 Good evening, good afternoon, or good mornings depending on to where you are. My name is Steve Tseng. I am the director of the Sours China Institute, and today we have a fantastic speaker on a very important subject, because we all know that in China whatever one thinks about it, ideology still matters. Ideological governance perhaps matters even more, and therefore the subject that we are going to hear and discuss, Xi Jinping's counter-reformation, the reassertion of ideological governance in contemporary China, is one that is going to be extremely important and I'm sure intellectually rewarding. And for the speaker, I'm delighted that we have the fantastic Professor Timothy Cheek to deliver this presentation. Timothy is the director of the Institute of Asian Research and the Lu Yi Cha Chair, Professor of Chinese Research at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, as well as the Department of History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Professor Cheek's research teaching and translating her focus on recent history of China, particularly of the Chinese Communist Party, he is engaging at the moment in research which focuses on the innovative and the more perceptive ways to understand the history of the Chinese Communist Party. And I'm sure his research is one of those that will be of tremendous interest to the general secretary of the party, though he may just disapprove of the approach that Timothy Cheek made for Sue. He's a very talented scholar with numerous important publications, both in journals as well as in books. And by my count there, at least seven books to his name, I will only mention a couple of the single author books that he has. And they are Propaganda and Culture in Mao's China, which came out in 1997. Mao Zedong and China's Revolution published in 2002. Living with reform, China since 1989, which came out 2006. And most recently the Intellect Road in Modern Chinese History 2015. With that, let me hand over to you, Timothy. Thank you, Steve. And I would do like to thank Professor Steve Zang, director of the SOAS China Institute for inviting me to share this research with you today. I regret that we cannot meet in London, but still at least we can communicate. I'm going to shift now to share screen and see if we can get the PPT to work. How are we doing? I hope we're good. There you go. Thumbs up from Steve. So let us begin with a thought from the president, the general secretary, and the core leader, Xi Jinping. Party and government, soldiers and civilians and schools, east, west, north, south, and middle, the party leads them all. To uphold the party's leadership, which is a major principle that determines the future and the destiny of the party and the country, the entire party and the whole country must, without any wavering, maintain a high degree of ideological consciousness, political consciousness, and consciousness of action. Xi Jinping in December 2018. Xi Jinping is the most powerful general secretary since Deng Xiaoping, some say since Mao. Xi certainly needs all that power and a good deal of luck to achieve his stated goal of saving China by saving the Chinese Communist Party. Over the past eight years since Xi took top leadership in 2012, we have seen the strongest effort at inner-party reform since the 1980s. Back then, the leadership of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, even with the mixed support of Deng Xiaoping, set out to create a reform Leninism that would avoid the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution. But these reforms were not sufficient to enforce both political and economic reform in the teeth of sustained resistance of vested interests and political leaders committed to central planning. Ominously, it was the Leadership Division in 1988-89 that brought a difficult situation to crisis in Beijing. The breakup of the Soviet Union by 1992 also reflected Leadership Division. The lesson of Tiananmen and Gorbachev, for Xi Jinping is clear, never let the party get that divided again. It is that lesson that informs Xi Jinping's reforms today. His political project is to address chronic political problems in the rule of the CCP over China, as well as host a host of pressing political, economic, social and environmental issues. He aims to do this by reviving the capacity of the central CCP and state institutions at the expense of regional and local political powers, by cauterizing the financial drain of excess SOE profits and large-scale elite pilferage and the corruption associated with it and by unifying the party under a firm order of public service and a group élan of well-rewarded but substantive and measurable public service that will recoup the party's current faltering prestige. We can understand Xi Jinping's efforts as a counter-reformation, acting against previous reforms in the CCP policy that he feels are not working. He believes only the party can save China and only ideological and organizational rectification under one supreme leader can save that party. He insists on the prerequisites and privileges of the power of the party, but like a reforming pope, he requires financial celibacy, doctrinal faith and obedient service from his congress. As one old colleague of the General Secretary puts it, Xi Jinping knows how very corrupt China is and is repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society with its attendant woes. It is no surprise that Xi might aggressively attempt to address these evils, perhaps at the expense of the new-moneyed class. However, this concern is not limited to Xi himself, but reflects a broader concerns in the party leadership. Before he came to power in 2011, then Prime Minister Wenjia Baol acknowledged the challenges of corruption and food safety scandals, and he interpreted these as a sign of decay, a decay of public morality and of social trust. Quote, if a country lacks citizens of high quality, he uses the term soldier, with moral strength, when pronounced, we absolutely cannot call such a country a really strong one, a country respected by its people. Thus, it is no surprise that a key pillar of Xi's counter-reformation is, that is, the cleaning up of the clergy in the anti-corruption campaign, combines comprehensive ideological campaign with a formidable administrative powers of a disciplined campaign. We have seen party officials from the Politburo on down at study sessions, and all have seen the frightening results of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection under Wang Qishan. However, as Ling Li notes, this commission is but the hand of a system of central inspection teams that are, quote, authorized to perform mandatory inspections without calls, end quote. In terms of our metaphor, these are the inquisitors for the center. Ideological governance is not only about ideas and values, it includes a robust enforcement of orthodoxy. So what is really going on? Analysts inside and outside of China continue to try to figure out what Xi Jinping is really up to. Is this, is his vaunted mass line program and anti-corruption campaign a sincere effort to reform the Chinese Communist Party and improve the governance of China? Or is it a cynical, factional effort to eliminate competitors and entrench his own power? Political scientists have struggled to interpret the black box of elite politics in China with mixed results. Lacking direct access to the thinking of leading party committees, we must interpret public announcements and activities. Almost all commentators conclude that Xi Jinping's policies first and foremost are designed to secure his personal power, as well as the power of the Chinese Communist Party. And certainly Xi has taken into hand an impressive ray of official posts beyond his formal positions as general secretary of the party and president of the nation. This brings considerable bureaucratic power back to Beijing and indeed into the hands of Xi Jinping himself. Clearly this is an effort to reverse the decentralization of party and government decision making that occurred under previous party leaders. However, power hungry individuals or structural tensions between party center and local authorities do not explain Xi's return to vigorous ideological governance in general and party rectification doctrine in particular. I suggest that an historical perspective can add to our social science studies of Chinese elite politics, grand strategy and political economy. It can suggest patterns of governance and claims to legitimacy to look for based on examples of previous Chinese regimes and leaders. Neither historical precedence of previous Chinese leaders nor recognizable patterns of policy practice alone can determine the actions of Xi Jinping or his colleagues today. But