Coronavirus crisis will ultimately strengthen Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party despite economic turmoil, US analysts say
- Another prediction: likelihood of China meeting the purchasing goals of the phase one US trade deal this year is ‘somewhere between zero and zero’
- ‘The state expands to deal with the crisis and then remains at a new expanded level even after the crisis fades away’
The likely outcome of the coronavirus epidemic is not only that Chinese President Xi Jinping remains in power, but also that the Communist Party emerges bigger and stronger despite the current economic challenges, long-time China watchers said on Thursday.
China’s responses in the first few months of the outbreak resulted in some criticism of Xi, and multiple signs have pointed to negative economic growth in the first quarter. But, after the crisis fades, “it’s very unlikely that there’s any significant or overt political challenge to Xi Jinping,” said Jude Blanchette, who holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.
“This is a leader who has consolidated extraordinary amounts of power … his value proposition is that he will be able to fix China’s governance system to be able to deal with black-swan events like the one we’re dealing with now and other challenges China is facing.”
He added: “I think where we should be spending most of our time looking is what will the new shape of the party state look like in response to or as a result of its actions to deal with the coronavirus.”
Blanchette predicted a stronger Communist Party in the wake of the outbreak because such an outcome “is a cyclical and structural feature of crises internationally – that the state expands to deal with the crisis and then remains at a new expanded level even after the crisis fades away”.
He said the crucial task for China now, after state media indications that the contagion is more or less under control, is to stabilise employment and restart the economy.