The “moonshot” has been a popular term in the start-up scene for years. Coined by John F. Kennedy seven years before the first moon landing in 1969, the word describes seemingly impossible but, if successful, ground-breaking projects that have the potential to change the future.
Although the expected result will not be quite as revolutionary when China sends another probe to the moon today, it will certainly be a “first.” Never before have humans taken rock samples from the dark side of the moon. Joern Petring explains why this is exciting not only for science but also for business.
Another endeavor of the People’s Republic to change the world is far less noticeable but at least just as effective: As a role model for autocracies all over the world, Beijing helps to put opponents of democratic and market-economy reforms at the center of power in more and more developing and transition countries. This is also a form of self-protection, Marcel Grzanna analyzes. An authoritarian state feels more secure when democracies appear weaker.
China plans to embark on another lunar mission this Friday, bringing back rock samples from the far side of the Earth’s satellite for the first time. The planned course of the mission involves launching the Chang’e-6 spacecraft into space with a rocket from the Wenchang space center on the tropical island of Hainan. The mission is scheduled to take 53 days, with the moon having been reached after around three to five days in the past.
After arrival, the probe will enter lunar orbit. The lander will head for the target area in the South Pole-Aitken basin, where it will land and start taking samples. The collected samples will then be transferred to the ascent module, which will return them to the orbiter. Finally, the samples will be loaded into the return capsule, which will separate from the orbiter and return to Earth. After re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the capsule will be recovered.
This is China’s sixth moon mission since 2007, which emphasizes the importance of the Earth’s satellite for Chinese space policy. The missions have become increasingly complex over the years:
Chang’e-6 now fulfills the tasks of Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-4. It will travel to the far side of the moon and bring back samples from there.
This mission is scientifically significant as it provides deeper insights into the moon’s history and, thus, indirectly, the entire solar system. The samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the oldest and largest impact craters on the moon, could provide information about the early conditions in the solar system and help clarify questions about the so-called “late heavy bombardment.”
This event, in which many large meteorites hit the inner solar system, is important for understanding the evolution of the planets and possibly the origin of life. Scientists hope to find clues about the exact time of the impact, which “remains a topic of debate,” Kentaro Terada, a cosmochemist at Osaka University, told Science magazine. Some scientists believe that the Basin on the moon was formed 4.3 billion years ago. Others think the impact occurred hundreds of millions of years later.
As with previous missions, China is once again cooperating with several international partners. Chang’e-6 is carrying payloads from France, Italy, Sweden, and Pakistan, which shows the further internationalization of the Chinese space program. A French instrument on the lander will spend 48 hours studying the origin and dynamics of the lunar exosphere, a thin layer of gas surrounding the surface. One objective is to explain the strong temporal and spatial fluctuations in the density of the exosphere.
However, the latest mission to the moon is also of economic significance. The Chinese explore capabilities that they could later use for space mining. In a recent opinion piece for the China Daily, Chinese space expert Wu Jinyuan emphasized that China is very interested in the helium-3 and titanium deposits believed to be on the moon.
Helium-3 is of particular interest as a potential energy source for nuclear fusion. Titanium, on the other hand, is in high demand in the aerospace industry due to its high strength and low weight. Wu believes the moon contains at least 100 trillion tons of mineable titanium.
The expert also hints that the mission is also about political interests. The ultimate goal of the Chinese lunar program is to bring its own astronauts to the moon by 2030 and establish a lunar outpost.
Similar to the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union displayed their technological and political power aspirations in the space race, today’s race to the moon also serves to signal geopolitical strength and scientific leadership claims.
However, while the missions back then were strongly driven by the desire for prestige, today scientific research and the utilization of lunar resources are more in the foreground. In other words, the aim is no longer just to “fly the flag and return,” but to establish a permanent presence and exploit the moon.
In the systemic competition with the world’s democracies, autocracies are increasingly gaining the upper hand. The Bertelsmann Foundation’s tenth transformation index, which analyzes the situation in the world’s developing and transition countries, diagnoses the continuation of a global trend. “In a growing number of countries, the opponents of democratic and market-economy reforms are at the center of power.” There are now 74 developing and transition countries with a total population of four billion people ruled autocratically, while 63 countries with three billion people are democracies.
