra-Chinese opposition to Party rule, whether they might issue from the provinces, the military, or from ideological deviationists within the Party itself. In doing so, he must navigate the changes in policy the Party itself has implemented during its now hundred-year history, since those changes might themselves provoke charges of deviationism from the tenets of Maoism. Admittedly, the Party has led “a major turnaround with far-reaching significance,” the move “from a highly centralized planned economy to a socialist market economy” and from a condition of isolation from the outside world to “one that is open to the outside world in every respect” (Speech at the Ceremony Marking the Centenary of the Communist Party in China, 7/1/21, iv.6). This notwithstanding, he is careful to remark that “the Party has united the Chinese people and led them in writing the most magnificent chapter in the millennia-long history of the Chinese nation,” thanks to “the concerted efforts of the Chinese Communist, the Chinese people, and the Chinese nation” which has remained faithful to the Party’s “founding mission” and “firm leadership, without which “there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation” (ibid.7-9). “The Party was chosen by history and the people”; its leadership must be upheld and strengthened by “follow[ing] the core leadership of the CPC Central Committee,” “act[ing] in accordance with its requirements” as it continues to follow “the path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” thereby “unit[ing] the Chinese people,” whose “fundamental interests” it “has always represented,” having “no special interests of its own” (ibid. 9-10). 

“Marxism is the fundamental ideology upon which our Party and our country are founded; it is the very soul of our Party and the banner under which it strives” (ibid.11). And rightly so, because “the scientific truth of Marxism-Leninism” provided “a solution to China’s problems” and animates “the capability of our Party and the strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics are attributable to the fact that Marxism works” (ibid.11,13). Against “the three mountains of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism,” the Party combined communism and nationalism to rejuvenate the country (ibid.15). “Realizing our great dream demands a great project,” namely, “strengthening the Party that is building momentum,” the “Marxist governing Party” that is “the vanguard of the times, the backbone of the nation” (ibid.17). Consonant with this, “our Party—the “highest force for political leadership”—has “continued to uphold dialectical and historical materialism” (ibid.19), combining “the tenets of Marxism with China’s conditions and the outcome of a range of innovations in theory, practice and system” in accordance with “the wisdom of the Party and the people” (Speech to the Second Full Assembly of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 10/31/19, iii.144).

Regarding the military, it is an “irrefutable truth that [the Party] must command the gun and build a people’s military of its own,” maintaining “the Party’s absolute leadership over the people’s armed forces,” taking “comprehensive measures to reinforce the political loyalty of the armed forces” (ibid.12-13). Under that rule, the military will both protect “our socialist country” from foreigners, “preserve national dignity,” and “protect peace in our region and beyond,” inasmuch as “peace, concord and harmony are goals that China has pursued and carried forward for more than 5,000 years,” although (he assures his listeners) “the Chinese nation does not carry aggressive or hegemonic traits in its genes” (ibid.13). Peace, concord and harmony include “resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification” as the Party’s “unshakeable commitment,” “tak[ing] resolute action to utterly defeat any move towards ‘Taiwan independence'” (ibid.16). 

