Fang Lian Talks: From Building to Ruining! A Sharp Review of Five Generations of Leaders! What is the Historical Status of the Five Generations of Leaders? Mao Zedong | Deng Xiaoping | Jiang Zemin | Hu Jintao | Xi Jinping
This episode video, hosted by Toronto Fang Lian, starts from the perspective of China’s development process, thoroughly inventories and sharply critiques the policies, power operations, and historical positions of the five generations of CCP leaders—Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping—during their tenures.
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When it comes to China’s leaders, we all know the five generations: Mao, Deng, Jiang, Hu, and Xi. During their tenures, the good side was that China’s economic growth outpaced the world; the bad side was that China experienced the largest famine in human history, and counting up, these leaders introduced more than 130 policies in total. Through these repeatedly shifting policies, this program will, from the angle of China’s development process, lead everyone to see exactly what these leaders did while in office and what role they played in China’s development history. Hello, I am Duo Duo Fang Lian, and in this episode we will sharply review China’s five generations of leaders from “hammer to pull”.
Mao Zedong is the leader who has actually been in power the longest from the founding of the People’s Republic to today. He started in 1949 and continued until his death on September 9, 1976—a total of twenty‑seven years. What did Mao do during those twenty‑seven years? He certainly did a lot, and quite a lot indeed. But if you ask what personnel moves he made, there weren’t many. After Mao came to power, what specific policies did he implement? What contributions did he make to China’s development? Those unfamiliar with Chinese history might only know about the three‑year Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. Those familiar with Chinese history, especially the regular viewers of my program, should already know that Mao’s policies were numerous, like a list of explosive dish names: the Three‑Anti Five‑Anti campaigns, the Four Cleanups Movement, the Anti‑Rightist Movement.
If you let Guo Degang speak, he couldn’t finish listing them all in one breath. Throughout Mao’s entire tenure, a conservative estimate is that he caused the deaths of several tens of millions of Chinese. Of course, we cannot simply label Mao’s historical role as merely torturing the Chinese people, assuming he was just sick and addicted to torment. Although Mao caused the deaths of millions, each policy he enacted had a purpose; his main line was very clear: to strengthen the Communist Party and his personal power. This was what Mao pursued throughout his life and the greatest impact he had on China’s historical trajectory.
In fact, Mao’s approach to “people” was carried out in phased, scientific stages. The first stage, from 1949 to 1953, involved two actions: externally, he played the Soviet Union like a fool; internally, he conducted purges and reprisals against former anti‑communist forces. The act of playing the Soviet Union was mainly reflected in the Korean War. No matter how the CCP tries to glorify the Korean War, in reality it was Kim Il‑sung’s impulsive decision to march south and invade South Korea, after which the CCP sent troops to assist the Soviet Union in defending North Korea.
At that time, because Mao still needed Soviet support, he essentially offered the Korean War and Chinese soldiers’ lives as a token to Stalin to secure continued Soviet backing. Of course, after external stability was achieved, Mao’s focus returned to internal matters. While the Korean War raged abroad, China’s interior was also ablaze. Mao immediately launched several waves of massive purges.
Of course, because Mao Zedong understood the principle of starting with the easier tasks and progressing to the more difficult ones, the initial targets of his purges were very vulnerable enemies, those who had grudges against the CCP, such as landlords. In June 1950, the "Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China" was promulgated, which led to the infamous land reform. At the beginning of the land reform, according to regulations, different classes were divided in rural areas into landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants, and hired peasants. Then, only the landlords' land was to be distributed to the poor peasants, while the rich peasants could keep their own land. The distribution method was also supposed to be carried out non-violently. However, in practice, it turned into a feast of plunder in the countryside.
Large numbers of landlords not only had their land confiscated but were also beaten to death. The female relatives of landlords were traded like commodities, widely raped, and distributed. After seizing the landlords' land, these poor peasants were naturally not satisfied, and the rich peasants' land, which was initially allowed to be retained, became an object of plunder. The entire land reform process was extremely bloody and violent. The death toll from the land reform varies greatly in current statistics, with the lowest estimates by Chinese scholars at 200,000, and the highest by Western scholars like Frank Dikötter at 1.5 to 2 million.
Of course, the most peculiar aspect of the entire land reform was precisely this violence. Mao Zedong's initial goal in launching this land reform was not to achieve fair distribution, but to make everyone's hands stained with blood. When the land reform first began, Liu Shaoqi actually opposed violence. In June 1950, in his report on land reform issues, Liu Shaoqi attempted to limit the use of violence in land reform. However, while Liu Shaoqi was issuing this report, Mao Zedong continuously emphasized mobilizing the masses and criticized peaceful land reform. Mao Zedong's calculation here was very clear. Mao Zedong always knew what the secret to struggle was. The secret to struggle has never been to defeat the opponent solely through public opinion, nor to uphold the banner of Marxism-Leninism or Mao Zedong Thought.
It is simply to exploit human greed, to make the majority fight the minority, and to make the majority complicit. What was most ingenious here was that Mao Zedong also put a legitimate and legal cloak on everyone's greed, making robbery guiltless, rape guiltless, murder guiltless, and even cannibalism guiltless. This approach would frequently appear in Mao Zedong's life later, for example, in the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries that began in October 1950. The only difference was that this time the target was no longer rural landlords but some counter-revolutionaries in the cities. To make the normal campaign bloody and violent, Mao Zedong even issued a killing quota at this time.