they do share their approach to problem, they do shape these backgrounds do shape the approach to problems and contribute to the tools and constraints Xi and his colleagues face. The range of political and administrative activities taken up by the CCP, by the central CCP since Xi Jinping's confirmation in November 12, 2012, I argue all make sense in the terms of the traditions of ideological governance in China in general and of the CCP statecraft in particular. David Lampton offers a trio to explain the rise of China's international power in 2008 in terms of might, money and minds. Clearly a comprehensive leadership program must include military security, economic productivity, military security, economic productivity, and popular legitimacy or a unifying national story. China has manifestly made headway on all three fronts. Other scholars have ably addressed military security and economic aspects of the Xi Jinping effect. Several of them at the SoS China Center China Institute talks recently. More difficult for many international observers to grasp is the role of ideas, national story, and ideology. Party building and the United Front. Xi Jinping's administration has revived a comprehensive package of the Yan'an rectification which claimed to address military, economic, and ideological or belief issues through ideological remoulding, party discipline, and managed public mobilization. This is the Maoist form of a longstanding practice in Chinese statecraft, ideological governance, or in the UK ideological governance. It is not only widely, it is not particularly widely recognized as such in western media, and I must say that in most of the analyses, but not all that I have seen, it is for this reason that I have chosen a well-known example from European history, the Catholic Reformation in the early modern period as a metaphor that might help us make this illegible political constitution more legible to us. So first, let's define our key term, what I will later call China's political constitution in the British sense. What is ideological governance? Ideological governance asserts a role for the government as a pedagogical state that has the responsibility to provide order and prosperity through civilizing its citizens according to the superior insights of certified transformational bureaucrats. Learned in a body of thought that when applied properly will bring great harmony to all under its sway, in which therefore requires and deserves freedom from competition, from alternative, and presumably lesser forms of political activity. Four phases in the history of Chinese statecraft in general, and leadership in particular, can help us see this political constitution rooted in ideological governance. First there is the longstanding habitus of ideological governance in Chinese statecraft from at least the Qing emperors through China's 20th century leaders, including Sun Yat-sen, Jiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong. Xi Jinping's efforts make sense within this style of politics that is characterized radically different political regimes in China, imperial, republican, and socialist. Second, the proximate and specific tradition from which Xi Jinping explicitly draws is rectification politics, which dates most notably from the Yan'an rectification movement of 1942 to 1944, and the nearly continuous set of political campaigns under the CCP since then. Generally considered a Maoist form of governance and associated with disruptive political campaigns, rectification, however, owes as much to Liu Xiaoqi and other less chiliastic party leaders as it does to Mao. And more importantly, it characterizes the regular politics in the party as much as it does its many disruptive mass movements. And so you can see for the images that I've given you on this slide, you will see that that's a Qing dynasty period, officials bringing out the Xianyu, the official emperor's sacred edicts. Then you have Shen Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, you've got Zhang Zemin and Xi Jinping. The little red book that you have there is my wicked thought. It is not, of course, for those of you who read Chinese Mao Zedong's quotations. It's a 1947 edition of On the Party of Lundan, which includes his Liu Xiaoqi's piece on the self-cultivation of a Communist Party member. Frederick T. Ves' long since documented the norms of rectification politics that characterized the Mao period. And the same pattern has helmed with important changes. The core of rectification politics is the primacy of the human will when tempered, reformed, and regulated by superior doctrine and implemented by a capable cadre of administrators. It does not require democracy in the electoral sense. It requires rectified leadership. A third phase in our story is reform Leninism after the Cultural Revolution. Leaders since Mao have continued to form, continued the form of rectification politics with less and less effect since the trauma of Tiananmen in 1989. This was largely because drawing lessons from the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, leaders beginning with Hu Yaobang and Jiao Zeyang before Tiananmen, but extending to party leaders in the decades after, all stressed institutionalization and political regulation over mobilization and ideological remoulding. By the 2000s, party campaigns from studying, by the 2000s, party campaigns from studying Jiang Zemin's 30 represents to a host of forgettable lessons Hu Jintao left the ideological zeal of the party doctrine dead on arrival for most Congress. The general public largely ignored these campaigns and the new internet culture mocked them. This has generated the fourth phase or neo-traditional form of Chinese statecraft, Xi Jinping's counter-reformation. This reinterpretation of party tradition along the lines of deeply familiar patterns of ideological governance is an institutional reaction to current events, to the decline of party norms in recent decades. The retreat from active ideological leadership of the party under Jiang Zemin in the name of Marxist fundamentalism akin to Lenin's NEP that accepted a transitional stage of capitalism in China is seen by Xi as the cause of China's current problems of corruption, pollution, and social unrest. In the face of political reformation and of this political reformation that Jiang Zemin's reliance on transforming the economic base first represented Xi Jinping's administration constitute accounts constitutes a counter-reformation a reassertion of the charismatic institution and the need for ideological cultivation of cadres according to the Orthodoxy. That orthodoxy made its official appearance in the 19th party congress in 2017 as, and this takes a deep breath, Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era. How can a historical perspective help us make sense of Xi's reassertion of ideological governance? In a political version of the Lone Dieré we can see cultural resources from traditional texts and a continuous chain of administrative practices from Qing emperors to Sun Yat-sen to Zheng Kai-shek to Mao. These form three traditions of Chinese ideological governance in modern China. The Qing dynasty has bequeathed to modern China expectations and tools for ideological governance of a large and diverse territory by a relatively small ruling elite that has been enthusiastically embraced by China's reformers and revolutionaries of various stripes. These expectations and tools have been shaped over the 20th century by exogenous influences such as science and technology, the Soviet model, endogenous pressures, social disorder, elite competition, and contingent events, Japanese invasion, cold war tensions, and today's global populace moment. From the traditional texts and Qing practices comes a belief in the transformative power of correct models, most notably in the ancient Confucian classics, the Liji or the classic of rights. Its constant repetition by Chinese governments and leading thinkers for the past 2000 years reflects a shared belief amongst China's cultural and political elite in the educability of humans. People can be taught how to be good and correct ways of acting, thinking, speaking, and even sitting can directly contribute to that noble goal. Thus models, especially top leaders like emperors, need to act well, or at least to be seen to act as exemplars of morality. The goal throughout and the term that carries this long-standing orientation in Chinese statecraft today is jiao hua, which I failed to put on the slide, sorry about that, jiao hua to transform the subject through moral political education. The significance of this tradition of ideological governance is that Chinese governments from the 14th century consistently insisted on giving moral