Hugo Jones, writing in The Diplomat said that the โnew eraโ โ connoting a fundamental historical shift โ has been systematically fused with the persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse
Beijing: Ahead of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi Jinping is pushing for a โnew eraโ discourse to strengthen his personal power.
Hugo Jones, writing in The Diplomat said that the โnew eraโ โ connoting a fundamental historical shift โ has been systematically fused with the persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse. Significantly, Xi calls Mao Zedongโs time the โrevolution period,โ Deng Xiaopingโs the โbuilding period,โ Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintaoโs the โreform periodโ while calling his term a โwhole new era.โ
For the past five years, the term โnew eraโ has appeared with increasing frequency in Chinaโs white papers, propaganda, official speeches, and public diplomacy.
From early on in his premiership, it was clear that Xi Jinping sought historical significance greater than that of his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. This was also encouraged by growing Chinese nationalism, which predates Xi, reported The Diplomat.
For Xi, while the โnew eraโ is scalable from the local to the international context, it is ultimately all about China, โIt will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind.โ
The discourse of a โnew eraโ serves three functions. First, it bolsters the CCPโs legitimacy in a domestic context. The โnew eraโ is also used to provide the context for sensitive issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, said Jones.
Second, the discourse of a โnew eraโ is used to empower the CCP and challenge norms internationally. The strongest example was on February 4, when Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin released a joint statement on โInternational Relations Entering a New Era,โ a major foreign policy declaration that aligned China with Russia weeks before the invasion of Ukraine.
The discourse of a โnew eraโ is also used to challenge the US, NATO, and Western countries that belong to the โold,โ unipolar era of global politics. The โnew eraโ is presented by China as the just temporality of a multipolar, post-imperial world.
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Third, the discourse of a โnew eraโ serves to reinforce the idea that the government of China, and the governance of Xi, are always thinking in the long term, operating on fundamentally different time scales to the Western world. This reinforces certain orientalist tropes that China is inherently โbetterโ at grand strategy, reported The Diplomat.
However, despite its popularity, this narrative disguises the reality that Xi and the CCP are often as short-sighted as other regimes โ the chaotic โzero-COVIDโ policy is just one example. This reminds us that we should take the narrative of a โnew eraโ with a fair degree of skepticism, said Jones.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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