Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping – The Diplomat 2022/10/3 上午8:13

CHINA POWER | POLITICS | EAST ASIA

Forging the ‘New

Era’: The
Temporal Politics
of Xi Jinping
The “new era” – connoting
a fundamental historical
shift – has been
systematically fused with
the persona of Xi in
Chinese o!cial discourse.

By Hugo Jones
October 01, 2022

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Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping – The Diplomat 2022/10/3 上午8:13

Credit: Depositphotos

On Monday, Xi Jinping and other senior

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders
attended a 30,000 square meter exhibition
titled “Forging Ahead in the New Era.” For the
past five years, the term “new era” (新时代)
has appeared with increasing frequency in
China’s white papers, propaganda, official
speeches, and public diplomacy. Further
declarations pertaining to the “new era” are
certain to feature in the CCP’s public
messaging during the 20th Party Congress, to
be held in mid-October, heralding both
achievements of the “new era” so far and
promises of what is to come.

Why is this important? The discourse of a

“new era” is hardly unique to Xi Jinping’s
China. Various parties and regimes around
the globe use the hyperbole of historical eras
to associate themselves with progress and
their critics with antiquity. See, for example,
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’ comments at
the United Nations last week, where she
proclaimed a “new Britain for a new era.” A
year earlier U.S. President Joe Biden declared
a “new era” of U.S. diplomacy. Hu Jintao also

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Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping – The Diplomat 2022/10/3 上午8:13

made a single reference to a “new era”

during his speech at the 17th Party Congress
in 2007.

The difference between these examples and

today’s China is the growing centralization of
power around Xi Jinping. The “new era” –
connoting a fundamental historical shift –
has been systematically fused with the
persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse.
This process began in earnest with the 19th
Party Congress in 2017 and Xi’s keynote
speech, in which a “new era” was mentioned
46 times. Since then, the “new era” has been
retroactively applied in official statements to
refer to the period following the 18th Party
Congress in 2012, equating the “new era” to
all of Xi Jinping’s tenure as general secretary
of the CCP.

The Xi Jinping Era

From early on in his premiership, it was clear

that Xi Jinping sought historical significance
greater than that of his two immediate
predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. This
was also encouraged by a growing Chinese
nationalism, which predates Xi. In a 2014
journal article, retired PLA officers Liu
Mingfu and Wang Zhongyuan wrote: “The
era of Xi Jinping has two meanings: the era of
Xi Jinping in a narrow sense is the next 10
years, which is limited by Xi Jinping’s term of
office. In a broad sense, the era of Xi Jinping
refers to the next 30 years… and the
successful realization of the Chinese Dream.”

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Forging the ‘New Era’: The Temporal Politics of Xi Jinping – The Diplomat 2022/10/3 上午8:13

Liu and Wang were prescient in

understanding how the language of an “era”
could be used to extend Xi Jinping’s political
power, even beyond the deadline demanded
by succession norms. In 2018, presidential
term limits were formally removed from
China’s constitution. In the same year “Xi
Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics for a New Era” was added to
the CCP constitution. These constitutional
changes instruct the party and the state to
think in terms of pre- and post-Xi.

The CCP is well known for mobilizing history

in support of the regime. Party historical
resolutions to this end have been issued
under Mao Zedong (1945), Deng Xiaoping
(1981), and Xi Jinping (2021). However, the
2021 historical resolution refers to “periods”
(时期) for the achievements made under Mao
and Deng’s rule, and “era” (时代) for those
under Xi. Similarly, during a speech to the
Communist Youth League in May 2022, Xi
made the period/era distinction between the
two previous leaders and himself. An “era” is
more momentous than a “period” in Chinese
– creating an intentionally grander historical
context for Xi.

So what is the “new era”? Despite a growing

body of Chinese literature on the “new era,”
these analyses tend to simply stress the
importance of following “Xi Jinping
Thought.” The most comprehensive outline of
the “new era” can be found at the source, Xi’s
(three hour) speech at the 19th Party
Congress:

Chinese socialism’s entrance into a

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“
new era is, in the history of the
development of the People’s Republic
of China and the history of the
development of the Chinese nation, of
tremendous importance. In the history
of the development of international

”
socialism and the history of the
development of human society, it is of
tremendous importance.

For Xi, while the “new era” is scalable from

the local to the international context, it is
ultimately all about China: “It will be an era
that sees China moving closer to center stage
and making greater contributions to
mankind.”

As such, the “new era” has been interpreted

by many international observers as China
entering a new phase in its history due to
changes in its material power. From this
perspective, the new era can be seen in
charts depicting changes in China’s GDP per
capita, military spending and technological
advancement. However, I argue that the
“new era” is better understood as a form of
“discourse power” (话语权) that seeks to
legitimize the centralization of power around
the CCP and, specifically, Xi Jinping.

The Discourse Power of a “New Era”

The notion of a “new era” is embedded in a

Marxist-Leninist understanding of historical
development through the lens of dialectic
materialism, or historical materialism. The
discourse of a “new era” places China under
Xi Jinping within a specific stage of socialist
development. The “new era” is also derived

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from a narrative of national rejuvenation

that long precedes Xi, based on ideas of
China’s historical place in the world, a
lingering victim mentality, and the project of
developing China’s comprehensive national
power.

