China, the 100th anniversary of the CCP, Sisci: “Future tied to democracy knot”

One hundred long years. The Communist Party of China celebrates its centenary tomorrow. A party-state. A “China that does not exist without the CCP”, a “very deep and ancient interaction”. A “strange animal” that “has to make up his mind to tackle the problem of democracy”, the knot with which “he has never” really “dealt with and which is crucial if the party” wants to continue to exist in the future “, with the China called to “decide what it wants to be” in this future, while nothing can be foreseen about that of Xi Jinping, 68, at the helm of the country and the party. Francesco Sisci, sinologist, professor of geopolitics at Luiss, talks with the Adnkronos about this “strange animal” which today is “something similar” to the dynasties of the past, “which every 200, 300 years passed each other to govern China and that they were what gave the country its very identity “, which is why” overthrowing the party tomorrow “would mean” changing the very nature of China “. Although the CCP “has changed several times in its history”, Sisci observes, highlighting how “from 1921 to 1949 it was a revolutionary party in the sense that it wanted to bring modernization and westernization to China”. Then, the second phase, “from 1949 to the end of the seventies, to the launch of Deng Xiaoping’s policy of reform and opening in 1979”, when the CCP was – he notes – “a ‘messianic’ party that wanted to bring heaven to earth, communism on earth “, all” centered around the person of Mao Zedong “, father of ‘modern’ China,” who emerged at the end of the first phase “. ‘Xi concentrated so much power, risk short circuit – Chinese and Western world increasingly on a collision course ‘And then again “from 1979 until a few years ago when” China’s goal was “to apply American modernization with Chinese characteristics” and so, Sisci continues, “for over 30 years” Asian giant “has pulled America in tow and America has pulled it into a strange process of modernization.” Strange because “for America it should have led China to become ‘like America’ and for China, on the other hand, everything remained an open question”. Coming up to 2010-2011, after the financial crisis, when “the American dream is the Chinese dream “turn out to be” different “. And today, he continues, “we are in the midst of this phase that reasonably does not suggest anything good because the Chinese world and the American-centered Western world are increasingly on a collision course”. We are therefore “in the midst of an extremely delicate phase in which China must decide with more precision than ever what it wants to be in the future.” A future in which it is not known whether there will be the face of Xi Jinping, president since 2013, forever. It is an unknown. “It has concentrated a lot of power”, Sisci observes, recognizing how in recent years it has “eliminated that system of power based on systematic corruption”. But also how the ensuing concentration of power leads to “naturally short circuits.” ‘Political reforms and truth, otherwise the boomerang effect of propaganda’ A crossroads? “Either it redistributes the power it has concentrated according to orders and ways different from the past – he replies – or the system risks breaking out due to a constipation of power”. A system of power that today, he points out, “is struggling to take the measures of reality”. Even compared to the global scenario. The recipe? Tackling “the problem of political reforms, of democracy”, which has come up several times in the past, the most recent in 2007, “a knot that the party has never really faced and that it must decide to tackle if it wants to exist in the future” in a Country “so big and so complicated”. The problem of “truth” in the party, which claims over 95 million members in a giant with a population of almost 1.4 billion people. The “truth” and propaganda. “Thinking of using propaganda without having addressed the problem of real political reforms” produces – concludes the sinologist – an effect whereby “propaganda backfires”.