CHINA: Xi Jinping Is Watching His Back.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s image may be all over the news these days, but in real life, Xi has all but vanished from the world stage. Hunkering down in Beijing for more than 700 days, Xi was a no-show at last year’s United Nations General Assembly, the G-20 summit in Rome, and the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Xi’s disappearing act is occurring at the same time he and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) face serious domestic headwinds, including rampant energy shortages, rising unemployment, and a real estate market teetering on the edge of collapse.

Times have clearly changed since before the COVID-19 pandemic, when Xi confidently boasted about ushering in a new, China-centric global order. Xi’s refusal to go abroad clearly reflects his fervent desire to stay on top of any renewed coronavirus outbreaks, the second-order effects of which have paralyzed China’s industrial output. But the pandemic alone cannot explain Xi’s refusal to leave his seat of power—or to shelve, however temporarily, his grand international ambitions.

Instead, if Xi’s latest pronouncements are any indication, there is something else keeping him awake at night: growing fears about resistance to his rule from factions inside the CCP.

Put plainly, as China’s economy stumbles and its global standing tumbles, Xi is quickly realizing that after almost a decade in power, his demand for “absolute loyalty” within the CCP remains quixotic at best—and foolhardy at worst. And that is a major cause for concern less than 10 months before the CCP’s 20th Party Congress, when Xi is expected to assume a once unthinkable third term as the party’s general secretary.
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Xi’s focus on regime security also carried over into remarks later in December before an audience that included nearly every member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest-level decision-making body. Xi asked that all those present take a pledge to protect the authority of the party’s centralized, unified leadership. Put another way, Xi demanded that the party’s leaders demonstrate their personal loyalty to him. On how many occasions have Standing Committee members repeated this same pledge in recent years? Countless times, for sure. More puzzling is why Xi must constantly hear them declare it in public if, as he so defiantly claims, his political future is all but assured?
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The simple explanation for Xi’s refusal to leave China and his recent, over-the-top loyalty push is that Xi recognizes he is increasingly vulnerable.

“One-man rule” also means there’s only one man to blame when things go wrong — something every would-be one-man ruler seems to forget along their quest for total power.