Against any suggestion that such centralized authority might yield tyranny, Xi claims that “a hallmark that distinguishes the Communist Party of China from other political parties is the courage to undertake self-reform,” practicing “effective self-supervision and full and rigorous self-governance” (ibid.15). In an earlier speech, he had affirmed that the “people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class based on an alliance of workers and farmers” assures that “all power of the state belongs to the people” (Speech at the First Session of the 13th National People’s Congress, 3/20/18, iii.168). Now, he asserts that “orderly and law-based” succession of Party leaders proves that “a country’s political system is democratic and effective,” along with law-based governance generally, the expression of public opinion “through open channels,” whether government offices are distributed “by way of fair competition,” and “whether the exercise of power is subject to effective checks and oversight” conducted by the self-governing Party (Speech to the Central Conference on the Work of People’s Congresses, 10/13/21, iv.297). That is, Chinese “democracy” is to “should be judged” by the Chinese people, “not by a handful of meddlesome outsiders” such as international human rights organizations (ibid.298). “There is no uniform or single model of democracy; it comes in many forms,” and it is “undemocratic in itself to measure the world’s diverse political systems against a single criterion” (ibid.298). In China, for example, “the people exercise rights by means of elections and voting,” although of course this means the affirmation of candidates selected by the self-supervising Party (ibid.299). Quoting his predecessor, Deng Xiaoping, “we cannot adopt the practice of the West” since “the greatest advantage of the socialist system is that when the central leadership makes a decision, it is promptly implemented without interference from any other quarters” (ibid.299). Such decisions are always in accordance with the rule of law, inasmuch as “leadership by the CPC is the most fundamental guarantee for socialist rule of law,” a rule that “must benefit and protect” the people because the Party acts as their vanguard, “lead[ing] the people in enacting and enforcing the constitution and the law” (Speech at the first meeting of the Commission for Law-based Governance under the CPC Central Committee, 8/24/18, iii.332-333, 334). “Under no circumstance should we imitate the models and practices of other countries or adopt the Western models of ‘constitutionalism,’ ‘separation of powers,’ and ‘judicial independence'” (ibid.333). If some of this sounds a bit like circular logic, well, “socialist rule of law must uphold CPC leadership, while CPC leadership must rely on socialist rule of law,” a rule in which “leading officials, though small in number, play a key role in implementing the rule of law” (ibid.334, 336). This will lead to “social harmony without lawsuits” and the emphasis of “moral enlightenment over legal punishment”—sometimes called ‘re-education’ (ibid.333). In this, “upholding CPC leadership and socialist rule of law must be the fundamental requirement for legal professionals” (ibid.344). “The Party’s leadership, the people’s position as masters of the country, and law-based governance form an indivisible whole” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, 10/18/17, iii.4).

Given its huge membership of 89 million and 4.5 million “grassroots organizations,” preserving and developing the Party’s Marxist character “is not easy” (Speech at the Sixth Group Study Session, Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 6/29/18, iii.114). The improvement of “the institutions and mechanisms by which the Party exercises leadership” includes “the reform of the national supervision system,” with “checks and oversight over the exercise of power” by the Central Committee (ibid.5), which will “ensur[e] that the Party exercises overall leadership and coordinates work in all areas” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit. iii.74). In appointing officials, for example, the Party will emphasize “political performance,” meaning the willingness to “follow the leadership of the CPC Central Committee and act in accordance with its requirements” with “full confidence in the path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” that is, in conformity to Xi Jinping Thought. That thought follows the principle of Mao, who “said that politics meant making more people support us and fewer people oppose us”—the “key to the Party’s success in leading revolution, economic development, and reform” (“Speech at the first meeting of the Commission for Law-based Governance under the CPC Central Committee, op.cit.347). This is what “the sense of responsibility” among Party members means (ibid.347). “The fundamental purpose of strengthening the Party’s organizations is to uphold and improve overall party leadership and provide a strong guarantee for advancing the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics” arming members with “the theoretical weapons of Marxism” and teaching them how to use them in order to “improve our ability to apply theory in practice” (Speech to the 21st group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 6/29/20, iv.581, 583). At times, Xi’s conception of the Party resembles that of a Christian church: “A political party must have faith. For the Communist Party,, this refers to the faith in Marxism, communism and socialism with Chinese characteristics,” fortified by reading “more Marxist classics and classical works on adapting Marxism to the Chinese context,” in order to “truly understand the Marxist stance, viewpoint and methodology, and internalize them so that they uphold faith in Marxism and persevere in pursuing their ideals with strong convictions,” ideals that “should be the beacon of faith for Party officials (Speech to the Second Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 1/11/18, iii.585-586).

Xi quotes Lenin: “The proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organization”—a strength, Xi adds, that “no other political party in the world has” (ibid.583, 584). This effort is especially important with the “primary-level Party organizations”—i.e., the ones at the grassroots—which directly oversee the people (ibid.585). “Managing human resources, including officials and talent, is essentially a matter of how to put people to good use” under the system of “democratic centralism,” the “fundamental organizational and leadership principle of our Party” (ibid.587). Taking “strong action to transform lax and weak governance over the Party” by “follow[ing] the core leadership of the CPC Central Committee,” its authority and “centralized, unified leadership” by “tighten[ing] political discipline and rules” will “ensure that political responsibility for governance over the Party is fulfilled at every level of the party organization” within a strong “cage of institutions” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit.iii.8,9). Thus, “we will continue to strengthen the Party’s ability to cleanse, improve, and reform itself, and forever maintain its close ties with the people” (ibid.iii.27). This will combat formalism and bureaucratism (“the obsession with official posts and power”) within the Party (Speech to Commission for Discipline Inspection at the Third Plenary Session of the CPC of the Central Commission, 1/11/19, iii.581, 582). There are, he warns, “cliques bound together by political and economic interests attempting to usurp Party and state power” practicing “unauthorized activities fanned by factionalism that sabotage the Party’s centralized and unified leadership” (ibid.587). Only if the Party can “cleanse itself’ of such elements, terminating their activities, can China “break the cycle of rise and fall,” by which he means the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties seen throughout the country’s history (ibid.592).