The People’s Republic of China plays an exceptional role here. Due to its large population of around 1.4 billion people, it is not only the world’s largest dictatorship. It is also the second-largest economy and an advertising medium for an illiberal government model. Beijing actively propagates its idea of shaping and controlling society abroad and portrays its increase in social prosperity over the past 30 years as proof of the superiority of its system.
“China’s message to the Global South is: We are the first country that has managed to rise despite the will of the West. Those who support us will achieve prosperity on the same path,” says departing MEP Reinhard Buetikofer, who is also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. In recent years, the country has thrown money around to buy loyalty and secure influence. China has also used dependencies to blackmail, says Bütikofer. However, he adds that this did not result in a mechanism where financial aid or dependencies on China resulted in authoritarian structures in other countries.
Just as the Americans have done with democracy in the 21st century, Beijing pursues its own interests by exporting its ideology. However, the reasons are different. A deeply authoritarian state can never feel safe in a democratically dominated world because liberal international norms challenge illiberal practices back home, the Journal of Democracy wrote last year. “Autocracies simply are incapable of practicing liberalism abroad while maintaining authoritarianism at home,” wrote political scientist Minxin Pei from Claremont McKenna College in the US. Accordingly, China is going on the offensive and offering its system as the superior choice.
“The Communist Party presents itself with missionary self-confidence. It presents Xi Jinping’s governance as the most highly developed form of all modern political realities,” says Bütikofer. From an authoritarian perspective, the tempting thing about this is that state responsibility for the rule of law or human rights plays no role in the separation of powers. “This model provides all autocrats – and those who want to become autocrats – with an experimental box that they only need to reach into,” the Green politician says.
The Chinese Communist Party also sees opportunities to spread its model in Africa. At Tanzania’s Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, seconded Chinese experts teach African leaders. The curriculum includes, for example, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s concept of “targeted poverty reduction” and China’s climate policy. There is hardly anything wrong with that. However, media reports claim that the Chinese guests also teach students from six countries about classic forms of authoritarian government. The lecturers reportedly described the advantages of a ruling party that is above the state and the courts.
Gunnar Wiegand, Head of the Asia Department at the European External Action Service (EEAS) until the end of 2023, recognizes this as a “not insignificant” indication of the hypothesis that China intends to export its government model. However, Wiegand says there is no clear answer whether China bears decisive responsibility for the autocratization of the world or whether other, national factors might be much more decisive when democratic states develop authoritarian structures.
Wiegand firmly believes that China would not dare to overtly influence the political development of influential democracies such as Brazil or South Africa. “I don’t see China as a seller of its own system,” he says. However, the former diplomat believes that “where there is great instability, China tries to manipulate domestic political processes through elite capture.” He is referring to the strategy of using various forms of donations to influence powerful people to bring them closer to China, steadily increasing the country’s influence.
Numerous examples from the past show that Beijing shows great flexibility in choosing its partners. Be it Myanmar, where China immediately sought to close ranks with the military after the coup. Or Afghanistan, where Beijing entered into close dialogue with the Taliban immediately after the withdrawal of the Americans. This hardly surprises political scientist Andreas Fulda: “The Communist Party supported revolutionary movements in the global South during the Cold War. In this respect, the party leadership is well-versed in cooperating with militant groups. The Taliban are just the latest example,” Fulda says.
However, instead of blatantly marketing autocracy, China justifies its political regime as a step on the road to democracy. In doing so, the country occupies the term democracy with its own definitions and characteristics without actually filling it out. In doing so, Beijing is trying to blur the lines between the two forms of government to create the impression among its people that it ultimately makes little difference whether they are governed by a democracy or an authoritarian regime.
In March, the Communist Party invited 200 delegates from all over the world to Beijing to discuss issues such as “democracy and modern governance” and “democracy and global governance in a multipolar world.” After a long search, “China has carved out a democratic development path with Chinese characteristics, which has safeguarded the democratic rights of over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” the Chinese State Council commented.
The forum conveyed the contradictory message that even an authoritarian environment can practice democracy. Beijing is trying to put together many small building blocks to create a new world. The transformation index indicates that a Beijing-style world has already begun to take shape, at least in its basic structure.
Beijing’s Politburo convened the Third Plenum nine months overdue. The long-awaited Third Plenum is a special working conference where the Central Committee convened within the first year after each major party congress. Its task was to adopt programmatic guidelines, primarily for China’s economic development, or, put more simply, to set China’s reform course for five years at a time.