Nanjing, a large city with a population of 500,000, was the capital of the Kuomintang. The number of reactionaries to be killed was stated to be over two thousand. Mao Zedong demanded that one in every thousand people nationwide must be a counter-revolutionary, a quota that was passed down to all levels of government. So, how many people were killed in the entire suppression of counter-revolutionaries campaign? According to a report from the Ministry of Public Security in 1954, a total of 712,000 people were executed. At that time, China's population was slightly over 500 million, which perfectly met, and even exceeded, Mao Zedong's requirement of one in a thousand. Of course, besides the movements mentioned above, there were also campaigns such as the "Three-Anti and Five-Anti" movements to crack down on industry and commerce, and the first rectification campaign to suppress intellectuals, and so on, which will not be detailed here.
Some might say at this point: "How can you say that Mao Zedong was using land reform and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries to attack enemies? Wasn't he fulfilling his revolutionary promises?" If you think Mao Zedong was a person who kept his promises, then you are greatly mistaken. After the simplest enemies were purged, Mao Zedong began to turn his attention to another group of people: the opposition within the party, non-party individuals, and the Soviet Union.
When the People's Republic of China was just founded, Mao Zedong, in order to win over non-party individuals and make them willing to join him in criticizing others, promulgated an interim constitution called the Common Program. This program stated very clearly that after the CCP came to power, it would not establish a dictatorship or a one-party rule, but would govern jointly with everyone. Economically, Mao Zedong also emphasized building socialism in fifteen to twenty years, rather than immediately implementing a Soviet-style planned economy. Therefore, when the PRC was founded in 1949, to fit this narrative, three of the six vice-chairmen of the state were non-communists.
Two of the four vice-premiers were non-communists, and eleven of the twenty-one ministers were non-communists. By 1953, seeing that most of his previous opponents had been purged, and the democratic figures began to show signs of dissent, Mao Zedong immediately turned his back on them. In 1953, he launched his first Five-Year Plan, and a series of planned economy measures such as the Three Great Transformations and rural cooperatives were immediately implemented.
The Constitution was also significantly revised later. The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which was originally the supreme organ of state power in the provisional constitution of 1949, was replaced by the National People's Congress (NPC) as the supreme organ of state power in the 1954 Constitution. Of course, these changes on paper were just minor adjustments. The most ruthless move was the Anti-Rightist Campaign that began in 1957. During this campaign, a large number of non-communist democratic figures were labeled as rightists, and those within the Communist Party who were not loyal enough were also labeled as rightists by Mao Zedong.
Among the non-communist figures, the most famous were Zhang Bojun, Luo Longji, and Zhang Naiqi. They were democratic figures who, before the Anti-Rightist Campaign, served as Minister of Communications, Minister of Forest Industry, and Minister of Food, respectively. They were all purged and sidelined during the campaign. Meanwhile, high-level officials within the Party who opposed the rapid implementation of a planned economy, such as Deng Zihui, were labeled by Mao as "bound-footed women." Peng Dehuai was directly labeled as an anti-party clique at the Lushan Conference two years later. Mao Zedong once again incited the majority of society to crush the minority.
At the same time, Mao Zedong, feeling that his wings had grown strong, began to be dissatisfied with his suzerain, the Soviet Union. After Stalin's death, Sino-Soviet relations began to deteriorate directly. Mao Zedong finally broke free from the Soviet Union and became a full-fledged tyrant. The consolidation of power did not make much difference to most Chinese people. There is little difference between a dictatorship run by one person and one run by a group. Even whether the CCP acts as a dog for the Soviet Union makes little difference to the Chinese people, because being a dog for the Soviets or a dog for Mao Zedong is the same for ordinary Chinese.
However, the problem is that after the Anti-Rightist Campaign began, Mao Zedong used the entire movement to sweep away opposition both inside and outside the Party, completely completing his control over the Party and eliminating dissenting voices. Once dissenting voices were lost, the brake pads of China were effectively removed by Mao, which meant that Mao's subsequent erroneous economic policies could not be corrected by anyone. To spite the Soviet Union, the Great Leap Forward began, and the Great Leap Forward led to an unprecedented catastrophe in human history: the three-year Great Famine.
The three-year Great Famine caused the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese people and can even be called the greatest man-made disaster in human history. What did this disaster mean to Mao Zedong? Did it make him realize that he was not a talent for governing the country and that he should step down and yield to the virtuous? Not at all. The Great Famine directly impacted Mao Zedong's personal prestige, especially among high-level Party officials, who all discovered that Mao had no ability to govern the country. Therefore, after the Great Famine broke out, the 7,000-person meeting was held. At the meeting, technocrats led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping began to collectively challenge Mao Zedong.
Of course, these people were still merciful. The whole plan was not to kill Mao, but to hope to reach a tacit understanding with him. "You continue your personality cult, and I will focus on the economy; we will stay out of each other's way. Since you, Mao Zedong, are not good at economics, please spare the Chinese people." Initially, at the 7,000-person meeting, Mao Zedong saw that things were going badly and pretended to be humble, agreeing to release control over the economy. However, less than a year after the meeting, Mao's counterattack began immediately. Of course, the logic of the counterattack was the same old routine: seeing that high-level officials were not on his side, Mao mobilized the grassroots masses to struggle against these high-level bureaucrats, letting the masses take to the streets, capturing these old bureaucrats, and subjecting them to public denunciation. This is what everyone knows as the Cultural Revolution.