lectures to local communities when all available evidence shows that locals paid next to no attention to them. These lectures proclaimed the sacred edicts, the sheng yu of Ming and Qing emperors, the ritual performance of moral political education for the people signified legitimate government regardless of whether or not anyone was paying attention. These lectures were not simply in books, local magistrates were instructed to recite at the maxims and expound upon their meaning in monthly public meetings. The image you see on the right hand side of the screen is from a handbook, Li Laijiang's Explanations of the Sacred Edicts Lecture System from 1705, and it literally maps out how to hold these meetings down to diagrams showing the placement of the tablets with maxims and alters, locations of where both scholars and town folks should change to stand, as well as instructions on how to fill out, how to hold the meeting and fill out registers of good and bad behavior. Confucian study and thought perform per kind behavior of the Qing dynasty. Ideological governance continued to pace in the varying regimes of the 20th century. The core approach shared by all governments in China down to today is political tutelage, shun zheng. This was Sun Yat-sen's explanation for putting democracy off for another day and the primary expression of the pedagogical state under his nationalist party. This, the founding father of China's republic, soon came to feel by the 1920s that the Chinese people were not ready for democracy and required instead a period of political education or tutelage, during which his one party state would inculcate the masses in modern civility. This tutelary state, as John Fitzgerald calls it in his study of Sun's political model, was meant to awaken the Chinese people and teach them how to be modern citizens. This responsibility or presumption, depending on one's point of view, was enthusiastically embraced by his successor, Shen Kai-shek, in China's destiny in 1944. John quotes Sun to say, when there is one purpose, and it is the purpose of the entire people, and when the people all work to achieve this purpose, it is easy to succeed. John concluded that such unity required the complete domination of political life by the nationalist party to maintain order and to educate the people. John famously did not succeed in this unification of political wills, but for a time Mao did. The third tradition and the direct model of ideological governance for Xi Jinping is the one he regularly hearkens to, the Yan'an rectification. Rectification or Chongfeng is the political education and reform process to train party leaders and rank and file that Mao Zedong and his colleagues perfected or developed in Yan'an in the 1940s. It is often employed in an orchestrated campaign, such as the Yan'an rectification movement, the Chongfeng Yundong itself in 1942 to 44, and in other base areas in the years that followed and amongst intellectuals nationally in 1950 and 51 and down every few years to Xi Jinping's campaigns today. However, rectification characterized everyday politics under the CCP as well as campaign politics. When undertaken seriously, this form of political training resembles nothing so much as Bible study in small groups run by your local police department with officers from the intelligence service and the military on hand as needed. Individual study, public confession of your sins, review of your personal record, and public propaganda about role models and a few negative role models to show what is to be avoided. These define a CCP rectification campaign, but also daily rectification work. Such campaigns always include purges, the naming and denunciation of negative models, and the removal of offending cadres and others who crossed the campaign's line. Rectification was taken to absurd and tragic extremes in the anti-rightist campaign and ending the cultural revolution, but it has been a staple of political life under the CCP since the 1940s. Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign is just such a rectification effort, so too is the campaign announced by the central political legal committee that is advertised as, quote, like the Yan'an rectification movement and slated for 2021. Rectification is the political policy that the CCP articulated in the 1940s to address urgent political and administrative problems in the face of a lack of regular institutions or sufficient military power to enforce its will. How does the CCP rectification system work? It works by precisely the three components Mao outlined in 1938, party building, control of force, and providing a latitudinarian and tolerant welcome to cooperative non-party political actors. Today this means the articulation and consensus on the ideas and projects, the line of one party leader. Criticism and soft criticism for party members to inculcate that line, crackdown and prosecution of corruption via party channels to control deviance, repression of public criticism, irritating lawyers, and mouthy professors with the goal of managing the public message, and welcoming and using the skills of NGOs and social organizations to implement party policy. This adds up to one leader, one party, one voice, all for one project, China's rejuvenation under Xi Jinping and the Communist Party. Why does Xi Jinping choose to employ 1940s techniques to address problems of governance in the 2010s? Why rectification? A comparative perspective is suggestive. Rectification is essentially the political constitution of the Chinese government, in the British sense of a working constitution in national politics, as opposed to the formal paper constitution of the Chinese state. It is useful to think of such a political constitution in the terms that Peter Hennessy uses to describe the operation of British politics in his book, The Hidden Wiring, and he puts it this way, that peculiar combination of administrative measures used, powers agreed upon, and procedures deemed appropriate, that tradition and practice have legitimated amongst top political leaders. I'm going to repeat that. The political constitution in this sense is that particular combination of administrative measures used, powers agreed upon, and procedures deemed appropriate, that tradition and practice have legitimated amongst top political actors. In the case of the political constitution that rectification doctrine represents, in the CCP's case, the political constitution that rectification doctrine represents was built in Yanan in the 1940s in the rectification movement. It saw the confirmation of Mao's supreme leadership, but more importantly, the Yanan rectification saw the establishment of measures, powers, and procedures that made the CCP the most effective political administration and military force in China in that day. Other party leaders, such as Liu Xiaoqi and Chen Yun in particular, fleshed out the organizational methods and norms, including self-cultivation party members and the proper handling of political competition called inner party struggle. The historian, the second book you see on the screen, the historian Philip Qun has drawn our attention to the significance of such an unwritten constitutional order for 20th century China that has dominated the concerns of Chinese politicians and thinkers. That constitutional agenda Qun shows addressed three problems of governance, participation, competition, and control. These issues formed the three dominant challenges of modern Chinese politics. How political participation and public mobilization can be reconciled with enhancing the power and legitimacy of the state. Second, how political competition can be reconciled with public interest. And third, how fiscal demands of the state can be reconciled with the needs of the society. The CCP's rectification doctrine and practice addresses these three challenges to the modern Chinese constitutional agenda. Political scientists, particularly Frederick T. Ways and Franz Sherman, have documented the centrality of the Yan'an agenda. They focus on the formal procedures of rectification that we have reviewed above. But the general term for this political constitution in the CCP is known as the political line. In this case, the mass line of the Qun Zhong Lu Xian. The Yan'an rectification in the 1940s was an implementation of this mass line to address the problems of governance in modern China, questions of political participation, leadership competition, and the control of finances, officialdom, and society. It was by no means perfect nor was it without drawbacks, not least in its frequent use of terror, but it beat the competition in the 1940s. In summary, the Yan'an rectification addressed the challenges of modern China's constitutional agenda by