“No matter what kind of work they do and how high their rank” Chinese Communists “are first and foremost Party members” whose “primary duty is to work for the Party” (Speech at the National Conference on Strengthening the Party in Central Party and Government Departments, 7/9/19, iii.125). That is, “political awareness is not abstract” but always to be manifested by the principle, “Be loyal to the Party,” its beliefs, organizations, theories, guidelines, principles and policies” (ibid.125). As Mao said during the Korean War, “The enemies have more steel than morale, while we have less steel but higher morale” (ibid.126). By “democratic centralism” Xi means the practice of “solicit[ing] opinions from a certain number of Party members”; “of course, after collecting opinions and advice from all parties involved, it is the Central Committee that makes the final decision,” given the fact that in “such a huge Party in a vast country like ours if the final and sole authority of the Central Committee were undermined, the decisions of the Central Committee were ignored, and everyone followed their own way of thinking and worked their own way, nothing would be achieved” (Speech at the Second Full Assembly of the Third Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 2/28/18, iii.196, 197). “Delegation of power,” under the Chinese Communist regime, thus means top-down rulership, after consultation with “a certain number” of Communist Party operatives. “Weak political commitment and a lack of regular and sound political activities” must never be permitted (Speech to the Second Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, op.cit.584). To ensure that this will happen, “we will establish supervision commissions at the national, provincial, city, and county levels,” an “anti-corruption working mechanism under the Party’s unified leadership” (ibid.593). “This will make some people unhappy” (ibid.594). Needless to say, “discipline enforcers must first discipline themselves,” being “a key target of people with ulterior motives” who “seek to corrupt them.” (ibid.iii.594). “We cannot allow ourselves any respite” (Speech to the Study Session on implementing the decisions of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 1/11/22, iv.38). “Self-reform is key to ensuring our arty never betrays its nature and mission” (Speech to the Second Full Assembly of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 11/11/21, iv.629). Since “the history of our Party is like a most lively and convincing textbook,” in 2021 the Central Committee launched “an education campaign on CPC history in the whole Party and society to review, study and promote the Party’s history,” which will give Party members “a better understanding of our cause, firmer commitment to our ideals, higher standards of integrity, and greater determination to turn what has been learned into concrete actions” (Speech at a criticism and self-criticism meeting on the education campaign on CPC history to the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 12, 27-29,/21, iv.634). Such study will buttress an overall campaign to combat the “hedonism and extravagance” concealed under formalism and bureaucratism (Speech to the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 1/18/22, 641). 