Once the Cultural Revolution started, it continued until Mao Zedong's death. Before the Cultural Revolution, Mao's use of the majority to struggle against the minority was only intermittent; after the Cultural Revolution began, it became normalized. Since then, the Chinese people have entered a decade of mass struggle. In fact, looking back at the years of Mao Zedong's rule, ordinary Chinese people were just like NPCs. For more than twenty years, China had only one protagonist: Mao Zedong himself. Everyone was using their own blood and tears to cooperate with Mao Zedong in playing a game of power.
During Mao Zedong's reign, the only real thing he did was to purge the opposition—all kinds of opposition, from real opponents to opposition outside the Party, to democratic figures outside the Party, and then to opponents within the Party; none could escape Mao Zedong's clutches. Under this governance of Mao Zedong, China's economic growth during this period was a complete mess. It was during this stage that China was left behind by South Korea and Taiwan. In 1950, the per capita GDP of China and South Korea was about the same, and there was not much of a gap with Taiwan either. But by the time Mao Zedong died in 1976, Taiwan's per capita GDP was already 4.1 times that of China, and South Korea's was 3.2 times that of China.
So, from a historical perspective, what was Mao Zedong's only contribution to China? Perhaps it was the construction of a CCP dictatorship. Mao indeed ended the chaos of the Republican era and created an absolutely powerful and stable central government. Of course, whether that is a virtue is up to the benevolent and the wise to judge. A strong central authority may not necessarily be a good thing for China or its people. In short, Mao can only be given a lukewarm evaluation.
After Mao's death, the immediate successor was not Deng Xiaoping; there was a Gang of Four and Hua Guofeng in between. Mao never gave up his lust for power even until death. When choosing an heir, he ignored China's economy and selected the incompetent but loyal Hua Guofeng, hoping that after his death he would not suffer the same fate as Stalin and be purged. Mao's obsession with power was truly deep.
However, Mao miscalculated: Hua Guofeng was a terrible choice, and after being tormented for so long, the Chinese people finally could not endure it any longer. Eventually Deng Xiaoping rose to power. Contrary to the popular belief that Deng ascended through superb political maneuvering, his rise was not due to his cunning but because the Chinese people were terrified of the Mao era and did not want to relive it.
Back on April 5, 1976, while Mao was still alive, hundreds of thousands of people marched under the banner of commemorating Zhou Enlai and stormed Tiananmen. This protest occurred decades before June Fourth and was not only a civilian movement; during Mao's lifetime, China was truly isolationist. Apart from Mao, Zhou Enlai, and a few foreign affairs officials, most CCP bureaucrats had never been abroad. They might have known that foreign countries were better, but their knowledge was limited and they lacked confidence.
After Fang Hongpeng came to power, he sent many senior cadres abroad to change this. Those officials were shocked by what they saw. For example, after his visit to Japan, Deng Xiaoping said, “Only after I visited Japan did I understand what modernization is.” Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Quanguo, after his trip abroad, said, “We used to think capitalism was decadent and decayed, but once you step out of the country you see it’s not like that at all.”
A wave of twenty‑to‑thirty senior cadres went abroad, and none escaped being stunned by the West—somewhat reminiscent of Li Hongzhang’s 19th‑century American tour. Their reports eventually reached Hua Guofeng, who famously said, “China is not only the birthplace of Mao Zedong Thought, but also the birthplace of Yelang arrogance.” Many people now romanticize Mao, but when he died, most of his absurd policies had already been despised by the majority of Chinese; only his personal prestige prevented change. By 1978, the election of Deng Xiaoping became inevitable.
For Deng, who took power at the end of 1978, assuming office was just the first task. Although he declared that China would not follow Mao’s line, another question immediately arose: if not Mao’s line, what path should China take? This became the problem Deng needed to solve. Thus, while many policies were implemented during his era, the core was to answer that question.
Inside China at the time, there were two main currents. One, led by Chen Yun, was the conservative faction, which blamed the economic mistakes of the Mao era on Mao himself rather than on the planned‑economy system. Since the Soviet economy was still doing okay, Chen argued that the Soviet planned economy worked, so the problem was that Mao couldn’t manage it, not the system itself. The other current, led by Hu Yaobang, was the democratic faction, which rejected the past China entirely and advocated full Westernization of both political and economic systems.
Faced with these two camps, which did Deng choose? He opted for a compromise. Politically, Deng remained extremely conservative, preserving the one‑party authoritarian system Mao built; economically, he suppressed the conservatives and pursued opening‑up. This duality was evident right after he came to power. Politically, he immediately allowed Hu Yaobang to launch a “rehabilitation” campaign, but at the same time he cracked down on the “Democracy Wall” in Xidan. The Democracy Wall was a wall in Beijing where people posted big‑character posters—mainly political critiques—and served as the primary venue for ordinary citizens to discuss politics in an era before the internet.
At the beginning, during the Hua Guofeng period, the Xidan Democracy Wall supported Deng Xiaoping, so Deng welcomed it. After Deng came to power, the Xidan Democracy Wall was no longer satisfied with only economic reform and began to seek democratic and political reforms. At this point, Deng's attitude toward the Xidan Democracy Wall made a 180-degree turn, immediately shifting from support to a regime crackdown, arresting many dissidents including Wei Jinsheng and Wang Juntao. Of course, the most typical example of this was Deng himself, who in March 1979 put forward the Four Cardinal Principles.