In 1978, two years after Mao’s death, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, gave the starting signal. At the Third Plenum after the 13th Party Congress, Deng departed from Mao’s Cultural Revolution and set the course for a new era characterized by a market economy, which saw China rise to become the world power it is today.
Beijing’s leadership apparently wants or needs to follow this example. 19 months after the 20th Party Congress ended, the Politburo, chaired by Xi Jinping, decided the day before May 1 to hold the Third Plenum in July. The date, set two months in advance, and the “comprehensive and in-depth reforms” listed as the meeting’s “main agenda” are apparently intended to reassure doubters at home and abroad, stabilize stock exchanges and markets and bring foreign investors back into the country.
Only autocrat Xi knows why he kept his party waiting so long for the Plenum. Instead of making explanations, the Politburo swore by his will to reform. They are an “important magical weapon for the party to move with the times” 大踏步赶上时代的重要法宝.
The announcement is repeated six times in succession – without mentioning a single actual measure – that reforms are a “necessary requirement” 必然要求 so that the Party can “further develop, modernize and govern China competently and overcome its national and international contradictions, risks and challenges.” The Politburo then calls for “confidently prioritizing reform even more prominently” 自觉把改革摆在更加突出位.
Reform architect Deng Xiaoping once called on his contemporaries to reform China with courage and undogmatic thinking. Deng was a political hardliner, not a liberal. But based on his experience of the Cultural Revolution, he called ideological and nationalistic phrases “idle talk.”
But Deng was no theorist. His pragmatic approach was based on folk wisdom. They are still at the top of the People’s Republic’s treasure trove of political quotes. “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice” 不论黑猫白猫，只要能抓到老鼠，就是好猫. Deng said this in 1962 when he defended Beijing’s new policy of allowing farmers to privately farm leased land in an attempt to revitalize agriculture after Mao’s devastating forced collectivization.
Deng borrowed the cat and mouse saying from his friend and communist military leader Liu Bocheng 刘伯承, with whom Deng jointly commanded a division of the 8th Marching Army 八路军 as a political commissar during the revolutionary period. Liu used the saying for military tactics. He always spoke of yellow and black cats 黄猫黑猫, as would Deng later.
The wall newspapers, on the other hand, spoke of white and black cats. The slogan became one of the main accusations against Deng in the campaign by his political opponents that flared up at the beginning of 1976. His 1962 mouse quote was posted on the wall newspaper area of Peking University, serving as proof that he wanted to reintroduce capitalism among farmers.
In March 1976, China’s propaganda authorities also organized foreigners living in Beijing to visit it. Among them was the German couple Florian and Ursula Mausbach, who worked for the Beijing Foreign Languages Press. The trained architect told Table.Briefings how he and his wife worked as German lecturers and translators in Beijing in 1976/77, almost 50 years ago.
They came as young idealists who sympathized with Mao’s China. Mausbach disliked the crude polemics against Deng, who was vice premier at the time. When the campaign escalated, his publishing house also set up a wall newspaper corner and encouraged its employees to vilify Deng there. The German joined in, but hung up an allusive pro-Deng poster. He cited Mao’s words that the party had to unite against schemers, otherwise the mice would dance on the tables.
The couple lived through the following weeks like running a gauntlet. But the courageous Germans were suddenly praised after Deng’s radical left-wing opponents were disempowered after Mao’s death in October and Deng was rehabilitated. When Deng learned of this, he sent them two signed photos of himself – an unusual way of thanking foreigners.
Mausbach, who was President of the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning until his retirement in Berlin, also had buildings built in Beijing, including the German Embassy and school. Today, he is retired, working through his experiences in China in the hope of publishing them.
It is not known whether Xi Jinping ever mentioned Deng’s slogan, which is known in internet slang as the “white-black cat theory 白猫黑猫论.” Bloggers joke that Xi only knows one cat color anyway, and that is red.
As China’s economic reforms entered deeper waters, pragmatist Deng began to favor a different piece of folk wisdom. He borrowed it from Chen Yun, the Communist Party economic tsar and one of his close associates, who often quoted it: “Crossing the river by touching the stones.” 摸着石头过河. Chen demanded that delicate economic and financial decisions be made cautiously and prudently.
All his life, Deng refused to speculate about what awaited China on the other side of the river once it had transitioned from a planned to a market economy. But he used the quote to warn against impulsiveness when introducing new reforms. Market conditions should not be introduced overnight as a shock, but should be tested in pilot projects or special economic zones and then gradually popularized.