proposing a novel package of ideology and organization, hence the title of Franz Sherman's classic study of the CCP in 1966. It offers Mao Zedong thought to explain what to do, how to do it, and why to do it. Democratic centralism to implement the mobilization of cadres and citizens, the management of conflict, and the exercise of state control of economic and military resources, along with self and mutual criticism amongst leaders and officials to ensure the effective implementation of those ideological and organizational norms. This is the heart of Xi Jinping's current policies, his counter reformation. Rectification or the mass line political order of the CCP is almost unimaginable to political theorists and politicians and to the general public in the West. It is the profound acceptance of formal ideology and ideological remoulding at the heart of rectification that stumps us. At root, rectification politics depends on the power of correct thought, Zhang Tui's decision, and on the impact of a mobilized faithful cadre of leaders. When it appears to be working, it makes the CCP look like a religious organization at best, like a cult at worst. The mental and emotional interventions into the minds of individuals that rectification requires in order to function effectively outrages our sensibilities about individual autonomy and privacy. Our constitutional agenda is built on behavior and its consequences, not on mental states. What in Chinese political language is discussed in terms of Jing Sheng and Tai Du? Translate those words and Chinese political thought appears either as mendacious or menacing. What role in our political agenda do such terms as spiritual Jing Sheng or attitudinal Tai Du factors play? Certainly, political scientists as well as publicists are attentive to questions of attitudes, which bleeds into values. But our political constitution is explicitly agnostic on attitudes, hate speech, behaviors around multiculturalism being an exception. And certainly our political regimes do not, or at least not openly, use the measure and manipulation of fundamental attitudes, one's personal thoughts and feelings, as a public political instrument. Chinese rectification does. And Xi Jinping is currently employing this rectification politics amongst a party population of some 19 million people in order to address challenges of political participation, leadership competition, and control of the polity in the PRC today. This is a revival of rectification politics. It is, as Joseph Fusmith quips, putting the Lenin back in Leninism. This effort amounts to a counter-reformation in Chinese politics after the post-Mao retreat from the excesses of rectification mobilization during the Cultural Revolution. This retreat was the Protestant Reformation of the Party, started under Hu Yabang and Jiang Ziyang, and continued under Jiang Zemin and ineffectually resisted under Hu Jintao. Mao's campaigns, particularly the Cultural Revolution, had discredited the extremely extreme and highly emotive versions of rectification and made a mockery of massline egalitarian claims. This led in the early post-Mao period to a search within the party for regularization of political life by a return to the explicit organizational norms of Leninism, essentially a version of military hierarchy. This was the work of Deng Xiaoping from 1975 and of Peng Zheng, who resuscitated socialist legality in the 1980s. This Protestant revolt against the institutional abuses of the spiritual side of rectification doctrine saw an emphasis on two things, socialist legality and technocratic leadership, law and science. This served to expunge the wild excesses of emotional ideology that had become divorced from administrative practicality and produced a functional political package into the new century. However, this Protestant fundamentalism in Leninism, regulation plus science, failed to address leadership competition or to control official officialdom satisfactorily. This Leninist reformation since the 1980s was meant to return to the scientific side of Leninism in which social engineers and material engineers would join forces to produce a rational society and guide China through its necessary capitalist stage under party tutelage. However, the absence of a compelling ideology made itself felt in leadership drift and growing official corruption, hence Wen Jiabao's call to action and Xi Jinping's counter-reformation. What can we make of Xi Jinping's counter-reformation in Chinese politics? First, this is Maoism, but it is institutional Maoism of Liu Xiaoqi and Peng Zhen and not the charismatic populism of the later Mao. We can put away our quotations from Chairman Mao, the little red book, and dig out our dusty copy of Liu Xiaoqi's How to Be a Good Communist. There is a substantial body of governance theory and experience underwriting today's rectification. This is a serious attempt to address the problems of governance, what we have called modern China's constitutional agenda, by reclaiming control over the economy and over the behavior of the leadership, by channeling political competition among the elites, and by guiding popular participation to unthreatening support roles in social welfare. This is Xi Jinping making good on his promise to save China by saving the CCP. Rectification is much more than criticism sessions or buying your own steamed buns or driving a Hongqi instead of an Audi. It is a comprehensive package of ideological unification, administrative control, and police power. As Kerry Brown and his colleague Rosina Kronakova have concluded, quote, ideology in Xi's China is important because of the ways it enforces unity, creates a common purpose, and operates as a means of guiding the country under the direction of a unified CCP rule. Towards its great objective, modernization with Chinese characteristics, end quote. This is the current form of ideological governance in China under Xi Jinping, and this software is incompatible with the norms and assumptions of liberal democracy. Second, first this is Maoism but not the Maoism we think. Second, this is political orthodoxy. Rectification talk is a public transcript for the CCP. It is the orthodoxy of the Party of Mao. As we can see in the Catholic Church and indeed within our own liberal democratic societies, the pieties of our ideals coincide with the abuse of and cynicism about them. Public declaration of communist value serves as a public transcript to promote identity and commitment amongst the ruling elite. These public transcripts, as James Scott has argued, have a strong political role to play as the hidden transcripts of quiet dissent and resistance under authoritarian regimes. His chapter on public transcripts is the one that nobody ever seems to read. And as we have seen, this orthodoxy has a robust enforcement mechanism in required party study sessions, pressure to voice agreement with party policies, and the fearsome discipline and section commission. It is dogma with inquisitional support. Pointing out that Xi Jinping and his colleagues, of course, are closing their eyes to the facts of power politics does not weaken the legitimating function of a plausible political orthodoxy. Multi-year research, survey research by a Harvard team at the Ash Center continues to find broad-based support for party leadership, even though local leaders are often criticized. Third, Xi's counter-reformation probably will not work, at least not in the terms of rectification goals of moral personal transformation and the pure governance of the mass line. The leadership of the Communist Party today under Xi Jinping is embracing traditional values of the Communist Revolution to address very new problems. And just as Mao Zedong was not successful in applying the economic policies of Yan'an mass mobilization to the challenges of industrialization in 1958 in the Great Leap Forward, I do not think this application of the ideological wing of the Yan'an model is going to work either. Rectification with moral solutions for administrative problems, party-run scriptural study sessions, and the demand for orthodoxy and public expression, all enforced through an independent inquisitional force, this is no way to handle the challenges of an information society, a middle-income trap, or rising leadership in regional and global affairs. We should understand why rectification, the rectification approach makes sense to Xi Jinping, but this does not mean it will produce good or sustainable government. The China of the 2010s is not the China of the 1940s or the 1960s. Globalization may not have made Chinese politics democratic, but it has certainly made Chinese society globalized, with international contacts and content extending to village China. As Liu Qin at