What do these Four Cardinal Principles say? They are to uphold the socialist path, uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and uphold Marxism‑Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. To us today, this may sound like a truism, but it was not at the time. When Deng proposed these principles, he was actually answering a question that the whole society was waiting for: how should Chinese politics be reformed in the post‑Mao era, and what direction should it take? Deng's answer was that China would not adopt a democratic system, nor would it revert to the multi‑party co‑governance of the pre‑1953 era.
At the same time, he would not, like Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin, denounce Mao. That is the Deng Party. Politically conservative, but economically Deng continuously pushed for liberalization, such as the 1978 household responsibility system, the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States on New Year's Day 1979, and the launch of Special Economic Zones in 1980. To stimulate economic modernization, Deng also employed democratic figures and even protected them from conservative suppression, such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, and this continued through the June 4, 1989 era.
At the end of 1980, the student movement arrived. Hu Yaobang, for supporting the movement, was forced to resign the following year, breaking completely with Deng. Yet even so, Deng still appointed the fellow reformist Zhao Ziyang to replace Hu. In 1989, Zhao, for opposing martial law, again broke with Deng. Deng still did not fully side with the conservatives; he appointed the reform‑leaning Jiang Zemin as his successor and even designated former Communist Youth League member Hu Jintao to succeed Jiang.
Conservative figures such as Li Peng, Deng Liqun, and Hu Qiaomu all exerted great effort in the struggle against Zhao Ziyang. Li Peng participated throughout the imposition of martial law and the tank crackdown. However, under Deng's suppression, these conservatives did not receive promotions after June 4. When we talk about Deng's achievements, we often call him the chief architect of reform and opening up. I think that description is inaccurate. Deng designed the overall direction of reform and opening up, but he did not design many of the concrete details. Before Jiang Zemin came to power, everything was chaotic. The actual step‑by‑step implementation was Jiang's work. Deng only set the direction, defined what reform and opening up meant, and stipulated that it would reform the economy without changing the political system.
Of course, looking at history, taking the reform‑and‑opening‑up path at Deng's juncture was not difficult. We often have a misconception that because the Deng era was much better than the Mao era, Deng must be far superior to Mao. That logic is flawed. Choosing the reform‑and‑opening‑up path was not hard; China at that time simply had to choose among democracy, centralization, and authoritarianism.
Returning to centralization was no longer feasible, and that was not something Deng could decide. People did not want a Mao‑style life; if they wanted centralization, Deng would not have risen to power, and the Gang of Four or Hua Guofeng would have taken over. Between democracy and authoritarianism, Deng did not perform any miraculous feat of toppling the entrenched bureaucratic elite and ushering China into a democratic society that would surpass Korea and Taiwan, becoming a national hero of Chinese history.
He simply chose a path that ninety percent of dictators would take. Deng remained caught in the vortex of power. Of course, Deng also made notable contributions. His core contribution lay in personnel appointments; he continuously prevented conservatives like Chen Yun from restoring old‑style rule, thereby maintaining the forward trajectory of reform and opening up. It was his personnel decisions that firmly steered China onto the reform path, which is his greatest contribution. Additionally, Deng was the first to propose abolishing lifelong leadership to prevent a repeat of Mao’s mistakes. Ironically, Deng himself was a lifelong leader, effectively serving until his death.
In the last few years of his life, although he had retired to a secondary role, until his death he still wielded the power to decide matters of inheritance and life or death with a single word—in effect, he was a retired emperor. Apart from that, Deng Xiaoping, while being far more pragmatic than Mao Zedong on economic policy, inexplicably introduced another highly conspicuous policy on population: the one‑child policy. This policy directly caused China, before it even became a developed country in 2020, to already experience the level of aging and population pressure typical of developed nations—an over‑achievement that seemed to transcend time. Considering these merits and demerits, Deng Xiaoping can at best be given a modest personal rating.
What about after Deng Xiaoping? It was then Jiang Zemin’s turn. Speaking of Jiang Zemin, he was actually the true chief architect of reform and opening up, because the approach of changing only the economy while leaving politics untouched was entirely his design. How exactly to implement the changes was all decided by Jiang. That is Jiang’s greatest contribution. Of course, this does not mean Jiang Zemin was a saint deserving of uncritical praise. To evaluate Jiang, we must first look closely at the specific form of reform and opening up that he designed.
First, in foreign affairs, Jiang Zemin set China’s diplomatic strategy during the reform era as “pro‑Western.” Starting in the 1990s, Jiang personally planned China’s accession negotiations to the World Trade Organization. It can be said that WTO accession was the most important turning point for China’s economy. However, the process of joining the WTO was not easy. The biggest resistance did not come from the United States, as one might assume, but from within China itself—from conservative old‑guard officials and populists who launched an endless siege.
In April 1999, to push WTO accession, Jiang arranged for Zhu Rongji to travel to the United States for negotiations. The details of the talks unexpectedly leaked, and the terms then appeared highly unfavorable to China. Seizing the opportunity, conservative elements led by Deng began a media campaign, accusing the government of treason. Then, in May 1999, the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was bombed, public opinion erupted, and the nation fell into a wave of opposition to WTO entry, with a stance of fighting the United States to the death.