Xi does not fail to invoke a sort of populism, having learned from Russian and European communism generally the danger of allowing deep-seated popular resentment of Communist Party rule. “One main reason for [the] failure of communism in Russia “was that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became detached from the people and turned into a group of privileged bureaucrats who only served their own interests,” “imperil[ling] the fruits of modernization” (Speech at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 1/11/21, iv.197).  He associates populism with the anti-corruption campaign, remarking that “the people resent corruption most,” making it “the greatest threat our Party faces” (XXX, 10/17/18, iii.72); “it may even lead to the loss of power” (Speech to the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee, Commission for Discipline inspection, 1/22/21, iv.589).  More generally, the “centralized, unified leadership” of the Party takes a “people-centered approach” to his work, he assures his listeners, as “the people are the creators of history,” the “fundamental force that determines our Party and our country’s future” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit.iii.23). “The fundamental goal for the Party since its founding, in uniting the people and leading them in revolution, construction and reform, is to give them a better life” (Speech at the deliberation session of the inner Mongolian delegation to the Third Session of the 13th National People’s Congress, 5/22/20, iv.61). If the Party becomes “detached from the people” it will lose the “vital force” of the people’s creativity (Speech commemorating the 120th birthday of Zhou Enlai at the World Leadership Alliance, Imperial Springs International Forum, 11/30/17, iii.161).  “The people are our Party’s greatest strength in governance,” and “the Party works for the people’s interests and has no interests of its own” (Speech at the Conference on the Aspiration and Mission Education Campaign, 5/31/19, iii.163). The Party leadership guarantees “that the people are the masters of the country”—hence the Leninist formula, “people’s democratic dictatorship” (Report to the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit.iii.37-38). He promises to “expand the people’s orderly participation” within that regime, presumably with emphasis on the “orderly” (ibid.39). Party committees “should strengthen democratic oversight, focusing on the implementation of the major principles, policies, decisions, and plans of the Party and the state” (ibid.40, emphasis added, although it may not be needed). When it comes to the many ethnic groups within China, the CPC will lead all of them toward “Chinese socialism,” inasmuch as “the Chinese nation is a big family”; to “uphold socialist values,” the Party will build ” cultural home shared by all ethnic groups” by “highlight[ing] China’s cultural symbols” (Speech at National Conference commending Model Units and Individuals for contributing to Ethnic Unity and Progress, 9/27/19, iii.351-353). “Having a stronger sense of national identity is essential to defending the fundamental interests of all ethnic groups,” and this can be achieved by “build[ing] a cultural Great Wall for safeguarding national unity and ethnic solidarity, pool[ing] efforts of all ethnic groups to defend national security and maintain social stability, and effectively combat[ing] infiltration of extremist and separatist ideas and subversion” (Speech at the Central Conference on Ethnic Affairs, 8/27/21, iv.279). “Chinese culture is like the trunk of a tree, while individual ethnic cultures are branches and leaves; only when the roots are deep and the trunk is strong can the branches and leaves grow well” (ibid.1v.281).

Chinese culture, under Xi’s definition, is fundamentally non-Chinese—specifically, Marxist. “Why does Chinese Socialism work? Because Marxism works.” (Speech to the Study Session on implementing the decisions of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 1/11/22, iv.35). He repeatedly elaborates on the Marxist character of the regime, lest there be any misunderstanding of this. “We need to uphold and apply the worldviews and methodologies of dialectical and historical materialism” and to apply “Marxist views on practice, the people, class, development and contradictions, and truly master and apply well these skills” “so as to better transform such ideas and theories into a material force for understanding and changing the world”—adapted, to be sure, to Chinese circumstances (Speech Commemorating the Bicentenary of the Birth of Karl Marx, 5/4/18, iii.97). He quotes Marx himself as writing that “Chinese socialism may admittedly be the same in relation to European socialism as Chinese philosophy in relation to Hegelian philosophy” (Second Full Assembly of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19the CPC Central Committee, 10/31/19, iii.145). “We should uphold the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field, base our efforts on Chinee culture, and continue to guide agricultural development with the core socialist values” (Speech to experts and representatives from education, culture, health and sports sectors, 9/22/20, iv.357). “It is the sacred duty of Chinese Communists to develop Marxism,” to “open up new prospects for the development of Marxism in contemporary China and the 21st century” (ibid.98). As a historicist, he avers that “the era is the mother of thought; practice is the fount of theory” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit. iii.28). Literature, the arts, and social science must “foster and practice the core socialist values,” “consolidating the guiding role of Marxism,” “strengthen[ing] confidence in the culture of Chinese socialism and better present[ing] China to the world” (Speech at the Joint Panel Discussion of members of the literary, art, and social science circles during the Second Session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee, 3/4/19, iii.376). The “fundamental issue” is to know “who we are creating and speaking for”: the people, who are “the source of inspiration for literary and artistic creations” and the field of study for the social sciences (ibid.378). Literary and artistic works should “create an enduring epic about the people” (Speech to the 11th National Congress of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the 10th National Congress of the China Writers Association, 12/14/21, iv.372) while “present[ing] China as a country worthy of friendship, trust and respect,” which would undoubtedly serve the interests of Chinese diplomacy (ibid.376).

