It’s long been known that China’s workers spend long days in the office, but now they face a new set of tasks: studying the writings of President Xi Jinping.
Since Beijing launched a new propaganda campaign earlier this year, the Xi Jinping idea has reportedly become a common topic of discussion among employees of state-owned and private companies, including foreign firms.
What is “Xi Jinping’s Thought”?
Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, or Xi Jinping’s Thoughts for short, is a collection of the Chinese leader’s writings and speeches on the course of China’s development.
The declared aim of the writings is “the great renewal of the Chinese nation”.
In April, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a new campaign to investigate and implement Xi Jinping’s thoughts.
Since then, the campaign has spread throughout the business world.
Media outlets, including Bloomberg and Nikkei Asia, have reported anonymous reports from bankers and other employees describing lengthy meetings and discussions about Xi’s work.
The jobs affected also reportedly include global companies headquartered abroad.
Under Xi, the world’s second-biggest economy has made a turn towards greater ideological purity, based on the party’s Marxist-Leninist roots and his own cult of personality.
Among other steps to strengthen indoctrination, Xi has enshrined his writings in the CCP constitution and the national curriculum.
What does Marxist-Leninist theory have to do with economics and banking?
While communist ideology doesn’t seem particularly relevant to banking or international finance and trade, China’s banks and state-owned enterprises are closely intertwined with Beijing and subject to heavy oversight and influence.
Likewise, it’s not uncommon for Chinese citizens to be members of the CCP, which is officially separate from the government — though that distinction has faded under Xi.
Last year, total CCP membership officially stood at 96.71 million people — about 7 percent of the country’s population.
According to Carsten Holz, an associate professor of social sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, studying Xi’s writings is an ongoing practice in all CCP cells.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has consolidated power and control more than any leader since Mao Zedong [Gianluigi Guercia/Pool via Reuters]Top bankers and other high-level officials are likely party members, Holz said, meaning they were likely to have engaged with the Xi Jinping ideas even before the April directive.
“Banks are mostly state financial institutions and the largest used to be part of the government in every sense of the word. They are aware that they resemble government bureaucrats more than traditional bankers,” a Hong Kong-based private sector analyst told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.
“They almost certainly had some ideological training beforehand. So 1694065943it may be more than before and more focused on one person, but it’s definitely not her first time at the rodeo, so to speak,” the analyst said.
What happens in these learning sessions?
While study sessions on Xi Jinping Thought have no real equivalent in the Western world, they function somewhat like an activity like Bible studies, said Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.
Mok described Xi Jinping’s ideas as a mixture of a “moral framework” and a “state religion” devoid of superstitious elements, so that study session participants would discuss how to apply the scriptures to their lives and business practices.
In the case of banking, he said, the practice is not dissimilar to the practice of many Islamic countries that have pioneered Islamic finance.
“Why should Chinese banks study Xi Jinping’s thoughts? I think one reason is that Xi Jinping’s thoughts are of course a political ideology, but they could be even deeper and broader,” Mok told Al Jazeera. “It’s actually a philosophy of life.”
But Holz said the rise of Xi Jinping ideas could be seen as a symptom of the Chinese leader’s drive to consolidate power and control on a scale not seen since Mao Zedong.
“I interpret these study sessions as rituals. “These rituals serve primarily to maintain loyalty to the regime leader,” Holz said.
“They also help protect against independent thinking, as the brain’s capacity is occupied with the leader’s dogma and any interest in intellectual debate is stifled by the need to appear to conform with the leader’s dogma.”
How do bankers and executives feel about these study sessions?
Most of the evidence for how staffers feel about studying Xi’s ideology is anecdotal — but there are some signs that the trend hasn’t always been welcome.
In a recent report by Nikkei Asia, an unnamed employee described his dismay at having spent 90 minutes of a two-hour business meeting discussing Xi’s writings.
Other people cited in the report complained that such activities eat up valuable employees’ time and resources, with some top managers reportedly being recruited to take part in week-long learning sessions.
While the study sessions may be time-consuming, bankers and executives are more concerned about Xi’s parallel “shared prosperity” campaign, the Hong Kong-based analyst said.
The tenet of the Xi Jinping idea, which calls for more economic and social equality, could in practice mean drastic cuts in the salaries of high-performing employees and weaken morale, he said.
Holz said he was concerned that Xi Jinping’s thoughts could distract China’s banks and state-owned enterprises from the most important task, which is restoring the economy as their post-pandemic recovery falters amid challenges including deflation, a housing crisis and a low birth rate.
“Studying the leader’s dogma has a direct and negative impact on the open exchange of ideas and free-spirited innovation that fuels economic growth,” he said.
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