But after the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989 (which Deng himself had caused), he did not allow Beijing’s party leadership to refuse further reforms. Instead, he demanded even bolder decisions in 1992, such as establishing China’s first stock exchange. He also banned debates on whether stock markets were capitalist or socialist.
Xi Jinping, who became CCP leader at the 18th Party Congress in 2012, has indeed adopted Deng’s quote about crossing the river. However, as soon as he took office, he made it clear that it was not his goal. He explained that China did not need a shore where Western economic practices, democratic models and legal systems awaited. Xi declared that his goal and dream was to make China a global power and to help Chinese-style communism achieve global recognition, in other words, to make China the shore that others want to reach.
He immediately instructed his Politburo on this in December 2012. The method of moving forward stone by stone to cross a river is suitable for reviewing and promoting locally introduced gradual reform and opening-up steps. In this respect, it is a “reform method with Chinese characteristics and is in line with China’s national conditions.” But it must be combined with increased “design creation from the highest level in a dialectical sense,” 摸着石头过河，是富有中国特色、符合中国国情的改革方法。..摸着石头过河和加强顶层设计是辩证统一的. Xi has made the very highest design 顶层设计, the design principle of his supreme leadership that applies to everything.
Between 2010 and 2012, China’s economic reformers noticed that the economic reforms were no longer making any headway. Well-known reform economists such as Wu Jinglian called for the duality of planned and market economy systems to be overcome as quickly as possible. The brilliant sociologist at Qinghua University, Sun Liping 孙立平, discovered a flaw in the Chinese reform fabric.
Under one-party rule, corrupt party bureaucracies with their state monopolies nestled comfortably on the stones in the middle of the river as new economic and political interest groups. They earned money from the permanent state of the status quo thanks to the state-private mixed economy. “We have become addicted to just lying on the stones. We no longer want to cross the river.” Sun called for a constructive debate on the goal of a fair and equal society with institutional safeguards motivated by recognized value systems and capable of bridging equality gaps in distribution or education.
Like other economists, Sun Liping, who spoke of the “transition trap” 转型陷阱 at the time, initially believed he would find allies in the new party leadership under Xi, as they had taken up the fight against rampant corruption.
The old reformers have fallen silent. There are no longer any controversial public debates about which path China’s reforms should take. The Third Plenum now vows to introduce a myriad of reforms. But chief designer Xi has his own agenda. At the People’s Congress, he announced that China’s reforms should focus on developing “new quality productive forces” in high-tech and innovation. Beijing no longer has any use for black and white cats.
The Chinese are traveling again. According to the Alibaba travel platform Fliggy, bookings at the start of the five-day Golden Week on May 1 were back to pre-pandemic levels.
Although Chinese tourists have once again been traveling en masse to popular destinations such as Thailand, a trend has taken root from the pandemic. Domestic travel destinations away from well-known tourist hotspots, such as the Great Wall, remain popular.
The “moonshot” has been a popular term in the start-up scene for years. Coined by John F. Kennedy seven years before the first moon landing in 1969, the word describes seemingly impossible but, if successful, ground-breaking projects that have the potential to change the future.
Although the expected result will not be quite as revolutionary when China sends another probe to the moon today, it will certainly be a “first.” Never before have humans taken rock samples from the dark side of the moon. Joern Petring explains why this is exciting not only for science but also for business.
Another endeavor of the People’s Republic to change the world is far less noticeable but at least just as effective: As a role model for autocracies all over the world, Beijing helps to put opponents of democratic and market-economy reforms at the center of power in more and more developing and transition countries. This is also a form of self-protection, Marcel Grzanna analyzes. An authoritarian state feels more secure when democracies appear weaker.
China plans to embark on another lunar mission this Friday, bringing back rock samples from the far side of the Earth’s satellite for the first time. The planned course of the mission involves launching the Chang’e-6 spacecraft into space with a rocket from the Wenchang space center on the tropical island of Hainan. The mission is scheduled to take 53 days, with the moon having been reached after around three to five days in the past.
After arrival, the probe will enter lunar orbit. The lander will head for the target area in the South Pole-Aitken basin, where it will land and start taking samples. The collected samples will then be transferred to the ascent module, which will return them to the orbiter. Finally, the samples will be loaded into the return capsule, which will separate from the orbiter and return to Earth. After re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the capsule will be recovered.