East China Normal University has argued, this has pluralized Chinese society, and neither Chinese socialism nor Confucianism appear well equipped to deal with that diversity. Rectification politics requires the rigorous control of available information, 40 years of social experience, and since opening and reform began, and also the impact of the internet have made such propaganda control harder and harder to achieve and to maintain. Finally, our metaphor, Xi Jinping's counter-reformation. This metaphor compares the Catholic reformation over a century from the Council of Trent to the close of the Thirty Years War in 1648 with the current efforts of the CCP since about 2010 and now associated with the rule of Xi Jinping. Like all metaphors, it does not work in all respects, but metaphors are as useful when they fail as when they succeed. The failures. The Leninist reformation of the post-Mao reforms, as I call it, is nothing like the challenge to the old order that Luther and the German princes were to Catholic Europe. However, this highlights the shared conclusion of medieval Catholics and contemporary CCP leaders. The rot comes mostly from within their own ranks. But not all of their counter-reformation focuses on internal rot, corruption and loss of sense of mission. Burning heretics and disappearing rights lawyers are a nasty but secondary part of this primary mission, institutional renovation. On the other hand, the frightening reeducation centers in Xinjiang, really concentration camps bent on burning turning Uyghurs into Han Chinese, suggest an even darker side to ideological governance and rectification practice. The Xinjiang ideological revolting camps tragically revived the human carnage of the Great Leap Forward that happened when political technologies from an earlier time was applied to a new and different circumstance. The production campaigns of Yunnan and the Civil War error may have contributed to effective governance in the 1940s, but they brought nationwide famine in the late 1950s. Likewise today, the terrible extension of rectification discipline from a closed group in a political party to a general population constitutes a violation of human rights on a mind-boggling scale. More tragically, the vocational retraining quote that the Uyghurs and others suffer in these camps as they are compelled to re-educate into party-loving Han Chinese does not appear to work. Rather, these camps are likely to generate the sustained opposition the state so much fears. In the end, and especially in light of our outrage at the increased repression in China today, the counter-reformation metaphor draws our attention to the long-standing traditions of Chinese statecraft that inform not just Xi Jinping, but a sufficient group of party leaders to sustain the project for some time. I think we're going to discover in many places that getting rid of a bad leader won't change the problems of the system. That corpus of governance techniques is rectification doctrine. If we dismiss this political software, we will be hard-pressed to make sense of Xi Jinping's administration or the helmsman's place within it. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much, Tim Professor Cheek, for this absolutely fantastic talk and you have raised a lot of very, very interesting points to discuss. Before we get to discuss your points, let me just remind people who are attending this seminar to use the Q&A box for raising your questions or comments. If you would prefer not to be identified, please say so and I will respect your wish not to be identified. But nonetheless, it would be very helpful to me to know who is raising the questions. So if you could start off by saying who you are before you raise the question, that would be very, very helpful indeed. I noticed we already have four questions in the Q&A box. I'll get to them. Before that, Tim, let me start this seminar by asking you about Liu Xiaoqi and Mao Zedou. You talk about this counter-reformation. You talk about this ratification. You mentioned Liu Xiaoqi several times in parallel with Mao Zedou. So my question to you really would be that, how much are we looking at a kind of restoration of Maoist elements and how much are we looking at the restoration of Liu Xiaoqi elements? Are we, in a sense, looking at Xi Jinping trying to change, revive the party and China with a kind of Maoist ambition, with kind of near-Maoist vision, but fundamentally using the arched, typoed, lemondess of the Communist Party's method, the Liu Xiaoqi way, as you have highlighted, exposed in the, how to be a good Communist pamphlet. Where are we there for Xi Jinping, Mao and Liu? You have muted yourself, Tim. I muted myself. There you go. Self-censorship. Apparently Western academics do that a lot. The, I started with the focusing on Liu Xiaoqi as a way to respond to, after the initial, I wouldn't call it euphoria, but hopes for Xi Jinping, 2012, when it became clear what was happening, people said, oh, God, he's going to be like Mao. It's Maoism all over again. And, you know, I've been saying for a long time that there are many songs that you can sing in the key of Mao. And I use Liu Xiaoqi as a figurehead because it's not just him. As I mentioned, Peng Chenyuan, there is a body of thought that is this institutional Maoism. You know, I like to call it bureaucratic or, you know, we assume that Maoism has to be charismatic and chiliastic. And I think there's a large body of the priesthood who are happy to have Mao be the figurehead, but it needs a well-trained priesthood to apply it. And Liu Xiaoqi was very much part of this organizational Maoism, if you want to call it. To give it a simple big picture, I think the kind of Maoism we're getting under Xi Jinping is what Liu Xiaoqi would have done if he was able to keep his job in 1960 if Mao had died. You know, we think, oh, Mao died. It'd be great. We'll have democracy. Not so much. And so I think the key distinction fundamental here, we can talk details and there's many specialists here who know more than I do. But the heart of the matter is that there's a form of Maoism that is not Red Guards running around on the street. But it includes an important role for ideology. And you have to have the orthodoxy. The orthodoxy matters. And it's not unique to Chinese communism or to Maoism. So yeah, I think Liu Xiaoqi is a better guide for what we're going to get. Thank you. The first question I'm going to take is from our esteemed French colleague, Sean Philippe Bichard. There's one part of the verification, which is lacking. Mao's verification campaign, whether we're talking about the Yan'an Jingfeng or the anti-rightist campaign, were preceded by an appeal to the people to express their criticism. Nothing after salt in the case of Xi. Don't you think that this makes a big difference? Absolutely. I think you're absolutely correct. And this is one of the key differences between Mao and Liu. But remember, Liu Xiaoqi said he was set himself to be a Maoist. So I'm taking, well, you know what I'm doing, Sean Philippe. I'm unlawfully following the 1981 resolution on some questions in the history of our party. And you know the paragraph that says is the crystallization of the wisdom of the experience of the party. And they list six or seven names, including Liu Xiaoqi. And so that's what I, you're absolutely right that if we could characterize what is the difference between Mao according to Liu and Mao according to Mao. And Mao according to Liu doesn't trust the masses. They're just not up to it. It's closer, he's closer to the political tutelage view. You should lianxi with the masses and listen to them. But you do not, you do not get down and roll with the polls, which is that, you know, the Maoist model. And so yes, it is a key difference. And but it, I'm trying to say is that there's an extended body of ideological governance in the Chinese Communist writings by Liu Xiaoqi, Chen Yuan, and others that makes a viable set of statecraft practices for Xi Jinping that he can legitimately call Maoist. Okay. Next questions from Hugo de Beau from the University of Westminster. What is left in Xi's ideology of Marxism and Leninism? Oh, Comrade, you have to look at this dialectically, right? And we know that one of the key contributions of Comrade Mao Zedong was, was, was, was the signification of Marxism. And that's what Xi Jinping, I think, is trying to do. Xi Jinping, I have not found particularly articulate. I trusted Wang Huning could write a little more clearly, but apparently not. But we have the great contributions of professor of Beijing law professor, Zhang Shigong, who has written a gorgeous pay on to the Xi Jinping thought in the January 2018, our journal of Kaifeng Shidai, David Owen B has