Xi Jinping is poised to become the most potent Chinese leader since Mao Zedong — and to guide his country’s continued emergence as a fascist global superpower for at least the next decade.

The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is scheduled to start on October 18, when it will appoint leaders and establish the country’s course for the next five years.

Xi undoubtedly will be re-appointed head of the CCP, followed by re-selection as China’s president and head of state early next year.

But he appears also to have overturned the collegial, limited term system of leadership established after the social ravages and tens of millions of deaths caused by Mao’s maniacal leadership.

The system of circumscribed leadership was reinforced after the nationwide uprising against the CCP in 1989; under that system, Xi would only get another five years at the helm, followed by retirement.

But since his appointment to the leadership as a compromise candidate with no obvious personal ambitions in 2012, Xi has worked assiduously to destroy rivals and potential enemies. He has also overseen the construction of a highly sophisticated authoritarian state unmatched by anything in China’s history.

Coupled with this is a vigorously promoted vision of China as a global superpower. In combination, these efforts appear to have successfully cleared Xi’s way for appointment to a third term as leader in five years’ time. By that time, he will be only slightly older than Donald Trump is now.

The dawn of the Xi dynasty has profound implications for Canada and other countries Beijing considers to be within its commercial and political orbit.

The CCP aggressively asserts what it sees as its right to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries on matters its considers to be in its own national interest. Thus, the CCP has no qualms about intimidating and harassing Canadians it considers dissidents, grabbing Canadian technology and resources it deems economically crucial, twisting Canadian academia and scholarship to its version of history, and suborning Canadian politicians to promote Beijing’s international interests.

Revelations in Australia and New Zealand in recent weeks show the CCP is running similar campaigns of coercion and influence in those countries. (My book Claws of the Panda, an account of the CCP’s long-running campaign of political, business and academic manipulation in Canada, will be published next year.)

China’s movement from a one-party state masquerading as a meritocracy to a one-man dictatorship presents a major problem for the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Trudeau administration has moved to boost commercial and investment ties with China to try to compensate for the uncertainties of Canada’s trade relationship with the United States under Donald Trump.

All the aspects of a classic fascist state are in place in China now. All the aspects of a classic fascist state are in place in China now.

But the ongoing efforts to negotiate a free trade agreement with Beijing are coming up against excessive demands by the CCP that are causing concern in Canadian society at large and in the business community.

A poll conducted by the Angus Reid organization last month found that 85 per cent of respondents have reservations about Chinese investment in Canada. Major causes of concern are threats to national sovereignty and security, the CCP’s abuses of human rights, and fears Canada will be infected with the corruption endemic in China’s business world.

Public anxiety has been heightened by Liberal government decisions to overturn prohibitions imposed by the previous Conservative government on the purchase by Chinese operations of Canadian companies owning sensitive military and security technology.

The Trudeau government has offered the CCP additional blandishments by refraining from expelling Chinese security agents accused of harassing Canadian citizens, by not challenging Beijing’s illegal territorial claims in the South China Sea, and by not exposing or denouncing the CCP’s massive cyber-espionage campaign against Canadian companies and non-governmental organizations.

President Xi began his campaign for supreme power the moment he was appointed head of the CCP at the end of 2012. He launched a vicious and long-running campaign against his potential rivals and critics, a campaign that masqueraded as an anti-corruption drive. About 750,000 CCP and government officials were demoted, warned off, humiliated or expelled in the first three years of the purge — and 35,600 were prosecuted and imprisoned.

Xi’s drive against his rivals even reached the 205 members of the Central Committee, the third most powerful body after the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee. Seventeen members of the Central Committee have been arrested and imprisoned. Among them was Sun Zhengcai, one of the 25 members of the Politburo and the party leader in the province-level city of Chongqing, who once was seen as a potential successor to Xi.

Major victims of Xi’s purge were also people associated with former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

Hand-in-hand with Xi’s attempts to erase challenges from within the CCP has gone a massive increase in repression and social control of Chinese society at large. Ideological and indoctrination campaigns have been launched on a scale not seen since the days of Mao; the Internet and social media are subject to relentless scrutiny and retribution for offenders, while non-governmental organizations and reform-minded lawyers are the targets of unrelenting campaigns of intimidation and imprisonment.

All the aspects of a classic fascist state are in place in China now.

Even though his control appears solid, Xi is launching China into future laden with storm warnings.

The perpetual growth of the Chinese economy is now the only source of legitimacy for the CCP. But it is no longer certain that the party can continue to deliver the advances in the standard of living that the country’s 1.3 billion people have come to expect. Export markets for manufactured goods have dwindled, Chinese labour costs are now higher than for many of its neighbours, and the revolution in production technologies is making Chinese factory labour superfluous.

There are also grave questions about the cost and practicality of Xi’s signature “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure project, which aims to establish land and sea links between China and markets in the rest of Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Working very much in Xi’s favour, however, is the dwindling willingness of the U.S. to play its traditional role of international arbiter and global policeman — a trend of which the Trump regime and the dysfunctional Congress are mere symptoms.

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