Xi Jinping Is in Dangerous Territory Whether or Not He Launches a Second Cultural Revolution

Xi Jinping (People News)

[People News] On December 5, U.S.-based economist He Qinglian published an article in Up Media titled “Will Xi Jinping Launch a ‘Second Cultural Revolution’?” The article argues that Xi Jinping will not launch a second Cultural Revolution.

He Qinglian begins by comparing the Cultural Revolution with Xi Jinping’s party-led anti-corruption campaign and massive military purge, noting their similarities:

1. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong purged the Party and government systems to regain the leadership power that Liu Shaoqi had taken.

2. Xi Jinping has investigated more than 5 million cadres through his anti-corruption campaign and has rectified the military, moves widely viewed as political purges.

However, He Qinglian argues that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution by creating Revolutionary Committees to destroy existing power structures, whereas Xi Jinping conducts selective purges using existing mechanisms of power—such as the security apparatus, the CCDI, and the National Supervisory Commission. Fundamentally, the two are different.

He Qinglian identifies three key points about Mao’s Cultural Revolution:

1. Mao Zedong’s power had been stripped by Liu Shaoqi. Fearful that he might lose the leadership position he himself had built, he launched the Cultural Revolution to seize power. Thus, the first core factor was anxiety and the desire to reclaim power.

2. Mao deeply understood the grassroots imagination of power—“The emperor’s throne rotates; next year it comes to my house.” He believed that if the masses were given power, they would overthrow the existing regime.

   Mao innovated with the so-called “three-in-one” model to incorporate people from the social bottom. For example, the famous “Anshan Constitution” integrated workers, technicians, and cadres (“two participations, one reform, and three combinations”) as a model for socialist enterprise management; schools promoted “three-in-one” participation of students, teachers, and administrators to drive education reform.
   The core idea was to institutionalise the sharing of power with the grassroots, giving ordinary people a voice and a place in every social sphere.

3. Mao resented the Soviet-style bureaucratic system, believing it betrayed revolutionary ideals. He hoped to use the Cultural Revolution to smash bureaucracy and rebuild a revolutionary regime.

He Qinglian argues that Xi Jinping will not—and does not dare to—launch a Cultural Revolution, for four reasons:

1. Xi already holds absolute power, including control of the military, and has no rivals. There is no need to launch a Cultural Revolution.

2. Xi lacks Mao-style charisma and has no understanding of what the masses think. The vast surveillance network he has built shows he also does not trust the masses, and therefore cannot mobilise them.

3. Today’s CCP bureaucracy is maintained by Xi, and Xi in turn depends on this system to rule. Xi and the bureaucracy are mutually dependent.

4. Xi’s “five one-step-in-place measures” are: intra-party supervision, anti-corruption, anti-rent-seeking, and encouraging the public to report wrongdoing (but not encouraging rebellion).

In short, Xi does not view bureaucrats as class enemies, does not believe there is a “bourgeois line” within the Party, and does not incite the masses to overthrow the Party’s leadership. Therefore, He Qinglian concludes that Xi is not launching a second Cultural Revolution. But Xi’s methods of persecuting individuals resemble those of the Cultural Revolution, which leads people to believe it is a repeat.

Senior independent commentator Cai Shenkun, however, offers a very different conclusion. He believes Xi’s “five one-step-in-place measures” are precisely the signals of a Cultural Revolution-style movement.

Looking back at history today, it is clear that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to reclaim the power that Liu Shaoqi had taken. But why was Liu able to take power? Because Mao had wrecked the economy.

In 1958, Mao launched the “Great Leap Forward,” mobilising the masses to “make steel” and pushing the slogan “Leaping into socialism.” Agricultural production was severely neglected. At the same time, he promoted the abolition of private ownership and the full-scale implementation of the people’s commune system, including communal kitchens and centralised distribution, resulting in massive waste of grain.

By 1960, the national food supply collapsed. Famine erupted across China, killing tens of millions. To cover up the disaster caused by policy, the CCP labelled 1959–1962 the “Three Years of Natural Disasters.” But given China’s vast geography, it is impossible for the entire country to experience the same natural disaster at the same time; even in major disaster years, drought and flood occur regionally. This makes clear the famine was not natural but a man-made tragedy brought on by policy.

At the 1962 “7,000 Cadres Conference,” Liu Shaoqi criticised the roots of the famine and won strong support within the Party. Between 1963 and 1965, Mao struck back by launching the “Three-Front Struggle.” In 1966, Mao formally launched the Cultural Revolution to regain power. But during the three years Liu was in charge, his push for economic reconstruction had gained broad support. To eliminate this faction completely, Mao encouraged mass-against-mass struggle: rebels versus conservatives, officials against officials, students beating teachers, villagers publicly criticising county party secretaries, Kang Sheng persecuting Xi Zhongxun, and so on.

Now, looking at Xi Jinping, he has—like Mao—wrecked the economy: shattering the real estate sector, the tutoring industry, and the internet economy, and now attacking the livestreaming economy. His foreign policy blunders have driven foreign companies out of China, causing massive youth unemployment. The background today resembles the pre-Cultural Revolution conditions under Mao.

Overall, He Qinglian and Cai Shenkun differ only in perspective, not in contradicting each other on the possibility of a “second Cultural Revolution.”

He pays more attention to structural and institutional factors—arguing that a Cultural Revolution requires mass mobilisation, a power vacuum, and the collapse of the bureaucracy. These conditions do not exist today, so structurally, a repeat is unlikely.

Cai focuses on realpolitik: tightening political controls, economic disorder, large-scale purges, and an increasingly closed information environment. He argues that these trends strongly resemble the destructive consequences of the Cultural Revolution. The key point is that both warn the Chinese people that the country is entering dangerous political territory.

(People News original publication)