This is China’s sixth moon mission since 2007, which emphasizes the importance of the Earth’s satellite for Chinese space policy. The missions have become increasingly complex over the years:
Chang’e-6 now fulfills the tasks of Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-4. It will travel to the far side of the moon and bring back samples from there.
This mission is scientifically significant as it provides deeper insights into the moon’s history and, thus, indirectly, the entire solar system. The samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the oldest and largest impact craters on the moon, could provide information about the early conditions in the solar system and help clarify questions about the so-called “late heavy bombardment.”
This event, in which many large meteorites hit the inner solar system, is important for understanding the evolution of the planets and possibly the origin of life. Scientists hope to find clues about the exact time of the impact, which “remains a topic of debate,” Kentaro Terada, a cosmochemist at Osaka University, told Science magazine. Some scientists believe that the Basin on the moon was formed 4.3 billion years ago. Others think the impact occurred hundreds of millions of years later.
As with previous missions, China is once again cooperating with several international partners. Chang’e-6 is carrying payloads from France, Italy, Sweden, and Pakistan, which shows the further internationalization of the Chinese space program. A French instrument on the lander will spend 48 hours studying the origin and dynamics of the lunar exosphere, a thin layer of gas surrounding the surface. One objective is to explain the strong temporal and spatial fluctuations in the density of the exosphere.
However, the latest mission to the moon is also of economic significance. The Chinese explore capabilities that they could later use for space mining. In a recent opinion piece for the China Daily, Chinese space expert Wu Jinyuan emphasized that China is very interested in the helium-3 and titanium deposits believed to be on the moon.
Helium-3 is of particular interest as a potential energy source for nuclear fusion. Titanium, on the other hand, is in high demand in the aerospace industry due to its high strength and low weight. Wu believes the moon contains at least 100 trillion tons of mineable titanium.
The expert also hints that the mission is also about political interests. The ultimate goal of the Chinese lunar program is to bring its own astronauts to the moon by 2030 and establish a lunar outpost.
Similar to the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union displayed their technological and political power aspirations in the space race, today’s race to the moon also serves to signal geopolitical strength and scientific leadership claims.
However, while the missions back then were strongly driven by the desire for prestige, today scientific research and the utilization of lunar resources are more in the foreground. In other words, the aim is no longer just to “fly the flag and return,” but to establish a permanent presence and exploit the moon.
In the systemic competition with the world’s democracies, autocracies are increasingly gaining the upper hand. The Bertelsmann Foundation’s tenth transformation index, which analyzes the situation in the world’s developing and transition countries, diagnoses the continuation of a global trend. “In a growing number of countries, the opponents of democratic and market-economy reforms are at the center of power.” There are now 74 developing and transition countries with a total population of four billion people ruled autocratically, while 63 countries with three billion people are democracies.
The People’s Republic of China plays an exceptional role here. Due to its large population of around 1.4 billion people, it is not only the world’s largest dictatorship. It is also the second-largest economy and an advertising medium for an illiberal government model. Beijing actively propagates its idea of shaping and controlling society abroad and portrays its increase in social prosperity over the past 30 years as proof of the superiority of its system.
“China’s message to the Global South is: We are the first country that has managed to rise despite the will of the West. Those who support us will achieve prosperity on the same path,” says departing MEP Reinhard Buetikofer, who is also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. In recent years, the country has thrown money around to buy loyalty and secure influence. China has also used dependencies to blackmail, says Bütikofer. However, he adds that this did not result in a mechanism where financial aid or dependencies on China resulted in authoritarian structures in other countries.
Just as the Americans have done with democracy in the 21st century, Beijing pursues its own interests by exporting its ideology. However, the reasons are different. A deeply authoritarian state can never feel safe in a democratically dominated world because liberal international norms challenge illiberal practices back home, the Journal of Democracy wrote last year. “Autocracies simply are incapable of practicing liberalism abroad while maintaining authoritarianism at home,” wrote political scientist Minxin Pei from Claremont McKenna College in the US. Accordingly, China is going on the offensive and offering its system as the superior choice.
“The Communist Party presents itself with missionary self-confidence. It presents Xi Jinping’s governance as the most highly developed form of all modern political realities,” says Bütikofer. From an authoritarian perspective, the tempting thing about this is that state responsibility for the rule of law or human rights plays no role in the separation of powers. “This model provides all autocrats – and those who want to become autocrats – with an experimental box that they only need to reach into,” the Green politician says.