Nevertheless, Jiang Zemin, facing this pressure, chose to stand firm and insist on joining the WTO—a decision that was far from easy. Later, when the “9‑1‑1” incident erupted in 2001, Jiang broke with his usual pattern and called President Bush on the night it broke out. He also unconditionally supported the anti‑terrorism resolution at the UN Security Council. This swift stance directly reversed the then‑stalled Sino‑U.S. relationship. If before Nixon’s 1972 visit China and the United States were hostile, and from 1972 to 2001 they were in a tentative phase, after 2001, thanks to Jiang’s efforts, the relationship entered a full‑blown honeymoon period.
The United States, to some extent, gave up confronting China, and the main theme of Sino‑U.S. relations returned to cooperation. In addition, another prominent contribution of Jiang Zemin was the massive transformation of China’s market economy. Deng Xiaoping had set the overall line of “reform and opening up: change the economy, not the politics,” but the specifics—how to restructure the economy, what to do with state‑owned enterprises—were a mess. Those details were largely resolved during Jiang’s era. The Company Law was passed in 1993, the Securities Law in 1998, and the Contract Law in 1999; these legislations fundamentally shifted China from a socialist system toward a capitalist one. Of the entire reform, three particularly important items deserve separate mention: the tax‑sharing reform, the welfare system reform, and the emphasis on GDP.
In 1979, when reform and opening up first began, China had not yet figured out how to organize its fiscal system, resulting in a chaotic early fiscal structure. To stimulate local governments, the central government introduced a fiscal‑responsibility system. For example, in 1988 Shanghai was assigned a fiscal target of 10.5 billion yuan for the year; any tax revenue collected beyond that amount belonged entirely to Shanghai. This system worked well initially, motivating Shanghai’s officials. However, such a system would be considered absurd in any modern government.
Is this managing China like a company? Are all provinces branches and the CCP the head office? Even if viewed as a company, this profit-sharing model is incredibly unreasonable. But there's no other way, as Deng Xiaoping failed to establish a modern political and fiscal system during his time. By 1993, this model began to falter. The direct reason for its collapse was the excessively high proportion of local fiscal revenue. At one point, local fiscal revenue accounted for nearly 80%, with the central government receiving just over 20%. Moreover, at this time, the central government not only received little but also had to bear large expenditures like pensions and defense. A system where the central government bears the brunt of expenses while local governments receive the majority of revenue is unsustainable for any company, let alone a nation.
To address this issue, the tax-for-revenue reform was introduced. Decided at the end of 1993 and implemented at the end of 1994. Initially, the reform's purpose was purely to optimize fiscal relations between the central and local governments. However, its actual impact was profound. The most ironic aspect is that its greatest impact wasn't changing central-local fiscal relations, but rather two unexpected consequences.
The first was the division of customs duties, value-added tax, corporate income tax, and individual income tax between the central and local governments during the tax-for-revenue reform. This division effectively established China's main tax categories for the future. China's tax system is essentially built upon the foundation of the tax-for-revenue reform.
The other significant change was that the tax-for-revenue reform gave rise to land finance. The central government, during the reform, lacked foresight and logic. It not only consolidated the majority of tax revenues for itself but also assigned major responsibilities to local governments. This is akin to wanting the horse to run without letting it eat grass. Faced with this predicament, local governments had no choice but to strive to reduce welfare provisions and begin developing revenue sources beyond taxes. What were these non-tax revenues? They were what everyone later came to know as land finance. And what did land finance give rise to? It gave rise to high housing prices.
High housing prices are a direct consequence of the 1994 tax-for-revenue reform. Subsequently, with the surge in land finance, local revenue did not decrease significantly. This is why I say the original objective of the tax-for-revenue reform was fundamentally unachieved; it was a reform in name only. Following this, besides the tax-for-revenue reform, another important reform during Jiang Zemin's era was the reform of China's welfare system. During Mao Zedong's time, although Mao did not develop the economy at all, and China's economy progressed at an extremely slow pace, at least theoretically, Mao adhered to the communist doctrine. This meant that in name, China's healthcare, education, and pensions were the government's responsibility, regardless of their actual quality.
Then came the Jiang Zemin era, and the market began to modernize. What should be done about the responsibilities for education, healthcare, and pensions? Jiang Zemin's answer was: no responsibility. Apart from public officials within the system, the vast majority of Chinese people were directly excluded from the welfare security system, and Chinese labor rights were effectively reduced to zero. For the sake of development, with a wave of his hand, Jiang Zemin declared these unnecessary. The poor welfare and labor rights in China are not inherent but originated from Jiang Zemin's design of the reform and opening-up.
Furthermore, another significant achievement during Jiang Zemin's tenure was the introduction of the concept of GDP. Nowadays, when we talk about whether a country is developing well, the first thing we consider is its GDP growth rate and per capita GDP. To help everyone understand better and to facilitate international comparisons, I have repeatedly cited GDP data in my programs. However, in many countries, GDP is not the sole measure of economic performance. For example, if you follow the US stock market, you'll find it's more influenced by non-farm payroll data, such as unemployment rates and new job creation, rather than GDP.
So, how did GDP become the standard, or even the sole standard, for measuring economic performance in China? It was because of Jiang Zemin. In 1993, China officially switched from the Soviet-style national income accounting mechanism to the GDP accounting mechanism. Subsequently, GDP became China's primary economic indicator. But that's not the most crucial part. Jiang Zemin's truly pivotal step was making GDP the primary performance metric for local officials' promotion. Consequently, to achieve this goal and win the GDP race, local officials began focusing on large-scale infrastructure projects and attracting investment. Of course, from a national perspective, Jiang Zemin's era also saw a breakthrough in binding the CCP's legitimacy with GDP.