As a result, the prevalence of rejuvenation

discourse under Xi is not surprising – this has
permeated Chinese political discourse since
the foundation of the PRC. But equally Xi did
not need to declare a “new era” to align his
leadership with a pre-existing narrative of
national rejuvenation. From 2012 it was
already clear that his time as China’s leader
would likely coincide with the first centenary
goal of achieving a moderately prosperous
society. But Xi actively went one step further,
and transposed another temporal framework
over Chinese history with the concept of a
“new era.”

Rather than a specific political agenda, the

language of a “new era” is a powerful
example of how Xi understands discourse
power as a tool to advance broad normative
change and to strengthen his personal power.
Adding “in the new era” or “for the new era”
to statements on various policy areas, such as
security, development, diplomacy, poverty
alleviation, human rights, evokes the context
of an inevitable and objective tide of change.
Moreover, it ties Xi Jinping to that change.
This seeks to create the space for more
radical departures from previous domestic
and international norms.

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The “New Era” as a Source of Legitimacy

The discourse of a “new era” serves three

functions. First, it bolsters the CCP’s
legitimacy in a domestic context. “New era” is
plastered across China’s state media
landscape, where each day multiple articles,
editorials, and news segments are devoted to
a particular item “in the new era.” This acts
as propaganda for the idea that the CCP is
now operating under different conditions.
This framing allows Xi to diverge from long-
standing political and economic decision-
making norms such as a Dengist approach to
market regulation, or the two-term limit for
China’s president, by making Xi’s measures
seem timely in a changing world. As Xi said
in 2017, “as history progresses and the world
undergoes profound changes, the Party
remains always ahead of the times.”

The “new era” is also used to provide the

context for sensitive issues such as Tibet,
Xinjiang, and Taiwan – Xinhua reported in
2020 that Xi said “facts prove that the party’s
policies on Xinjiang in the new era are
completely correct and must be adhered to in
the long term.” And in August the State
Council released a white paper titled “The
Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in
the New Era.”

Second, the discourse of a “new era” is used

to empower the CCP and challenge norms
internationally. The strongest example was
on February 4, when Xi and Russian
President Vladimir Putin released a joint
statement on “International Relations
Entering a New Era,” a major foreign policy

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declaration that aligned China with Russia

weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. In the
past couple of years, China has also begun
referring to “comprehensive strategic
partnership for a new era” (emphasis added)
with certain parties, including Russia and
Uzbekistan, in what seems like a soft
extension of its tiered partnership diplomacy.

The discourse of a “new era” is also used to

challenge the U.S., NATO, and Western
countries that belong to the “old,” unipolar
era of global politics. The “new era” is
presented by China as the just temporality of
a multipolar, post-imperial world. This can be
seen in the way the “new era” is increasingly
used in Chinese public messaging to provide
context for South-South relations, such as the
eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in
November 2021. This messaging paints Xi
Jinping as the figurehead of a “new era of
international relations” in an attempt to
bolster his legitimacy as a global leader in a
changing world (not necessarily successfully).

Third, the discourse of a “new era” serves to

reinforce the idea that the government of
China, and the governance of Xi, is always
thinking in the long term, operating on
fundamentally different time scales to the
Western world. This reinforces certain
orientalist tropes that China is inherently
“better” at grand strategy. Despite its
popularity, this narrative disguises the reality
that Xi and the CCP are often as short-sighted
as other regimes – the chaotic “zero-COVID”
policy is just one example. This reminds us
that we should take the narrative of a “new
era” with a fair degree of skepticism.

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The New Era after the 20th Party Congress

As we approach the 20th Party Congress,

many expect to see the formal contraction of
the lengthy “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism
with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era”
to simply “Xi Jinping Thought” (习近平思想).
As David Bandursky of the China Media
Project noted, this would be an important
consolidation of Xi’s long-term power.
Bandursky wrote: “These abbreviations, far
from being incidental, must be regarded as
chess moves in the longer rhetorical game, in
which the ultimate victory will be the final
transformation of Xi Jinping’s 16-character
banner term into a 5-character banner term.”

However, I think we are more likely to see

increased usage of “new era” in official
discourse. The real “victory” for Xi Jinping is
perhaps the 8-character “Xi Jinping Thought
in the New Era” (习近平新时代思想). This
temporal element ties Xi to both his Marxist
roots and the future of China’s rejuvenation,
and distinguishes his doctrine from both Mao
and Deng’s. The discourse of a “new era”
works to place Xi as the center of gravity in
China’s space-time.

In sum, we should recognize the “new era” as

an emergent strategic narrative that is
seeking to further political objectives.
Academics, policymakers, business circles,
and analysts should go further to understand
the implications of China’s exercise of
“discourse power.” We should not take the so-
called “new era” for granted.

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AUTHORS

GUEST AUTHOR

Hugo Jones
Hugo Jones is a program and research
associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of
Economics’ foreign policy think tank. He holds
an MSc in International Relations from LSE.

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