Sixth plenum: China’s Xi Jinping is rewriting history. But it’s the future he wants to leave his mark on

When more than 300 members of Chinas political elite gather in Beijing this week their main task will be to review a draft history resolution that defines the ruling Communist Partys major achievements and historical experiences since its founding 100 years ago. The agenda of the most crucial Central Committee meeting before the twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle next fall is carefully and deliberately chosen. It speaks of the importance Xi attaches to party history, and his own place in it. In some ways, that obsession with history can be seen as rooted in a tradition dating back to ancient China. For centuries, Chinese imperial courts appointed historiographers to document the rise of an emperor, which often involved compiling and rewriting the history of his predecessor. To the Chinese Communist Party, history or rather, certain curated versions of it can be extremely useful. Chinas alleged historical claims to disputed territories and waters, for instance, have been used by Beijing to bolster its case for contemporary sovereignty, while the narrative attached to the so-called century of humiliation by foreign powers from the First Opium War in 1839 to the founding of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 has become a central source of legitimacy for the party. In the eyes of the partys leaders, losing control over these narratives can bring disastrous consequences. The collapse of the Soviet Union a stern cautionary tale cited time and again by Xi is in part attributed to historical nihilism, or the ruling elites rejection of Soviet heritage. As a result, the Chinese Communist Party vigilantly guards its own history by airbrushing the darker chapters of its tumultuous past and erasing particularly sensitive episodes from public memory. But the upcoming history resolution is not only about reshaping the partys past. More importantly, its a way for Xi to codify his authority and supremacy in the present and project his long-lasting power and influence into the future. Since its founding, the party has only issued two such resolutions, put forward by Xis two most powerful predecessors Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Maos resolution in 1945 established him as the unchallenged authority within the party, after a three-year rectification campaign that brutally purged his political and ideological opponents. Dengs resolution in 1981, meanwhile, acknowledged Maos errors in launching the Cultural Revolution a political campaign that plunged the country into a decade of chaos and torment (although it concluded that Maos contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweighed his mistakes). But by admitting to and moving on from past mistakes, Deng was able to usher in a new era of reform and opening up. By issuing his own resolution, Xi seeks to further entrench his status as a towering leader on the same level as Mao and Deng. Already, he has managed to establish his own eponymous political theory and have it written into the partys constitution, a privilege previously only reserved for Mao and Deng. Xi sees himself as responsible for taking on the mantle of Mao and Dengs epoch-making legacies, brushing past his two immediate predecessors. In that version of party history, Mao led China to stand up against the bullying by foreign powers, Deng helped the Chinese people to get rich, and Xi is now leading the country on a triumphant path to become strong. And to continue to do that, the rationale goes, he needs to stay in power for at least a third term, to steer the country through what he terms the window of opportunity for China to catch up with if not surpass the West in national strength. For now, few details about the resolution are known barring the expectation that it will most likely be passed by party elites this week. The documents title indicates a more celebratory and forward-looking tone than the previous two resolutions, which focused on clarifying the problems or mistakes of the immediate past. But regardless of the finer details, the consensus among political observers is that the resolution will further cement Xis authority and place him firmly at the helm of the party for the foreseeable future. The essential function of all of this verbiage, make no mistake, will center on the person and power of Xi Jinping, defining his leadership as the way forward, on the basis of an understanding of history that defines his core agenda, wrote David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. As George Orwells famous quote from 1984 puts it: Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And for Xi, it seems like hes about to control all three, at least for now. The post Sixth plenum: Chinas Xi Jinping is rewriting history. But its the future he wants to leave his mark on appeared first on Patabook News .

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