China Journal slams ‘another central committee’ to undermine party leadership
News analysis
A publication of the Communist Party of China (CCP) recently published a comment stressing the need for members to stick to a “centralized and unified leadership.”
The article in the Red Flag Manuscript, a bimonthly journal of political theory, also criticized some former leaders for setting up an alternate central government, a reference to the Party’s earlier history.
Current political observers view the May 10 article as an indication that the CCP is seriously divided, with leader Xi Jinping’s power limited and dispersed.
The article began by declaring that “a centralized and unified leadership” is the “supreme principle” of the Party, which would be affirmed as “a mutual political obligation” of all cadres.
The phrase “centralized and unified leadership” appears 39 times in the full text.
If the Central Committee does not carry out what it has decided, “if each member still talks and does what they want, then nothing will be done,” as Xi quoted in the article said.
The article also named the first leaders in the CCP’s history such as Zhang Guotao and Wang Ming, while criticizing Zhang for “setting up another Central Committee” and Wang for his “right-wing mistakes.”
Both Zhang and Wang were rivals of Mao Zedong in the 1930s.
Although deceased for decades, Zhang and Wang frequently appeared in official media as cases of counterfactuals during the Xi era.
In an article published on August 15, 2021, the CCP-run Qiushi website compiled a series of comments, specifically stating that Zhang “used the military to create a separate central committee” and that Wang “sent away.” rallied and acted on his own. manner” within the CCP, disobeying the leadership of the Party Central Committee.
On June 25, 2021, ahead of the CCP’s high-level meeting in Beidaihe, state media published intensive articles criticizing Zhang and Wang, calling them “ambitious” and “returning independence” to the Central Committee, an example. negative of “division” and “threatening the CCP.”
Zhang, one of the founders of the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army, established a second Central Committee in 1935 which later announced the expulsion of Mao and other Party leaders.
Mao, however, defeated Zhang and became the first leader of the CCP regime. He recalled the struggle with Zhang as “the darkest moment of his life” in an interview with American author Edgar Snow in 1960. “At that time the Party was facing a split, and there was even the possibility of civil war with an uncertain future,” Mao said.
Zhang was expelled from the Party on April 18, 1938, and he later joined the opposition Kuomintang. With his family, he went into exile in Hong Kong in 1948. Zhang eventually settled in Canada in 1968 where he died in 1979.
Wang, another political rival of Mao, whose proposal to unite with the Kuomintang against the invasion of Japan was concluded by the CCP as a “mistake of right and surrender”. Wang then traveled to the Soviet Union for medical treatment in 1956 and resettled there until his death in 1974.
Foreign political commentator Lu Tianming told The Epoch Times that the state media has launched a recurring pattern of criticism targeting the so-called “other Central Committee,” which hints at a similar situation occurring in the upper echelons of the CCP. That is, someone is looking at Xi’s central power.
The split within the Party could escalate to an extremely serious extent, Lu said.
While disparaging the establishment of another central government, the article pointed to a series of “internal rules and regulations” that the CCP had formulated earlier in 1938, saying that all Party work should be “directed in a manner centralized by the Central Committee” and that Party members at all levels “must implement them unconditionally”.
These regulations were established to govern the party with decisive authority, said Mouthpiece CCTV on December 21, 2021.
In addition, the Party constitution is used to provide a basis that CCP members must be absolutely subordinate to the policies of the Central Committee.
“The Communist Party’s constitution is a gangster rule, which does not speak of right and wrong, but forces people to blindly obey the orders of the party leader,” Lu said.
But other than that, Xi actually has no other way to convince other senior Communist Party officials, including those behind him, to support and implement his decisions – support for Russia and enforcement of the nationwide Zero-COVID policy – which had negative consequences in China and placed it under considerable pressure within the CCP, according to Lu.
Lu noted that the article itself was not published in a high-ranking media outlet, but only in a bimonthly magazine, “which also indicates that Xi may not have as much influence in his position, with part of its privileges restricted and dispersed.”
Compared to the purely centralized power of the Mao era, Xi has fallen far behind, Lu said, adding that Xi had therefore tried to seek from Mao ways to consolidate the power of the Communist Party.
But “the CCP’s support seems obviously thin,” Lu said.
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Jessica Mao is a staff writer for The Epoch Times and focuses on China-related topics. She started writing for the Chinese language edition in 2009.