Organized Loyalty: A New State Ideology for China as a Global Power (Politics and Development of Contemporary China)

This book analyses the ideology that China's leader Xi Jinping has crafted during his decade in power. China’s political system and domestic and foreign policies have, between 2012 and 2022, become more defined by the political thought of Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader of the Chinese Communist Party since the time of Mao Zedong. Today, Xi’s China is embroiled in superpower rivalry with the United States and its allies. Therefore, ongoing ideological transformation in the People’s Republic is destined to have global repercussions. Yet surprisingly, the ideological mission of Xi Jinping is poorly understood. Based on analysis of Xi Jinping’s collected speeches, the book argues that China’s new state ideology is constructed around the three key concepts of loyalty, discipline, and greatness. Xi’s mission is about ideological re-orientation and re-activation, as well as organizational innovation, seeking to frame China’s “national self” as a collective unit under one political banner and one leader. However, despite the monumental Party-state effort to boost the new ideology and state-scripted “moral careers”, the book contends that Xi Jinping cannot take for granted that political and patriotic loyalty will forever trump the formation of “disloyal moral careers” in society. Acknowledgments 6 Contents 7 About the Author 9 1 Introduction: China’s National Self, President Xi Jinping, and Realizing the Chinese Dream 10 References 23 2 Anti-Corruption Forever: Discipline and Loyalty 26 Disciplining Vested Interests and Punishing Secret Cabals 30 From Discipline to Loyalty 36 Confucian Loyalty 41 Repudiation of Xi Jinping’s Predecessors: “Leninist Greed” Versus Capitalist Greed 44 References 46 3 Loyalty Toward State and Nation: Top-Level Design and “Moral Careers” 52 Toward a State of Maximum Security 59 Algorithmic Control and the Shaping of Moral Careers 61 References 68 4 Loyalty to the Nation: Lunar and Martian Exploration for Lasting Greatness 75 Lighter and Darker Aspects of Past Space Races 80 Lighter Aspects: China’s International Cooperation in Space 81 Darker Aspects: Potential US-China Conflict in Space and the Russia-China Axis of Friendship 84 Reasons for China’s Pursuit of Space Power: “Restrained Status Seeking” and Military Preparation 88 References 91 5 Post-zero-COVID-19 Policy: Limits to Loyalty on the Horizon? 96 References 103 References 104 Index 119