translated it wonderfully on reading the China dream. I make a shameless plug to that website right here. Just Google up reading the China dream, Zhang Shigong, and you will see what Xi Jinping's ideology looks like. It is trying, it is seeking out to combine, as you know, they call it the three traditions of China stood up under Mao, got rich under Deng, and has become strong under Xi Jinping. And it's, it is a form of nationalism at this point. Right. Next question is from a political science student based in Belgium. I'm not sure whether he wants these names to be mentioned. So I play it safe. Necessary, not necessary. No, no particular reason for it to be sensitive. The question is, Hannah said that totalitarianism is an ideology pretending to know the mysteries of the whole historical process, the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, and the uncertainties of the future because of the logic inherent in their respective ideas. To what extent do you think the ideology of Xi Jinping and the party corresponds to this quote? I think it does. They, that, that, that ends a definition of what I would call big eye ideology, which has an army behind it and has totalistic claims. That is exactly what Xi Jinping is claiming. And to doubters, he says, the proof is in the pudding. How's China doing? Right. So, you know, that's the old, the old mandate of heaven justification. It is, this is big eye ideology. And it comes with its strengths and weaknesses. And we're probably all would benefit from returning and reading again, because it, as we've seen under Mao Zedong himself, it can go sour in a big and ugly way. I am a student of, or advocate of, I never met him, Clifford Geertz and his famous essay from the 1960s on ideology is a cultural system. And we all have ideology. If you're going to use the term ideology as a social science term and not an invective. And so it's ideology cannot be the delusions you operate under while I operate with social science. We all have ideologies, which is that combination of affect and cognitive abilities, another stuff we believe in. And so that, but I make the distinguishing with the small eye ideology that runs the, that operates at the New York times versus the big ideology that runs at people's daily. So yes, I would agree with your application of Hannah Arendt for Xi Jinping's ideology. Next question from Duncan Barnett, the editor of Asian Affairs in London. The focus of the presentation was on the implications of the ideological approach of the domestic situation in China. What about the implications for China's international relations? The implications are awful. Okay, I'll elaborate. This, this is, I was trying to make sensible why is the PRC, you know, pitching a fit over where an airline company puts its, the line for Taiwan. All this, all this ritualistic demands for conformity by non-Chinese. And I think it is part of the, this is part of the downside of an ideological system. You have to, there's this, you know, and this reminds us of, of course, the dynasties. You know, I started off thinking Xi Jinping's regime is going to be like the like the Qing. Now it feels more like the Ming, you know, just absolutely such a, such a touchy, touchy and picky and anxious requirement for conformity. And that, you know, one thing I did not address is how much of this is driven by deep insecurity. And everybody knows, and the smart, smart commentators in China, also many of them translated on reading The China Dream, say, this is embarrassing. Why are we doing this? China's better than this. But the, the, this ideological orthodoxy, this, this reassertion of orthodoxy means that we, for farm powers, and I'm in Canada, we're middle power, you know, we're in the toilet because of Meng Wanzhou and the Huawei problem. We have to deal with, if you don't kowtow, you know, you'll get kicked. And I'll take this opportunity to say that I don't see any hope for middle powers other than joining together. So let's have a, let's have a Tongmen hui. Thank you. Next questions from PhD students in Hong Kong. I won't mention his name. From a comparative perspective, it sounds to me that it is similar to a new ideology promoted by political elites in electorate, to electorate in Western democracies, such as neo-neighborism by Margaret Thatcher of the Atlantic Kingdom. It is a dynamic process through which the new ideology is spread and accepted amongst the society gradually. The motive seems clear for the political elite to establish legitimacy of the new administration to address problems in the way the leaders see appropriate. I'm wondering if the term itself may suggest too much of the uniqueness of China's historical context to explain policy choices made by Xi Jinping, who, similar to new leaders in other countries, resorts to new ideology to legitimize his rule and mobilize support from the so-called masses. That's a great question. And my short answer is I'm looking forward to reading your article because you're right. It needs to be seen in a comparative perspective. You have smoked me out for my local assistant. I am a China-centered historian who was trained in the 1980s. And my first job was China, China, China, trying to figure out what China's doing. You're absolutely correct that you can see comparable. I mean, that's one reason I used the European metaphor. I could have compared Xi Jinping to the dynasties, but that was just too orientalist, I felt, though it's also useful in its own way. I think the question you have raised is good. Maybe others have done it. If anybody on today knows, please send Steve a message and he can throw up the URL or something. I'd be very interested in to read. Comparative does not mean identical. I think we're going to see some structural forces in an individualized system or relationships of authority, power, and discourse, but they're going to play out differently in different historical, cultural, social, and temporal situations. But those can be mapped out. I know there's a journal on political religion and totalitarianism. There may well be many articles in there on that. I'd be very interested to hear. So yes, this is not unique to China, and it is certainly not unique to the communists. That was my point about the Qing and the Republican period, but you are right. It can be compared with other areas. It can be compared to the UK and the United States. Next question from Jonathan Fenby in London. How much room does the counter-reformations have for flexibility in practical administration, for instance, in the economy? I don't have expertise there, but I did suggest at the beginning of the talk that a historical perspective could suggest patterns of behavior, possibilities, examples, and all I remember from the Ming and the Qing in my synological training was that beneath the very febrile and rigid orthodoxy of those regimes, there was huge flexibility. If China's had governments that had pretended to totalitarian power, or what we would call totalitarian power, since Qin Shu Huang, it has officials and locals who have become expert in handling that. So you know, Zhong Yang, your Zheng Zi, you are right. So that's it. I think that there can be room for economic rationality. We look under Liu Xiaoqi, other than the Great Leap Forward and his establishment intellectuals and cadres, they were attempting rational economics while having, while they were preparing the cult of Liu Shaoqi. Look at those chapters in Liz Perry's Anya book. It's very, very illuminating. He was busily having a cult for Liu Shaoqi being warmed up politely, not too fast, you know, have a transition from leader number one to leader number two. So I think there is room for rational economics under the city logical system. Next question from Run Run Yang. I want to ask about the road of science in China's ideological governance. Is it part of the bureaucratic Maoism? Do Deng and Xi understand or mobilize the ideology of science in different ways? Or there are more continuities in them? This is between Deng and Xi. He's contrasting. Deng and Xi, yes. About the ideology of science, continuity and change. So as at least as I read it, the stuff from the 1980s, it was regulation and science. This is a technocratic elite approach. And, you know, my first studies were in the establishment of intellectuals under Peng Zhang in Beijing in the 50s and early 60s. They were great. They were, they were, my point was they were fully ideological and they were scientific. And they, they were, they were fine with that. This was the, in part, the ideology of a technocratic elite, which is consistent with the Xun Zhang, with the political tutelage, right? Because I'm more advanced than you, right? Those of you who listen to NPR know