Jiang Zemin put forward the Three Represents theory, which mentions that the Chinese Communist Party must always represent the development requirements of advanced social productive forces, essentially setting limits on the CCP itself and requiring it to ensure China’s development. How well this development is ensured is judged by what? By GDP growth rate. Of course, Jiang also answered a question that has troubled Chinese people since the 1990s. After the massive changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chinese thought fell into confusion. The CCP was founded on communism, but after the 1990s everyone knew that communism had already collapsed. So why does the Communist Party still rule after communism’s demise became a question that needed answering.
Especially since communism’s reputation still lingered. Over the past decades, communism has essentially become synonymous with poverty. One cannot honestly say that because China has tanks to crush people, it needs a Communist Party, right? To solve this, Jiang formally adopted the Three Represents, re‑establishing the legitimacy of the CCP based on performance generated by growth. This change completely resolved the opposition between development and the CCP system. Previously it was a choice between development and the Party; now the Party equaled development. Coupled with politics, Jiang implemented Deng Xiaoping’s principle of “politics does not change,” and the image of China that most people now have basically took shape.
Readers can reflect here: what has China been like in your mind over the past decades? The economy developed, but politics saw no reform, while corruption ran rampant, welfare was poor, and housing prices surged. The root of all this, the way China became this way, can be said to originate from the Jiang Zemin era; these were the tones he set. Did people like the reforms and opening up that Jiang launched? In terms of achievements, they were average. Jiang’s version of reform and opening up is not unique to China in political science; it is a standard authoritarian development model. Its earliest pioneer can be traced to Spain’s dictator Franco, and in East Asia to Park Chung‑hee, with Chiang Ching‑kuo also employing the same model.
Using GDP growth to exchange for the ruler’s legitimacy allows the authoritarian leader to lead the country to rapid development. Even when Jiang joked with Wallace that China was too underdeveloped to democratize for the time being, it was a one‑to‑one copy of Park Chung‑hee’s authoritarian development theory. The core of Jiang’s Three Represents is almost identical to Park’s model. Comparing the three East Asian leaders—Park Chung‑hee, Chiang Ching‑kuo, and Jiang Zemin—Jiang’s GDP growth was not particularly outstanding; the three were roughly on the same level. Yet at the same time, the negative effects during Jiang’s tenure were the most severe: high housing prices, official corruption, and deteriorating welfare. Although these problems also existed in the Park and Chiang eras, Jiang’s administration exaggerated them.
Therefore, judging by the results, Jiang was not very successful in executing reform and opening up, so I can only give him a “person above the people” rating, similar to Deng Xiaoping. Of course, I believe many will still consider Jiang decent. This is mainly because Chinese people have no real choice; perhaps he was better than Mao’s era, and for a generation that has endured lifelong hardship and never seen a bright future, that is enough.
Hu Jintao’s place in Chinese history can be seen as that of a conservator. When he came to power, there was not much left to change. Deng had set the direction of reform and opening up to focus on the economy without altering politics; Jiang defined what reform and opening up meant and how it should proceed. What could Hu still change? Of course, it is not that Hu did nothing during his term. What Hu mainly did were two tasks: patching up Jiang’s policies and guiding reform and opening up.
The first task—patching—was not well executed by Hu. This does not mean Hu’s direction was wrong; his direction was sound. How did Hu patch? It was written in his governing principle, the Scientific Outlook on Development. After taking office, Hu clearly felt that the Jiang‑era’s “GDP‑at‑all‑costs” model, which ignored everything else, had problems, so he introduced the theory of scientific development, fixing many of Jiang’s issues. The first patch was the abolition of the agricultural tax, a system that had existed for over two thousand years since the Warring States period to exploit peasants, finally abolished during Hu’s tenure.
Later, in terms of healthcare, elder care, education, and labor rights, Hu Jintao also introduced corresponding laws. In 2003, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme began pilot; in 2006, the Compulsory Education Law was revised; in 2007, the Labor Contract Law was passed; in 2009, the New Rural Pension Insurance Scheme began pilot. If Jiang Zemin laid the economic system and tax system for reform and opening up, then Hu Jintao can be said to have laid the welfare system for reform and opening up.
Hu Jintao actually gave China's economy a boost here. A large part of the reason why China is now in deflation is that the welfare system is too poor, and social distribution is unfair, leading to a lack of consumer spending. If the basic welfare systems that Hu Jintao established back then did not exist, China might not have fallen into deflation around 2023, but would likely have fallen into deflation around 2018. Of course, although Hu Jintao made these changes, and these laws and policies were introduced during his tenure, their actual effects were limited.
To this day, labor rights, healthcare, elder care, education, and welfare in China remain extremely poor. During his tenure, Hu Jintao also attempted to curb housing prices, issuing purchase restriction orders repeatedly, but the effects were also very poor. This is actually a characteristic of the Hu Jintao era. From today's perspective, Hu Jintao's economic reform strategies were very correct, pointing in the right direction, but their implementation was a complete mess.
