Intro LO:
The Nikkei Asia article (below) reminds me of one of the seven unresolved prophecies by American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) about China:
- On one occasion, Cayce told a group of people that eventually China would become “the cradle of Christianity, as applied in the lives of men.”
- “Yea, it is far off as man counts time, but only a day in the heart of God – for tomorrow China will awake.”
- He also suggested that eventually the height of civilization would move from the West to the Chinese people: “And these will progress. For, civilization moves west.”
Hence, prioritising regime security over economics & finance makes sense – albeit in the eyes of Chinese leadership, and/but not the Chinese people.
In my view, China’s choice and priorities (ie, regime security) will only accelerate that still unresolved Edgar Cayce prophecy.
To give some perspective:
- China has more than 1.4 billion citizens;
- China has more than 99 million CCP members (c.7%);
- most (c.93%) Chinese people have no communist links.
Hence, regime security is a very serious issue for Chinese leadership.
Analysis: Xi Jinping prioritizes ‘regime security’ over fighting economic turmoil (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia subtitle: As annual session of NPC opens, leader eyes extending reign beyond 2027
By: KATSUJI NAKAZAWA
Date: 6 March 2025
“As the annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, kicked off in Beijing on Wednesday, all eyes were on potential policy prescriptions for the country’s ailing economy.
But the nation’s leaders know fully well that the pain afflicting the world’s No. 2 economy is unlikely to be healed anytime soon, especially given that “regime security” appears to be the government’s top priority.
An emphasis on ensuring Communist Party General Secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping extends his reign beyond the party’s next national congress in 2027 means economic woes are not as firmly center stage as they could be.
Indeed, it was regime security rather than the economy that was high on the agenda at a group study session of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo on Feb. 28, just ahead of the annual parliamentary gathering.
The Politburo, which currently has 24 members, holds a meeting and a group study session once a month. The latter has been drawing particularly strong attention since the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament has become even more of a formality after it last year stopped including a premier’s news conference.
It had been a decades-long tradition for the Chinese premier to meet the media at the end of the NPC, providing a rare opportunity for journalists to question one of the national leaders. To many, its demise symbolizes China’s receding openness.
Meanwhile, the country’s economy remains stuck in the doldrums in the wake of grave policy mistakes over the past decade or so and as a festering real estate crisis casts a long shadow over many people’s lives.
With no quick fix on the horizon, the Xi administration has no choice but to basically adopt a wait-and-see attitude for the time being, after it completes some policy measures to avoid the worst fallout from the faltering economy.
Those measures include propping up the deteriorating finances of local governments, which are struggling with massive revenue shortfalls due to the prolonged slump in the property market.
Local governments in China have been selling property developers the rights to use state-owned land at high prices. But their revenues from such sales plunged 16% in 2024 from a year earlier.
But nursing the ailing Chinese economy back to health is expected to take time.
When they meet behind closed doors, many private sector business leaders in China often whisper about how long it will take to heal the country’s deep economic malaise. It’s taboo to talk about the subject in public.
Some of them say it will take at least one or two years, while others argue it will need five years or more and possibly over 10, citing what Japan experienced after the bursting of its asset-inflated bubble economy in the 1990s.
In a government work report to the annual session of the NPC on Wednesday, Premier Li Qiang announced an economic growth target of “around 5%” for 2025, unchanged from the previous year.
The growth target is not so significant, however, given private sector business leaders’ grim assessment of the economy and widespread doubts about recent official growth figures, even among prominent economic experts and analysts within China.
Critics say that China’s official growth figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt, arguing that they are inflated by at least a few percentage points to make the economy appear stronger.
Although Chinese authorities are desperate to delete unfavorable posts to that effect from the internet, many ordinary people in the country already believe official growth figures cannot be taken at face value.
Speaking at the group study session on Feb. 28, Xi showed a strong sense of crisis and gave a pep talk to fellow Politburo members. He stressed the need to give top priority to safeguarding “national political security” and “national regime security.”
This time, Xi dared to add the word “national” to the familiar terms “political security” and “regime security,” a move that reflects the harsh international situation surrounding China.
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing an additional 10% tariff on all imports from China. The new levy, which took effect on Tuesday, came on top of a 10% tariff that started on Feb. 4.
In response, China on Tuesday decided to slap retaliatory tariffs of up to 15% on key U.S. agricultural products — such as wheat, corn, soybeans and beef — from March 10.
If trade friction between the world’s two biggest economies escalates further, it is possible that it will take longer for China to emerge from its prolonged economic slump.
The Feb. 28 Politburo group study meeting, which was presided over by Xi, was reported on the front page of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, as the top story on March 2.
The Ministry of State Security, which is primarily responsible for national security-related legislation, also published a commentary about the same meeting on its official social media account on Tuesday.
Taking a step back, what do the terms “national political security” and “national regime security” actually mean?
National political security indicates realizing political stability by preventing the state led by the Communist Party from being politically divided and also by stopping ideologies different from that of the ruling party from penetrating the country.
The term national regime security is more specific. It means taking all measures to prevent the communist regime currently led by Xi from being toppled, not only by hostile internal forces but also through political upheaval due to external interference.
Such views are summarized in the “comprehensive national security concept” which the Xi administration has advocated since 2014, when he was serving his first term as China’s supreme leader.
Xi has used the comprehensive national security concept to the fullest extent as a stepping stone to his long-term rule. It has also been an effective tool to warn off resistance forces within the Communist Party and concentrate power in his own hands.
But it is the first time in five years that the comprehensive national security concept has become a main theme at a Politburo group study meeting. What is happening behind the scenes?
The key to answering that question is the phrase “peaceful China,” which was advocated at the latest study meeting. Simply put, it means a safe and secure Chinese society that is maintained by significantly stepping up security measures.
This is an issue that is not completely unrelated to Japanese people, as there was a spate of harrowing assaults on Japanese and other residents in various parts of China in 2024.
Those incidents included the fatal stabbing last September of a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy by a man in his 40s with a knife in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The assailant was sentenced to death in January.
The Shenzhen tragedy followed a similar attack in Jiangsu province’s Suzhou in June 2024, in which a Japanese mother and her child were wounded when they were attacked by a man with a knife at a Japanese school’s bus stop. Hu Youping, a 54-year-old female school bus attendant, was fatally stabbed while trying to stop the man. The assailant in his 50s was also given a death sentence in January.
Elsewhere, a male Japanese employee of Tokyo-based drugmaker Astellas Pharma was suddenly detained in March 2023. He was indicted on espionage charges in August 2024.
The first hearing in his trial was held at a Beijing court in November, but details of the charges against the veteran China hand remain unclear. Under China’s revised anti-espionage law, the definition of espionage can be interpreted broadly.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called for the early release of detained Japanese nationals, including the Astellas employee, when he held talks with Xi in Peru’s capital, Lima, in November. But no progress has been made since.
Based on the comprehensive national security concept, the Xi administration has tightened its stranglehold on the economy and business in various ways. This has also led to foreign capital flight.
Nevertheless, the Xi administration has no choice but to continue to make regime security its top priority with an eye on his extended reign beyond the Communist Party’s 21st national congress in 2027.”
“Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize.“
Source:
Nikkei Asia, 6 March 2025: Analysis: Xi Jinping prioritizes ‘regime security’ over fighting economic turmoil
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