It’s easy to think that the CCP is a political organization of 90 million people that uniformly agree on any given policy, but the reality may be far more complex and illuminating.
The first major faction after the reign of Deng Xiaoping was the Hu Jintao’s coalition of peasant farmers. Their sometimes rivals, sometimes partners were the elitist Shanghai coalition, with all the wealth and foreign connections that go along with being “coast elites”. The coastal elites, under the leadership of Jiang Zemin, rose above their rivals when Jaing’s faction advocated for the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989. At the time, Hu’s faction was more open to negotiate. Jaing created the 6-10 commission (a sort of secret police) to condemn and prosecute the Falun Gong (basically a meditative exercise, with a compassionate morality) practitioners. This was an empowering move, since any political adversary could be accused of being a secret practitioner of Falun Gong and removed from their opposition.
Within the ascending “Shanghai gang”, Xi Jinping made his rise. He was born in 1953. He became Governor of Fujian province from 1999 to 2002. He joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007 and became General Secretary of the CCP in 2012. Shortly after taking power, he orchestrated the “Tigers and Flies” anti-corruption campaign, which removed insufficiently loyal individuals from all the most significant political, domestic security and military positions.
In this show, we discuss why Xi is conducting such a harsh COVID policy, as well as come to terms with the apparent implosion of the Chinese economy.