PRC at 75: Xi Makes Dour Address While Critics Articulate Bleak Outlook

Executive Summary:

• Xi Jinping’s address on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) highlighted risks and challenges ahead and included a lengthy segment on unification with Taiwan. The speech was accompanied by relatively muted celebrations on October 1, which passed with minimal fanfare.
• Continuities in the PRC’s pitch to the wider world are evident when comparing Xi’s address to that of his predecessor Jiang Zemin on the PRC’s 50th anniversary, especially regarding the PRC’s leadership of the Global South and its position as an opponent of the Western-led international order.
• Many voices from inside and outside the PRC have made critical and troubling assessments of the country’s current condition. One blog by a prominent PRC-based writer published an article to coincide with the National Day holiday that analogized the current moment to the collapse of the Ming dynasty, echoing critiques that are apparently widespread among other PRC citizens and external observers.

On September 30, at a banquet on the eve of National Day in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), President Xi Jinping made a speech to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the nation’s founding. As a pre-dinner address, the speech was not intended to be policy-oriented or high on detail. It nevertheless provided a useful barometer for gauging the level of pressure the regime senses it is under. Broodings over “stormy seas (惊涛海浪)” and “preparing for rainy days (未雨绸缪)” suggest that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aware of the challenges it faces. After 75 years of “bitter struggle (艰苦奋斗),” it is steeling itself for the prospect of more years of the same (People’s Daily, October 1).

The speech itself contained four points of note. First, there was a useful reminder that the CCP sees rapid economic development and long-term social stability as the two main pillars of its legitimacy. These Xi refers to early on in his speech as “the two great miracles (两大奇迹).” The problem for Xi is that both factors appear to be running their course. As the Third Plenum in July and the recent Politburo Meeting in September suggest, the Party does not have good answers to the current economic situation (China Brief, July 26; Xinhua, September 26). The PRC meanwhile is turning to increasingly repressive tactics to maintain stability at home, with domestic security budgets ballooning over the last decade (China Brief, March 12, 2018; March 22, 2019; Nikkei Asia, August 29, 2022).

Second was the focus on Chinese-style modernization, which took up a substantial portion of the speech. Xi declared that “comprehensively advancing the building of a strong nation and the rejuvenation of the nation with Chinese-style modernization is the central task of the Party and the country in the new era and new journey (以中国式现代化全面推进强国建设、民族复兴，是新时代新征程党和国家的中心任务).” He also reiterated that the most important way to advance this vision of modernization is “to adhere to the leadership of the CCP.” Xi has increasingly made this the centerpiece of his plans for the PRC, both as a way to chart a course out of the domestic economy’s ills and as a model to offer to developing countries. As an article in the Party’s theory journal Qiushi argued several days before Xi’s speech, “recent history has repeatedly proved that modernization cannot be brought about by colonial aggression, nor can it be achieved by copying the Western model … Chinese-style modernization has provided useful references and lessons for developing countries to realize modernization” (Qiushi, September 26).

Another prominent feature of the speech was the space dedicated to Taiwan. Taiwan is traditionally mentioned in the PRC’s National Day speeches, as it remains central to the country’s conception of itself. This year, however, a whole paragraph—nearly 10 percent of the entire speech—was dedicated to the topic. Notably, there was no reference to “peace” in cross-strait relations. Xi instead opted for a harder line that played up the biological ties that bind Taiwan inexorably to the PRC. He claimed that “people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are connected by blood (台湾是中国的神圣领土，两岸人民血脉相连、血浓于水),” and that Taiwan is a “scared territory (神圣领土)” of China’s. He also presented reunification as inevitable, avowing that “the wheel of history cannot be stopped by anyone (历史的车轮谁都无法阻挡)!”

The final notable part of the speech, coming shortly before the toast, was an invocation to prepare for “unpredictable risks and challenges (难预料的风险挑战).” Warning that the country “must be prepared for danger in times of peace (要居安思危)” is not a triumphalist way to close out a speech and suggests a lack of confidence among the leadership. It perhaps goes some way to explain why the events that marked National Day itself were muted. Despite remaining in power for 75 years and outlasting the Soviet Union in the process, the official schedule for the day’s celebrations did not include a military parade or other grand events. Instead, Tiananmen Square and its surroundings were lined with flower beds and national flags, and various banquets and concerts were staged for visiting dignitaries and guests. Some PRC citizens have surmised that the country’s persistent economic problems might have made an expensive display of triumphalism impolitic (VOA, October 1). While it is true that big celebrations tend to follow the rubric of “one small celebration every five years and one big celebration every ten years (五年一小庆，十年一大庆),” an anniversary as significant as the 75th would ordinarily merit more full-throated festivities.

