The power lies behind the "correct performance view": Xi Jinping demands that cadres abuse power, who will restrict the unbalanced supreme power?

On August 25, China's official announced Xi Jinping's latest instructions on "establishing and practicing the correct performance view." Xi Jinping demanded to continue to consolidate learning and educational achievements, consider relevant education as a "long-term task", regularly review the so-called "performance view deviation", strengthen cadres' daily management supervision, "prevent arbitrary use of power", while demanding to grasp the typical, grasp the current, grasp the report, and maintain "strong deterrence."

If only understood by the official narrative of the Communist Party of China, this is another political deployment of the Supreme Leader to correct the style of local cadres.But putting Xi Jinping's power changes over a decade in power together with the instructions of today, what is really exposed is not exactly how Xi Jinping constrains power, but a sharper political paradox: The most concentrated people in power in China are asking other officials not to sexually use power, and this requirement itself has not answered who can truly constrains the supreme power.

Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the Communist Party of China has carried out mass line education, "three strictly three" and "two school one", party history learning education, thematic education, party discipline learning education and anti-corruption, surveillance and discipline rectification that continues to continue to this day.The officials now also demand that learning education be established as a "long-term mechanism".If after a decade of high pressure, rectification, falsification, formalism, abuse of power and so-called wrong political performance still need the highest leader to personally order rectification, then it is necessary to accept the test not only cadres' ideas, but why Xi Jinping's established governance system continues to replicate the same problem.

In the current cadres system of the Communist Party of China, local main officials are not produced by local residents through free competition elections, and their political future is mainly in the hands of higher-level party organizations. GDP, bidding projects, major projects, the completion of political tasks and political loyalty to the Party Central Committee can directly affect cadres evaluation and promotion. When a county governor, mayor or provincial committee secretary first needs to be responsible, not through votes to local residents, the impulse to make outcomes around higher-level indicators is not an icon, but the institutional incentive generated by the power structure.

This is also the most ironic meaning of Xi’s so-called “prevention of arbitrary use of power.”

In 2018, China revised the Constitution, removing the restrictions on the continuous office of the president of the country for no more than two terms. At the same time, Xi Jinping continued to strengthen the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee and established its core political position through the party's political demands, such as "political loyalty requirements for continued entry into cadres evaluation and political life within the party." China's courts, prosecutorship, propaganda, national security, the military and all levels of administrative system are placed under the leadership framework of the Communist Party, and the Communist Party itself does not have a system channel to lose power through competitive national elections.

In this structure, Xi demanded that local officials do not abuse power, but did not establish judicial, parliamentary, media or electoral mechanisms that could independently investigate and constrain the highest leader.Lower-level cadres must be supervised by inspections, disciplinary committees and organizational departments, but there is no external body in the highest political power that is equally independent and able to enforce accountability.

This is not a small vulnerability in the supervisory system, but the core of Xi's power structure.

The so-called supervision of the CPC is actually a upward political control chain: ordinary party members accept supervision of the party organization, local cadres accept supervision of the upper-level party committees, disciplinary committees and surveillance systems, central cadres accept supervision of the party central, and the entire system ultimately emphasizes safeguarding the authority of the party central and centralized unified leadership. In such a structure, supervision can be very strict, but not equal to the balance of power.

When major policies have achieved achievements, official propaganda often highlights the important deployment of "the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee" and Xi Jinping; once the implementation of the policy has serious social consequences, responsibility narratives often move downwards, turning into grassroots "layer coding", local cadres "formalism", officials "disadvantages" or execution pattern.

This political mechanism allows the highest power to have enormous decision-making influence, but can spread a lot of specific responsibilities through the organizational system to the lower executives. Xi Jinping once again called for the correction of the "wrong performance view", in fact still following the same logic: the problem is defined as cadres need to be educated, rather than asking whether the power structure that motivates cadres behavior needs to change.

Officials also demanded that cadres create "performs that can withstand the practice, the people, and the historical examination". but the "people's examination" of how the Chinese political system actually produces practical constraints is the question that this document cannot answer.

Chinese citizens cannot decide whether the Communist Party will continue to rule through national free competition elections, nor can they freely organize an opposition party that can challenge the CCP's rule; the main news media is under the CCP's propaganda management system, and the courts do not have a position independent of the party's political power to review major political decisions at the highest level.

Therefore, Xi Jinping today called for the establishment of a "correct long-term performance mechanism", and the real strengthening is still not the people's supervision of officials, but the Party Central Committee's vertical control of the bureaucratic system. Local cadres are responsible to the upper level, the upper level is responsible to the Party Central Committee, and the power of the Party Central Committee is further concentrated in Xi Jinping's era.

More than a decade later, the Chinese Communist Party re-established the same problem, which itself has been a torture for the so-called "modernization of governance."If the "comprehensive strict governance of the party" has solved the problem of power constraints, why is it still necessary to launch new learning education?If the CCP supervision system can effectively prevent abuse of power, why does Xi still need to repeatedly demand that officials do not "use the power of sex"?If the performance is really tested by the people, why can not the people decide through free elections to make false performance officials and even the highest rulers continue to take power?

Xi Jinping's speech therefore unintentionally uncovered the deepest layer of the political propaganda of the CPC: a regime that refuses to allow the highest power to accept independent balancing, but constantly demands the correct use of power at the lower level; a system that does not allow the people to freely choose the ruling party, but continuously declares that all performance is tested by the people; a system that continues to make political loyalty assessment, but also requires cadres not to pursue the false performance recognized by the upper level.

What really needs to be established is never another learning mechanism, but a system that can take the consequences of power. Freedom of the press, judicial independence, financial transparency, official property supervision and competitive political authority are important because they don’t have to wait for a top leader to rage to find another official abusing power.

Xi Jinping has chosen the opposite direction: not to restrict power with an independent system, but to continue to use more centralized power to oversee lower power; not to let citizens decide the fate of officials, but to let the Party organizations decide; not to remove the institutional risks arising from individual centralization, but to continue to maintain the entire power pyramid through study, surveillance, discipline and “strong deterrence.”

Therefore, the "correct performance view" really needs to be examined, first of all, is not a county governor, a mayor, but the power system established and led by Xi Jinping himself.A top leader who has been in power for more than a decade, if until today the entire bureaucratic system must continue to be educated not to fake, not abuse power, not to pursue false performance, then this is not only the issue of cadres education, but the direct torture of the effectiveness of its governance model.