about Dr. Science, right? So I know more than you do, right? And I'm here to help. So yes, I think science, rational science has, you know, a very comfortable role in the ideological system. You just have to submit to the hierarchy and repeat the pieties. Next question from Simon. This comes through the Facebook feed. Who really runs China? The President, the Communist Party, or the People's Assembly? I know what both the Yong Zhang Emperor and Mao Zedong thought. It's the bureaucrats, the officials. That's a huge question. But it deserves a sensible answer. To answer it well, would require a useful mapping of a measurable, with measurable criteria of what constitutes power. So normally we think in terms of who you can appoint a fire, who has disposition of money, and who tells you what you do with that money. And I think it is not possible for one person to run the entire EU, right? So China is not a country. It's a continent. It's an empire, if not in name. And it's too big for one person to do other than just strategic stuff. So yes, obviously the power is invested in these institutions. And part of this bringing the Lenin back and Leninism is that having a figurehead is one thing. Having an autocracy is another. And so far I don't see this as a dysfunctional autocracy. I'm not a fan of the Chinese Communist Party, but it is not poor. And it's not ruining the economy really so far. So it's clear that there is an institution that's working here. Okay, next question from another of our esteemed French colleagues, Sebastian Xi and Zhang Xigong are obviously promoting the narrative of the three eras, standing up, becoming rich, and becoming strong. But doesn't this try partitioned risk overstating the break with the Deng era? Isn't Xi Jinping still a crony capitalist whose own family is just as involved in the business of getting rich instead of Deng and Li Ping? Yeah, you're right. But what this helps me to clarify, and I only had a few kind of weasel words in the talk, you know, Deng Xiaoping was not the super duper reformer, right? The guy called in the tanks, you know, and he had the, you know, I mean, the four up holds. I mean, the guy was a serious Leninist. And, you know, it is true that they allow the perquisites of power for those who serve a lot. And yeah, this is about a plutocracy, you know, elites. I don't know, according to Pickard, he this is not unique to China. So, but what the point is, is that Deng Xiaoping was not that much of the reformer. It was Hu Yopang, Zhao Ziyang. And I think interestingly, Zhang Zemin, and I think that the logic they were following was the sort of NEP logic coming out of there. But you're, you're right. They're, they're, as with many political systems, they talk, they talk an egalitarian or a public service, but they are very happy for their 0.1% to do well. And, you know, Alice Miller and Li Chang and others have done wonderful work on like, what are the 200 families? And the earlier question, I think may have been indirectly evoking that the 200 families that are said to run China. And I don't know if I believe that, but I'm open to it. The, you know, that you're going to have these super rich. Next questions come from a Chinese, or at least ethnic Chinese students in California. And there are a few quotation marks, so I want to alert you to that, Tim, as I read it. Why do you think China's in quotation marks core values now include in quotation marks, democracy and freedom? Is this part of ratification politics? Well, Chairman Mao talked about democracy and freedom. And this is, this is where my colleague younger in red is needed here at UBC on discourse. In other words, it depends on how you define the term and how democracy has been used across the 20th century, something that has fascinated me. And I wrote on in that 2015 book. The, so Xi Jinping can straight face they say he's pushing democracy. But as Oh, we translated one of them that that was No, it wasn't who I'm gone. It was another one of the new left. They said, you can have representative democracy or representational democracy. And so in other words, democracy can be defined as serving the interests of the masses. So if you serve the interests, you don't actually need to consult them. And so you say that freedom, freedom is freedom from what freedom from chaos, freedom from national humiliation, right, freedom to get a job. Right. So you can, you know, in other words, it turns on the definitions. Okay. Next question is from a French postgraduate student is a follow up question is to the earlier one on foreign policy. What does this mean for the tensions in Southeast Asia and in particular South China Sea as they follow up on the foreign policy question. We hope that the Xi leadership will embrace the more rational members of their administration and not not play the ugly game that we've seen in international relations. Southeast Asia is expert at handling China and it's different regimes and I expect it will continue to. Brandy Womack has made a wonderful study of the successes that they have had in asymmetric relations. Probably Western countries, including middle power such as Canada and Australia ought to study the lessons of Southeast Asian nations, particularly Vietnam, I should think. How do you have a bad relationship with China and not get your ass kicked? The the but this the question saying what is this mean for Southeast Asia and Nanyang is exactly what we've seen in the last five years and it's not good. And it will require excellent diplomacy to avoid disaster. Next question from Norman Stockman, the council of trend. Sorry I thought you would enjoy this one. The council of trend may not have been a good example of a harbour mansion public sphere but it was a forum for debate in which alternatives were argued out. Where is the equivalent in Xi Jinping's Communist Party? Are not such forums indispensable? I agree and again Brandy Womack at a previous conference took me to task on which council and he named a different council that I should use. I realized that I that was just beyond my pay grade. But your point is good one that there needs to be this consultation and even under the Liu Shaoqi model in the early 60s there was. Those are inside the black box. Those I believe are happening. I don't know if they're happening through the sort of 200 families or through the you know what we you know those of us who studied Chinese politics in the 80s it was the elders council of elders or actually informal party committees and all these leadership groups but they are meant to be consulted and I think that one of the things those of us who seem to enjoy reading communist propaganda is that you realize and this is why I say there's many songs you can sing in the key of Mao. You know there's a lot of policy options that you can express in orthodox language and I the tip of that iceberg we see in the public debates again that for those of you who you know reading thousands of pages of Chinese debating fine points of orthodoxy might not be exciting. David OMB's translations on the reading the China dream give you access to that. The person I forgot was Wang Shaoguang. I was talking about how you can have democracy without elections. So that's where I would go. Okay next question from an Oxford student Adam said it is about foreign policy. Should the Xi Jinping era be seen as one that is temporary and in isolation within the Chinese Communist Party state or will his ideological assertiveness of Xi Jinping's leadership style continued well beyond his time? I think the import of my argument is that the system will live beyond Xi. That it existed before him and it existed after him however it was not always the system the ideological governance was not always applied in the same way and that's that's I use the metaphor the reform Leninism you know like the Protestants of Hu Yabong down through Jiang Zemin and they're not up by any means identical of course but I think they they emphasize science and technocracy and rules over belief and so I think yep well I think it will last I think I heard Joe Fusmith talking at one of the other talks at Fairmont Center he reckons you know get comfortable she's planning to stay till 2035 and you know we can reflect on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing especially when he when he has not made a successor we all know those of us who studied the Communist Party the great weakness one of the great weaknesses of the Communist Party is succession there's no regular succession and that that brings leadership competition so there you go next questions come from a student from India Hamd Khosong can you elaborate on the distinction between Xi Jinping's ideology and that of Jiang Zemin's what