The reason for this situation is also related to the political landscape during Hu Jintao's tenure. During Hu Jintao's time, the political model set by Deng Xiaoping was taken to the extreme, with
Mao Zedong was constantly strengthening his own power, while Xi Jinping is preventing the loss of his power. What could cause Xi Jinping to lose his power? In fact, there is only one word: democratization. Xi has always felt a crisis of potentially losing power at any moment, and he repeatedly says in his speeches that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must have a sense of the party’s possible demise. This cannot simply be dismissed as Xi’s over‑worry, because historically the reform‑and‑opening model has an end. If we review the paths of Franco, Park Chung‑hee, and Chiang Ching‑kuo, we find that this authoritarian development model reaches its limit when per‑capita GDP reaches the threshold of a developed country. At that stage, these nations generally completed democratic transitions and smoothly became developed countries. This may have been the earliest expectation the United States had for China.
However, from a planning perspective, this is not a problem Xi has to handle. After all, when Xi came to power, China’s per‑capita GDP was only a little over six thousand US dollars, about half of the high‑income threshold drawn by the World Bank at the time. Under normal assumptions, the CCP would face this test around 2022, when Xi would likely have stepped down and Hu Chunhua, the successor designated by Hu Jintao, would address the issue—not Xi himself. So how would Hu Chunhua handle it after taking office? Based on my usual speculation about the Tuan faction, it is highly probable that he would follow the tide of the times and implement democratic reforms.
But this development trajectory is clearly not what Xi wants to see. After coming to power, Xi imposed a harsh defense of this system. The first defensive move was to seize power, and the tool for that was anti‑corruption. The first major action Xi took after assuming office was an anti‑corruption campaign. When the campaign first emerged, neither the CCP leadership nor the broad public realized what it truly meant. Many people initially applauded Xi’s anti‑corruption drive because corruption had long plagued the Chinese people.
In this respect, Xi learned from Mao Zedong. Xi’s anti‑corruption, even the later crackdown on capitalists, essentially replicates Mao’s strategy of the many fighting the few. However, as the anti‑corruption campaign continued, people began to notice something was wrong. Xi quickly used anti‑corruption to carry out a massive purge. When Hu Jintao succeeded, only about one‑and‑a‑half of the nine Politburo Standing Committee members were from the Tuan faction, i.e., Hu’s camp. After one term, at the start of the second term, Hu had replaced about two‑and‑a‑half members with his own people. In Xi’s era, the pace of change was far faster. Through the anti‑corruption purge, Xi controlled the overwhelming majority of Standing Committee seats within his second term, abolished the leader term‑limit, and the “nine‑dragons‑go‑on‑water” system collapsed instantly, as did the cadre term‑limit system.
After that collapse, there was no longer any room for Hu Chunhua. The collective leadership system that Deng Xiaoping abolished the lifetime‑rule for, was only realized under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. During Xi’s tenure, it was reverted back by Xi himself. If we count Deng’s death in 1997 as the start of the collective leadership system, and Xi’s rise in 2012 as its end, the system lasted only about fifteen years in China—much shorter than many imagined.
Beyond the CCP’s internal dynamics, externally, such as social control, Xi also launched sweeping reforms. During the Deng‑Jiang era, there was a certain level of speech and thought control, but the overall bottom line was the same: to maintain Deng’s policy of changing the economy without changing politics. As long as speech and thought did not truly incite the overthrow of the CCP, the party generally did not intervene, especially to preserve market vitality. In the economic and scientific realms, Deng allowed a relatively high degree of leeway for economists and scientists; their remarks were rarely censored—a privilege of that period. Under Xi, however, the situation changed. Xi was not satisfied with the status quo; public opinion began to be shaped like in the Mao era. Xi no longer allowed Chinese citizens to criticize the CCP and even demanded that they praise the party.
In 2013, the Supreme People’s Courts and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued a judicial interpretation allowing a repost with more than 500 shares to be prosecuted as defamation, giving systematic legal support to criminalizing speech. In 2014, the Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization was established, with Xi as its head. In 2016, party media were ordered by Xi to bear the party’s name. In 2017, the Cybersecurity Law came into effect, and real‑name registration for the internet was officially implemented, and so on and so forth.
Under a series of counter-regulations, Xi Jinping has ultimately transformed China into what it is today, where not even the slightest criticism or hint of sarcasm is permitted. Regarding social power, the immense wealth brought about by the Reform and Opening-up allowed the power of capitalists to accumulate over the past few decades, even vaguely forming a force capable of challenging the CCP. After Xi Jinping took office, he struck hard: Ren Zhiqiang was investigated, Jack Ma was forced to flee overseas, and the social status and influence of capitalists plummeted. The power of capitalists, inherent to capitalism, was thoroughly suppressed.
Of course, democracy and freedom have another major pillar of support: the West. Therefore, after Xi Jinping took office, to prevent the West from importing democracy, China-West relations began to deteriorate rapidly, and wolf-warrior diplomacy became the mainstream. In the Russia-Ukraine war, Xi Jinping also stood directly on Russia's side, a sharp contrast to Jiang Zemin's stance after 9/11 in 2001. Naturally, in terms of economic policy, Xi Jinping also abandoned the laissez-faire policies of the Deng, Jiang, and Hu eras and began to intervene heavily in the economy. The policy of "grasping the large and letting go of the small" proposed during the Jiang Zemin era—where the Communist Party only managed industries related to people's livelihoods while leaving other ordinary industries to the market—began to be abolished. A new type of planned economy belonging to Xi Jinping began to come online.
Now, China's industrial development is approaching the Mao Zedong era. It is no longer the market that decides what to develop, but rather whatever Xi Jinping wants to develop. If he wants to develop new energy, the whole country must use its national strength to develop new energy; if he wants to develop robots, the whole country must use its national strength to develop robots. This is quite reminiscent of Mao Zedong's massive efforts in the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project and the Great Leap Forward's steel production. At this point, China's technological innovation is the same as it was in the Mao era. It is no longer an economic or technological issue, but a political one.