Crucial to this ‘cultural’ Marxism is the “education campaign” directed at members of the Chinese Communist Party itself, a campaign intended to inculcate “deeper understanding, firmer commitment, greater integrity, and stronger action” at the service of the Party (Speech at the preparatory meeting for the education campaign on CPC history, 2/20/21, iv.592). Marxism has been enriched and broadened with contributions from Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and, of course, Xi Jinping himself. Marx and Engels “systematically revealed the historical law that socialism would eventually replace capitalism,” a “trend of human society” that is “irreversible” (ibid.593). Today, a new education campaign “will help all Party members to be clear about China’s strategy of realizing national rejuvenation within the context of a wider world that is undergoing change on a scale unseen in a century” while maintaining the Party’s “distinctive features as a Marxist party” and affirming what Mao called its “magic weapons”: its “united front, armed struggle, and strengthening the Party,” thereby “carry[ing] forward the revolutionary spirit” “through to the end”(ibid.594-595, 597,599). At a seminar with “teachers of political philosophy,” Xi identified “the key to improving our education in political philosophy” as “fully implement[ing] the Party’s policies on education” for the purpose of “ensur[ing] that the younger generations can shoulder the responsibility of rejuvenating the Chinese nation” along Marxist lines (3/18/19, iii.382). Teachers educating Chinese students in this system should “have strong political convictions,” “love the country and the people,” “learn to use dialectical and historical materialism,” “broaden their vision of knowledge, the world and history,” “exercise strict self -discipline online and offline,” and “have an upright character” (ibid.384). They will “integrate political principles with scientific rationale,” that is, “integrate theory and practice,” obedient to the Party because “China’s success hinges on our Party” (ibid.384, 385). This goes for school administrators, as well, and of course for the Party secretaries who supervise them. This will be a moral as well as a “scientific” education because “selfless devotion and being open and above board are our defining qualities as Communists” (ibid.604). Here is where Confucius may be brought in, properly subordinated to Communist “political philosophy,” since the sage enjoins us, “When you meet people of virtue and wisdom, think how you should learn to equal them; when you meet people with poor moral standards, remind yourselves against such behavior” (ibid.604). This notwithstanding, Marxism and not Confucianism remains “an instrument to transform our objective and subjective world” (Speech at the 15th group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 6/24/19, iii.617). “We will foster a Marxist style of learning” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit.iii.68), as party members “consciously guide practice with theory and ensure that all aspects of our work better conform to the demands of objective and scientific laws” (Speech at the First Plenary Session, 19th CPC Central Committee, 10/25/17, iii.85).”Struggle is an art, and we must be adroit practitioners” of Marxian dialectics (Speech at the Central Party School 9/3/19, iii.265). “Once a communist party loses its ideals, it is no different from other political parties”; in losing “this motivating force and inner bond, it will become a disjointed group, doomed to failure” (Speech at the opening ceremony of a training program for young officials at the Central Party School, 9/1/21, iv.607). It is easy to maintain ideological discipline in revolutionary times but “in times of peace” one must “safeguard the authority of the Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership,” “faithfully follow the Party’s theories, guidelines, principles and policies, and implement the decisions and plans of the Central Committee to the letter,” strictly aide by the Party’ political discipline and rules, be honest with the Party,” and “put the cause of the Party and the people above anything else” by obeying its commands (ibid.609, 619). 

The Party will also rule the political economy of China, sometimes directly with state-owned enterprises, sometimes by its supervision in accordance with the laws the Party enacts. In November 2012, the same month Xi assumed the office of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the 18th National Congress of the Party established the “Two Centenary Goals” for building “socialism with Chinese characteristics”: achieving “a moderately prosperous society” by the year 2021, the Party centenary, and “a modern socialist country” by 2049—that is, a fully modernized, prosperous nation, “democratic” and “harmonious” in Xi’s meaning of those terms, and (obviously, if unstated) the dominant world power (iv.82 n.1). Against the slogan, “The American Dream,” Xi lauds “the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation” now that “socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era” (“Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era: Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, 10/18/17, iii.1). Moderate prosperity will entail “poverty elimination,” for which the “top leaders” in each district (especially rural areas) “are the first persons responsible” for “research[ing] and formulat[ing] an action plan on poverty elimination” and “set[ting] a timetable and roadmap for ending extreme poverty in three years” (Speech to a seminary on targeted poverty elimination, 2/12/18, iii.182). “Extreme poverty” has “shackled the Chinese nation for millennia,” but with such “targeted measures” as relocation businesses from “inhospitable areas,” state-funded job opportunities and subsidized housing renovation, along with better education and health care, the poor can be motivated to work harder and not to live their lives on the dole (ibid.185-186). This program includes a Chinese equivalent of Lenin’s New Economic Policy—reducing administrative regulations, permitting a limited free market, and granting property rights. The intra-Party campaign against corruption comports with this program. “A new type of cordial and clean relationship between government and business should be established” (Speech at a meeting on private enterprise, 11/1/18, iii.313). To be sure, “entrepreneurs should cherish and maintain a positive social image, love the motherland, the people and the Party, practice the core socialist values, and promote entrepreneurship,” including international ventures (ibid.315). [2]