Comparing Xi’s speech to the one Jiang Zemin (江泽民) made in 1999 on the Party’s 50th anniversary accentuates these points, while revealing a high degree of continuity (Reform Data, October 1, 1999). Convictions of the historical inevitability of the PRC’s rise feature in both, as does the certainty that socialism is the only correct model for the country to follow. While many of the specific rhetorical constructs of the Xi era are missing from the earlier speech, Xi echoes Jiang in allying the PRC with the countries of the global south. A quarter of a century ago, Jiang declared that the Chinese people have made unremitting efforts to “oppose hegemonism and promote world multipolarity, to push for the establishment of a just and rational new international political and economic order (反对霸权主义和推进世界多极化，推动建立公正合理的国际政治经济新秩序).” In 2024, this rhetoric might be supplemented by Xi’s three global initiatives, One Belt One Road, and the “community of common destiny,” but the core substance and direction remain the same. Namely, the desire to diminish the influence of the West in the world and promote the PRC’s preferences in its place.

Looking back at Jiang’s speech now, the phrase that most stands out is his announcement that the development of the Chinese nation “has entered a brand-new era (进入了一个崭新的时代).” Xi’s “new era (新时代)” has apparently lost the sheen of Jiang’s “brand-new” one, but it begs the question of how the current moment in the PRC’s politics should be framed. While Xi maintains that the current era—over which he has reigned supreme—is new, other voices have proffered alternative assessments of the PRC’s current condition.

Over the past two years, Western scholars and writers have used various terms to provide general, single-word characterizations of the “new era.” The Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé has framed the era acerbically as “Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium” (China Heritage, January 1, 2022). In a post timed for National Day this week, he went a step further, drawing parallels to 1930s Germany to describe the CCP’s agenda as “national socialism” (China Heritage, October 1). Others have referred to the contemporary moment in a similar vein as “Xi’s Age of Stagnation” or “China’s Age of Malaise” (Foreign Affairs, August 22, 2023). Most recently, Carl Minzer has proposed “China’s Age of Counterreform,” describing a period of “increasing internal risks” and “full-blown erosion” in which “the entire political superstructure of the reform era is being undercut” (Journal of Democracy, October).

These are bleak pronouncements, but Chinese voices have provided even more colorful—and sobering—descriptors. In a 2023 WeChat post, the essayist Hu Wenhui (胡文辉) described the period the Chinese people were living through as the “Garbage Time of History (历史的垃圾时间)” (CDT, August 1). Originally referring to sport, “garbage time” is a colloquial term for the period toward the end of a match in which the result is clear and teams simply aim to run down the clock. Hu argues that the PRC is experiencing something similar but at the national level. The term has since resonated, becoming a meme in online discourse used to express exasperation at the state of the economy. What “garbage time” on its own does not make explicit is the sense that a proverbial “final whistle” may be expected in the coming years. This sense of an ending has been put more clearly in a blog post by the writer and social critic Li Chengpeng (李承鹏) (coincidentally a former sportswriter himself).

Li Chengpeng describes the present-day PRC, by way of an analogy with the collapse of the Ming dynasty, as “the era of the sandgrouse (沙鸡时代)” (Wenxue/Li Chengpeng, September 26). At the end of the Ming, Li writes, someone began to sell a kind of sandgrouse, a bird that was native not to Beijing but to somewhere much farther north. According to local legend, the bird usually flies as far south as the capital only when its habitat is disturbed, usually by troop movements on the border. When the birds began to appear, Beijingers had a sense of what the sandgrouse portended, but “no one dared to say it out loud for fear of being killed (但没有人敢说出口，怕杀头),” and so all they could do was simply continue to trade sandgrouse (只能买卖沙鸡而已).” By labeling the PRC of 2024 as the era of the sandgrouse, Li suggests that the PRC might be reaching its endgame. What Li does not mention, but perhaps fits with his monitory essay, is that the PRC’s founding leader, Mao Zedong, has previously been compared to Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the founder and first emperor of the Ming dynasty. By analogizing Xi’s “new era” to that of the Ming’s demise, Li implicitly suggests that the “wheel of history” Xi referred to in his speech is spinning off course.

Conclusion

As the PRC reaches its milestone 75th anniversary, the health of its body politic has come under scrutiny. Official rhetoric from the Party continues to tell a good story, but as Xi Jinping’s speech makes clear, the positive energy of the propaganda messaging is shot through with concerns about the path forward and the risks and challenges that lie ahead. Those darker undercurrents are reflected in the characterizations of the PRC’s predicament articulated by many alternative voices, both inside and outside the country. The two groups have divergent views about the state of the nation, but they appear to concur that, for many Chinese people, this year’s National Day holds little cause for celebration.