When China engaged in the Great Leap Forward back then, it was not because Mao Zedong hoped to lead the Chinese people to prosperity, but because Mao wanted to spite Khrushchev at the time, to prove that he could develop well even without the Soviet Union. Mao's pursuit of the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" was not because China could improve production efficiency once they were achieved, but to ensure that in an extreme situation, China could perish together with the Soviet Union. Here, for Xi Jinping, it is the same. Electric vehicles, robots, and AI are not tools to make the Chinese people rich, but tools to ensure he is not overthrown by a democratic system.
Besides this, there is another political reversal: Xi Jinping has begun to gradually abolish the legitimacy derived from GDP performance. Xi Jinping knows well that China's economic growth is about to slow down. To prepare for defense in advance, he no longer treats development as the source of the CCP's governing legitimacy. Instead, he has learned from Mao Zedong, promoting a narrative that "China is bad, but the world is even worse." Isn't the popular "Old A" narrative just a 2.0 version of the Mao era's claim that 30% of Americans were starving every day? Locally, Xi Jinping no longer uses GDP as the primary assessment standard for the promotion of local officials, but instead uses loyalty to himself as the main criterion. Of course, under this set of operations, China's governance capacity has also begun to encounter problems, gradually regressing to the Mao era.
Although Xi Jinping's power is far greater than Hu Jintao's, China's disaster relief capability has declined significantly. For COVID-19, which had a lower mortality rate than SARS, Xi Jinping insisted on enforcing three years of mass lockdowns. Now, China's GDP growth rate has slid all the way to 5%, and the scale of new debt each year even exceeds the GDP increment for the same period. In fact, looking at the biggest difference between Xi Jinping and the Deng-Jiang-Hu era, I believe their greatest difference lies in their self-positioning. From the time Xi Jinping took office until now, his main goal has not been to maintain economic development, but to maintain his own rule, which is the same as Mao Zedong.
As for why this is the case, I think it is because their mindsets are different. Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping have one thing in common: they both feel that China is their private property. This was very normal for Mao Zedong. And Xi Jinping, as a "princeling" (red second generation), has once again adopted a mindset similar to Mao's. This idea of viewing China as one's private property is actually very common among the princelings. Take Bo Guagua, for example. In his statements over the past few years, Bo Guagua has also revealed this point. Even though his father, Bo Xilai, has been taken down by Xi Jinping, and even though he has already "run" to Canada, he still strongly supports the CCP and still feels a sense of pride in the CCP's development. Princelings generally view themselves as the legitimate shareholders of China; therefore, maintaining their absolute control over China has become their inherent vocation.
This sense of ownership determines the two different mindsets they have compared to the Deng Jianghu era. Deng Jianghu considered himself not inherently possessing China, so to continue ruling, he worked hard to improve the economy to gain legitimacy. If the CCP’s rule were to clash with China’s economic development, we are not sure what choice Deng Jianghu would make—whether to choose the CCP or China’s development—but at least these people would hesitate. However, for Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping, they feel that ruling China is their right, so they would not hesitate at all; maintaining the Communist Party’s rule and their own rule is their absolute goal, even if the entire economy collapses. The mission of Chinese people is to be supporting characters; aside from themselves, all Chinese are NPCs.
Therefore, for leaders who only put their own interests and the pursuit of power first, Xi Jinping can only be placed somewhere between a complete failure and an NPC. Of course, he is not a total failure; he ranks slightly higher than Mao Zedong, not because Xi is less foolish, but because he is overly foolish. His ability is inferior to Mao’s; he cannot achieve the level of personal cult that Mao had, so his destructive power is ultimately a bit less than Mao’s. After discussing Xi, this roughly forms my ranking of China’s five generations of leaders. Of course, each viewer may have their own ranking in mind, and you can post your ranking in the comments.
However, at the end of the program, someone might say you are smearing the CCP. How can you claim that China’s leaders are only personal superstars? Does the CCP lack any top‑tier or “cool” leaders? I think you are just blackening the CCP, disliking every Chinese leader. In fact, China does have “cool” leaders—Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang are considered such. For example, Zhao Ziyang, on May 17, 1989, during the June Fourth movement, faced a fierce confrontation with Deng Xiaoping.
When Zhao realized he could not persuade Deng to abandon martial law, and Deng insisted on maintaining it, Zhao resolutely chose to support the students. After being at the center of power for a long time, didn’t Zhao know that being unable to sway Deng and being in an absolute disadvantage, if he continued to oppose martial law and support the students, he would inevitably lose his position as General Secretary and his political career? We can ask ourselves: many people would not give up even a mayor’s post tomorrow for democracy. But Zhao Ziyang, knowing he might lose the General Secretary role and his entire political career, still refused to enforce martial law for the sake of democracy and the Chinese people.
In the early hours of May 19, he went to the square and told the students, “We are old now, it doesn’t matter. You are still young; the future is long,” which cemented Zhao Ziyang’s status as a “cool” leader. The same applies to Hu Yaobang. These two stand in stark contrast to Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. Such leaders can absolutely be counted among the most “cool” leaders in Chinese history. Unfortunately, even with the title of General Secretary, they never truly held power. The CCP’s system ultimately does not allow a truly “cool” leader to emerge.