In the targeted year of 2021, Xi declared victory in the Party’s war on poverty. Every year since the announcement of the Two Centenary Goals, he reports, “an average of 10 million people, equivalent to the population of a medium-sized country, have escaped from poverty” (Speech to the National Conference to Review the Fight Against Poverty and Commend Outstanding Individuals and Groups, 2/25/21, iv.147). Nearly 20 million persons received subsistence allowances or other aid, and more than 24 million disabled Chinese had also received subsidies. One of the main jobs provided by the government was forest warden, with more than 1.1 million “impoverished people” now “earning their livelihood by protecting the environment” (ibid.147). “No other country throughout history has been able to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty in such a short period of time,” proving that that the CPC “has unparalleled capacity to lead, organize and implement” as “the most reliable force for uniting the people and guiding them to overcome difficulties and forge ahead”; thus, “as long as we are steadfast in our commitment to upholding the leadership of the Party, we will be able to overcome any difficulties or obstacles on the road ahead and fulfill the people’s aspirations for a better life” (ibid. 151, 154). In turn, the CPC owes its success in this enterprise to Marxism, which recognizes that socialism comes in two stages: “undeveloped socialism,” which lasted in China from the founding of the PRC in the late 1940s until 2012, and “comparatively developed socialism,” the current stage (Speech to the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 1/11/21, iv.187). But Marx and Lenin “did not envisage the possibility of a market economy under socialism” (Speech to the Central Conference on Economic Work, 12/8/21 iv.243). Lenin’s NEP was a step in that direction, but it was left to the CPC to establish “the socialist market economy,” looking for a way “to boost the positive contribution of capital…while keeping its negative effects under control” (ibid.243). Capital must be regulated, as “no capital of any type can be allowed to run out of control”; this includes control of profits and prices (ibid.244). The regulation and guidance of “the use of capital” matters not only economically but stands as “a political issue of both practical and theoretical significance,” since capital might undermine the regime of socialism (Speech to the 38th group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 12/8/21, iv.251). Capital, he reminds his comrades, can be and is held in public/Party as well as in private hands. In this matter as in all others, “we must uphold Party leadership and the socialist system and keep to the correct political direction” by “prevent[ing] unchecked growth of capital while encouraging investment,” “properly manag[ing] the operation of capital and distribution of gains” not exactly in the communist way, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs (the communist stage of history has not yet been reached) but by the principle from the socialist state to each according to his work (ibid.253, 254). 

In considering international commerce, Party members must understand that “in today’s world, markets are the scarcest resource” and China has the biggest single market—a “huge advantage for our country,” an advantage of which “we must make full use” (Speech at the study Session on implementing the decisions of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 1/11/21, iv. 204). Competition in the international market (“Chinese enterprises now have interests that extend to many countries around the world”) will firm up the domestic economy, expanding the already “vast domestic market” by making export products and services better and stimulating industrial development (ibid.205). To facilitate such commerce, Xi tells attendees at the World Economic Forum at Davos that the world should “abandon ideological prejudice and jointly follow a path of peaceful coexistence, mutual benefit, and win-win cooperation” (Speech to the World Economic Forum Virtual Event of the Davos Agenda, 1/25/21, iv.535). That is, he artfully downplays the regime conflict that he will advance in non-economic areas in order to strengthen China’s capacity for success in that conflict in the long run. The most famous instance of Chinese economic outreach, the Belt and Road Initiative, “under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee,” will connect China via “hard connectivity” (physical infrastructure) and “soft connectivity” (“harmonized rules and standards” along with “people to people connectivity”) (Speech at the third meeting on the Belt and Road Initiative, 11/19,21, iv.573). This will “expand mutual political trust and strengthen policy coordination to guide and facilitate cooperation” along the Belt and Road corridor—all while “uphold[ing] the centralized, unified leadership of the Party” (ibid.573-574, 576, emphasis added). 

