A Chinese court sentenced former Politburo member Ling Jihua to life in prison Monday for accepting more than $11.6 million in bribes. His downfall caps paramount leader Xi Jinping’s purge of political rivals under cover of an anticorruption campaign. Mr. Ling was consigliere to Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao.
While the “tiger hunt” for top-level cadres may be over, that doesn’t mean Mr. Xi has consolidated power. China’s political struggle continues in other guises. This will make government policies unpredictable and risks conflict spilling out into public view in ways not seen since 1989.
Mr. Xi rose to power in 2012 as a compromise candidate not backed by any major faction. He turned that weakness into a strength by attacking factionalism as the source of problems within the Communist Party. Corruption was the first target, but he has now shifted the emphasis to ideological unity.
That causes some odd juxtapositions. On Friday Mr. Xi warned that the Communist Party must hold fast to Marxist ideology. But at the same time he continues to push reforms to increase the role of market forces in the economy.
Mr. Xi’s signature slogans—the Four Comprehensives and Five in One—boil down to one rule: What the Chairman says goes. In April he launched a one-year campaign to improve Party discipline. Having crowned himself the “core” of the Party’s leadership, he has inveighed against “careerists and conspirators” within its ranks. These campaigns and rhetoric recall the era of Mao Zedong, when a wrong word could spell career suicide or worse.
Mr. Xi has targeted in particular the Communist Youth League, the power base of Mr. Hu’s faction. Its budget has been cut in half and its leaders forced to make self-criticisms about their “elitism.” By intimidating other power-brokers, Mr. Xi has cleared the way to put his supporters in key positions. Last week Xi ally Xu Lin was unexpectedly named the new head of internet censorship.
The culmination of these maneuvers could be the removal of Premier Li Keqiang, the one Hu ally on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the pinnacle of Chinese politics. Mr. Li would normally serve a 10-year term through 2022, but rumors are flying that Mr. Xi will force him to retire at the Party Congress next year and move other Hu allies into ceremonial positions.
Attacking rival factions’ right to exist violates a key tenet of Chinese elite politics since Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power in 1979. The top leader has always governed in consensus with other leaders who maintained their own power bases. These factions competed for key positions but did not seek to eliminate each other. This tradition was designed to prevent a repeat of Mao’s purges. Mr. Xi has upended this decision making by consensus and made himself the decider in all policy realms.
All of this creates new political uncertainty, especially as China’s economy slows. Mr. Xi’s rivals could accommodate his ascendancy, or they could look for ways to resist—such as by stirring populism as former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai did before his downfall in 2012. Mr. Xi could use a foreign conflict to wave the flag and cement his popularity. And there is the problem that bedevils all dictatorships: how to handle the competition to succeed Mr. Xi. The rise of a new strongman brings a new volatility to old assumptions about China’s peaceful rise.