where's the divergence is the question the three represents all right so the Communist Party represents advanced cultural forces so intellectuals are welcome advanced productive capacities so capitalists can be party members and the interests of the whole people so there's no more class struggle sure you can say in ways that Xi Jinping supports those things but the results are very different and so essentially decentralization was grew a pace in the early 2000s as far as I could see within the party and local powers and the nobody really particularly believed it you know the intellectuals and students I've talked to during those years all you know Song of the idea they just talked about three wristwatches you know the so I think that it's the it is the effect and the intent that are different next question from mark rapidly Stalin's turns to ideological purity or correctivization in 1928 appears to have had support from young enthusiasts does Xi Jinping have extensive youthful support that's a great question and that's an empirical question and I don't have the answers I'd love to know you know Jude Blanchet done a new study of the new Maoists that's not the same as people following Xi Jinping we know that they Marx's Lenin this group at Beijing University when they went down to actually like help the workers you know god in the in Xinjiang god in the poo the party with that we know there's 50 centers but we also know that there is they what is the Xiaohong Qingfeng what is it the pinks you know who don't need to be paid so you know if I have if I have Chinese colleagues sending me messages on WeChat about the how Biden is stealing the election I see no reason why there can't be a significant number of people who think that that Xi Dada is just Xi Dada is just honeydory okay now that you mentioned about the pinks I'm going to ask you a question from Raju go moral he's referring to an earlier speaker in this seminar series who caused the term surveillance Leninism to disrupt China's attempt to control the behavior of its citizens authoritarianism seems to be on the rise globally the Chinese are proud of their authoritarian liberal states control of the COVID-19 pandemic what exactly makes you say that this won't work what's the last bit what exactly makes you think that this won't work oh that um they I think that the what they've done in Hong Kong and what they've done in Xinjiang shows that the ideological system drives the regime to do things that are counterproductive and the third thing which I did not dwell on would be formatting tensions with their neighbors and internationally by this aggressive needlessly aggressive stance in foreign policy it's a discursive aggression in most cases other than the South China Sea which is straight up taking territory um the but you are right and it's one of the things I tried to to say there's lots of successes in this system and you know there's drawbacks the original breakout of the of the pandemic was due to the weaknesses and failures of this system where they took loyal party members like Li Wenlian and you know threatened him with jail for for doing the rational thing and yet if we're to believe the numbers China has succeeded where Europe and North America are failing pathetically uh with the the pandemic and in fact the earlier question about will will Xi Jinping's kind of approach with that approach to live after Xi and having a global impact part of the global impact of China's foreign policy is relational and with you know America abandoning its role and Europe tied up in knots in the UK shooting itself in the foot uh you know that makes space for for them you know Putin can't do much with it but Xi Jinping can and so uh but as far as I'm concerned having some successes is you know that's a good thing in the government uh but we look at the whole thing the successes and the failures and I think running uh cultural um imprisoning uh a population uh on the basis of a few terrorists if you did that in America all white people would be in ready education camps based on the number of shootings done by white people some some there might be some people who would agree with you that sorry that was that was on call for I'd apologize we're all Naboo here next next question is about whether technological abilities would enable Xi Jinping's China to almost eliminate opposition which is why I came up with that very naughty comment sorry that's good so it can a neurological system um and it would lead opposition almost eliminate opposition almost eliminate manners that's a very unmaoist thing to say right there's always got to be mouth on the um it can suppress it very strongly but I don't think it can eradicate it and not only any system can um what it's what we want to look at is what its mechanisms and how effective or not are its mechanisms for handling the inevitable opposition that comes up and channeling it so that you know so what is opposition some of its elite competition I want to be the people's commissioner not you versus I don't want there to be people's commissioners right so those are distinguishing different kinds of opposition so you have to look at the system's ability to handle but no I don't think they can eradicate it okay next questions is from Ms Gao there is a huge gap between Xi's lofty ideological governance and the popular monitorial self-governance of the masses on the ground how do you see monitorial yeah monitorial self-governance of the masses on the ground yeah how do you see these two forces toggle and with the letter eventually win out and topple the communist party the uh well is there any chance that your monitorial self-governance of the masses can win against the lofty ideological governance of Xi Jinping based on I'll I'll I'll stay where I feel reasonably strong which is history the prognostications good god the one thing I would say is to answer your question directly I don't think they can or want to defeat but I think that they can endure and survive without utter capitulation and I draw that on having taught a survey course with Timothy Brooke my colleague of the Ming studies we were doing China in the world and we're doing these lectures in the Ming dynasty and then he said he kept pointing out you know well it was illegal to leave China or enter China during most of the Ming and much of the Qing and so I put my hand up and said so how did a million or so huaqiao get into the Nanyang during those centuries and he just smiled and I call I've since called that the insubordinate society that there is I have such faith in Chinese society looking over history the ability to work around just just to lie straight in the face to the authorities and to take care people to take care of their families to take care of the communities so in that sense I do have faith that local China and will work out their problems as best as they can and probably in the most simple sense if the Xi ideological government can deliver moderate economic coherence and social peace that probably develop be delivering a lot and local Chinese people are extremely hardworking intelligent and capable and they will go on and make their lives as they always have right we don't usually get a question from Turkey so I am going to fit this one in go for it we are nearly out of time so perhaps fairly short answer and the question from Ankara is that in Xi Jinping's governance of China 2014 he describes Mao and Deng as Marxist whereas he only describes Zhang Jiming and Hu Jintao as general secretaries of the communist party and not called a Marxist can we say that Xi sees Zhang and Hu as deviations from the Marxist ideology absolutely I think you're absolutely right because they are the Protestants they're the reformers that he's working against and thank you for that extra footnote. Well thank you very much Tim Professor Cheek there are still quite a lot of actually extremely good questions on the Q&A box that I have not been able to fit in including some of our very esteemed colleagues I do apologize to them for not being able to manage. Steve I'm going to interrupt you know if you would save that and send it to me you can strip the names if you want I would love to engage. Okay I'll try I'll try to do that. We're all learning zoom life and you as the moderator or Aki has the power I don't to save the questions I would love to engage look this talk is part of my effort to run this up the flagpole one and see what my colleagues think and I really appreciate the questions and the pushback it's good. Fantastic well thank you Professor Cheek and thank you to all of you who have attended this seminar and raised questions through various channels. See you see some of you next week goodbye. Bye bye thank you very much.