Even such carefully regulated openness to international commerce poses obvious threats to “national security,” over which the Party must retain “absolute leadership” (Speech to the National Security Commission, 19th CPC Central Committee, 4/17/18, iii.254). The National Security Commission was founded in 2014 for exactly that purpose, “making sure that the national security principles and policies are implemented, improving the working mechanism making great effort to improve its strategic capacity for understanding the overall situation and for planning future development” not only by technical and administrative improvements to the security apparatus but by “strengthening the Party and its work among national security departments,” “resolutely uphold[ing] the authority of the Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership so that we can build a loyal and reliable national security force” (ibid.255). “We must assign the highest priority to political security,” “ensur[ing] the security of our state power and political system,” not reactively but proactively (Speech to the 26th group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 12/11/20, iv.454, 455). This very much includes “the Party’s centralized and unified leadership over cybersecurity and IT application,” which must be made to “move in the right direction” by regulating, operating, and using the internet “in accordance with the law to ensure that the development of the internet is within the bounds of the law (Speech to the National Conference on Cybersecurity and IT Application 4/20/18, iii.361). 

As with the national security apparatus, so with the military—another potential source of regime subversion and overthrow. Since Xi’s appointment as Party Secretary, “the CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission (CMC) set about strengthening the military and its political governance,” “emphasiz[ing] the need to promote our Party’s full and rigorous self-governance and govern the military with strict discipline in every respect” (Speech to the Central Military Commission on Strengthening the Party, 8/17/18, iii.445). “Political commitment is the most important criterion and political integrity an essential requirement for our military personnel” (Speech to the Central Military Commission Conference on Talent, 11/26/21, iv.446).To assure “absolute Party leadership over the military,” military officers will receive more intensive “theoretical education” (i.e., Marxist instruction) (Speech to the Central Military Commission on Strengthening the Party, op.cit., 445) to “ensure their absolute loyalty to the Party and the state” (Speech to the Central Military Commission Conference on Talent, 11/26,21, iv.446); Party organizations within the military must be strengthened; Party discipline within the military must be improved and enforced, curbing corruption and “punish[ing] vice”; and, overall, “ensur[ing] Party self-governance with stricter, harsher, and more punitive discipline” (Speech to the Central Military Commission on Strengthening the Party, op. cit.446). While “transform[ing] the military into world-class armed forces,” this ever-enhanced power must be ruled attentively by the civilian Party (ibid.446). With these efforts, “we can build a socialist military policy framework with Chinese characteristics” (Speech to the Central Commission on reform of the military policy framework, 11/13/18, iii.451). The “dream of building a powerful military” can work in accord with “realizing the Chinese dream” (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Part of China, op.cit.iii.6). “The Party must command the gun and build up the people’s armed forces” (Speech to the 32nd group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 7/30/21).

As with national security, military actions should be ‘proactive.’ Xi cites the example of “China’s resounding victory in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea” not only as “a declaration that the Chinese people had stood upright and tall in the East” (“ending our century-long history of humiliation following the Opium War of 1840”), and not only as a counter to “the aggressors’ plan to destroy China in its infancy with the troops it had sent to the PRC border,” but as an example of military pre-emption, citing Mao’s maxim, “Throw one hard punch now to avoid taking a hundred punches in the future” (Speech on the 70th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Volunteers’ entry into the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, 10/23/20, iv.83). In “realizing the Two Centenary Goals,” “we must not forget the grueling route to victory in this war” (ibid.86).

Economic and military policy being closely linked to foreign policy Xi maintains that socialism with Chinese characteristics “offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence,” “offer[ing] Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing humanity”—an approach, one suspects, that will eschew any dependence upon the United States or the commercial republican regimes of Europe while substantially increasing dependence upon the regime in Beijing (Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, op.cit.iii.12). The Soviet Union’s disintegration dealt “a severe blow to world socialism” but, as Deng Xiaoping observed at the time, “So long as socialism does not collapse in China, it will always hold its ground in the world” (Speech to the Second full assembly of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 11/11/21, iv.93). Now, more than three decades later, “upholding the authority of the CPC Central Committee and strengthening the Party’s centralized and unified leadership over China’s foreign affairs” will prevent any such thing from happening and moreover “build global partnerships through pursuing a broad diplomatic agenda” that includes “steering reform of the global governance system to promote greater equity and justice”—i.e., world socialism (Speech to the Central Conference on Foreign Affairs, 6/22/18, iii.496). Since “the world is undergoing momentous changes of a scale unseen in a century,” “Remain[ing] loyal to the Party,” Chinese diplomats must “pursue continuous learning and self-improvement,” “gain[ing] a keen understanding of the Party’s theories, principles and policies, as well as Chinese laws and regulations,” practicing the “self-discipline” that stems from the knowledge that “the power to make foreign policy rests with the CPC Central Committee, which exercises centralized and unified leadership over China’s foreign affairs” (Speech at the meeting for Chinese diplomatic forces, 12/18/17, iii.489-491). All of this may well qualify Xi’s praise of “multilateralism” at various international gatherings. [3]

In all, “a well-founded system” or regime “is the biggest strength a country has, and competition in terms of systems is the most essential rivalry between countries” (Speech to the Second Full Assembly of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, 10/31/19, iii.144), whatever verbiage on “multilateralism” may purport. The Chinese regime combines “the tenets of Marxism with China’s conditions”; its “innovations in theory, practice and system…crystalize the wisdom of the Party and the people and are in alignment with [China’s] history, theory and practice,” all of those firmly subordinated to the principles of Marxism with Chinese characteristics. In the words of Deng, “By absorbing the progressive elements of other countries [our socialist system] will become the best in the world. Capitalism can never achieve this.” (ibid.149). Ergo, the commercial republics will slowly fall into the dustbin of history.

 

Notes

1. See “The Comprehensive Strategy of Xi Jinping, 2012-2017,” on this website under the category, “Nations.”
2. In this effort, the newly acquired, formerly capitalist regions of Hong King and Macao have had a distinctive role, with investments on the mainland and “a demonstration role in market economy” (Speech at a meeting with delegations from Hong Kong and Macao, 11/12/18, iii.460). Hong Kong and Macao also helped the mainland obtain export orders from the West, given their long and cordial relations with the commercial republics. For its part, the PRC “piloted many of its opening-up policies in Hong Kong and Macao first, gained experience and then introduced them into other parts of the country step by step,” “allowing the country to advance opening up while effectively controlling risks”—i.e., keeping firm control of market forces in the hands of the Party (ibid.461). “Hong Kong, Macao and the mainland work side by side with one heart and one mind” as the formerly separate regions “integrate into the overall development of the country, and share the glory of a strong and prosperous motherland” (ibid.463)—although Xi does hope that they “will integrate their development into the overall development of the country more proactively” (ibid.465) “improv[ing] local systems and mechanism for enforcing the Constitution and the Basic Laws” (ibid.466). This is the real meaning of the slogan, “One Country, Two Systems”: two systems gradually becoming one, under the Communist regime. The same formula will apply to the recalcitrant Republic of China on Taiwan, as the mainland and China “belong to one and the same China” (Speech at a meeting marking the 40th Anniversary of the release of the Message to Compatriots in Taiwan, 1/2/19, iii.470). “As the Chinese nation moves forward towards rejuvenation, our fellow Chinese in Taiwan should certainly not miss out,” especially given Xi’s assurances that “Taiwan’s social system and its way of life will be fully respected, and the private property, religious beliefs, and lawful rights and interests of our fellow Chinese in Taiwan will be fully protected” (ibid.471, 472). Initially, at least: with regard to religion, for example, Xi has insisted that “religions in China should conform to China’s realities, and we should guide religions to be compatible with socialist society” (Speech at the National Conference on Religious Affairs, 12/3/21, iv.302). Religious believers “must learn more about the history of the CPC, the PRC, reform and opening up, and the development of socialism” while “train[ing] Party and government officials engaged in religious work so that they will have a good command of the Marxist view on religion, the Party’s theory and policies on religious affairs, and increase their knowledge on religion, so as to  raise their capacity to provide guidance” (ibid.304). With regard to any move formally to declare Taiwanese independence, he warns, “those who forget their roots, betray their motherland, and seek to split the country will come to no good end; they will be condemned by the people and indicted by history” (Speech at a meeting marking the 110th anniversary of the Revolution of 1911, 10/9/21, iv. 478-479).
3. See, for example, Speech at the CPC and World Parties Summit, 7/6/21, iv.499; Speech at the 12th BRICS Summit, DATE, iv. 529; Special Address to the World Economics Forum Virtual Event of the Davos Agenda, 1/25/21, iv.537-542).