The Chinese Communist Party also sees opportunities to spread its model in Africa. At Tanzania’s Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, seconded Chinese experts teach African leaders. The curriculum includes, for example, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s concept of “targeted poverty reduction” and China’s climate policy. There is hardly anything wrong with that. However, media reports claim that the Chinese guests also teach students from six countries about classic forms of authoritarian government. The lecturers reportedly described the advantages of a ruling party that is above the state and the courts.
Gunnar Wiegand, Head of the Asia Department at the European External Action Service (EEAS) until the end of 2023, recognizes this as a “not insignificant” indication of the hypothesis that China intends to export its government model. However, Wiegand says there is no clear answer whether China bears decisive responsibility for the autocratization of the world or whether other, national factors might be much more decisive when democratic states develop authoritarian structures.
Wiegand firmly believes that China would not dare to overtly influence the political development of influential democracies such as Brazil or South Africa. “I don’t see China as a seller of its own system,” he says. However, the former diplomat believes that “where there is great instability, China tries to manipulate domestic political processes through elite capture.” He is referring to the strategy of using various forms of donations to influence powerful people to bring them closer to China, steadily increasing the country’s influence.
Numerous examples from the past show that Beijing shows great flexibility in choosing its partners. Be it Myanmar, where China immediately sought to close ranks with the military after the coup. Or Afghanistan, where Beijing entered into close dialogue with the Taliban immediately after the withdrawal of the Americans. This hardly surprises political scientist Andreas Fulda: “The Communist Party supported revolutionary movements in the global South during the Cold War. In this respect, the party leadership is well-versed in cooperating with militant groups. The Taliban are just the latest example,” Fulda says.
However, instead of blatantly marketing autocracy, China justifies its political regime as a step on the road to democracy. In doing so, the country occupies the term democracy with its own definitions and characteristics without actually filling it out. In doing so, Beijing is trying to blur the lines between the two forms of government to create the impression among its people that it ultimately makes little difference whether they are governed by a democracy or an authoritarian regime.
In March, the Communist Party invited 200 delegates from all over the world to Beijing to discuss issues such as “democracy and modern governance” and “democracy and global governance in a multipolar world.” After a long search, “China has carved out a democratic development path with Chinese characteristics, which has safeguarded the democratic rights of over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” the Chinese State Council commented.
The forum conveyed the contradictory message that even an authoritarian environment can practice democracy. Beijing is trying to put together many small building blocks to create a new world. The transformation index indicates that a Beijing-style world has already begun to take shape, at least in its basic structure.
Beijing’s Politburo convened the Third Plenum nine months overdue. The long-awaited Third Plenum is a special working conference where the Central Committee convened within the first year after each major party congress. Its task was to adopt programmatic guidelines, primarily for China’s economic development, or, put more simply, to set China’s reform course for five years at a time.
In 1978, two years after Mao’s death, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, gave the starting signal. At the Third Plenum after the 13th Party Congress, Deng departed from Mao’s Cultural Revolution and set the course for a new era characterized by a market economy, which saw China rise to become the world power it is today.
Beijing’s leadership apparently wants or needs to follow this example. 19 months after the 20th Party Congress ended, the Politburo, chaired by Xi Jinping, decided the day before May 1 to hold the Third Plenum in July. The date, set two months in advance, and the “comprehensive and in-depth reforms” listed as the meeting’s “main agenda” are apparently intended to reassure doubters at home and abroad, stabilize stock exchanges and markets and bring foreign investors back into the country.
Only autocrat Xi knows why he kept his party waiting so long for the Plenum. Instead of making explanations, the Politburo swore by his will to reform. They are an “important magical weapon for the party to move with the times” 大踏步赶上时代的重要法宝.
The announcement is repeated six times in succession – without mentioning a single actual measure – that reforms are a “necessary requirement” 必然要求 so that the Party can “further develop, modernize and govern China competently and overcome its national and international contradictions, risks and challenges.” The Politburo then calls for “confidently prioritizing reform even more prominently” 自觉把改革摆在更加突出位.
Reform architect Deng Xiaoping once called on his contemporaries to reform China with courage and undogmatic thinking. Deng was a political hardliner, not a liberal. But based on his experience of the Cultural Revolution, he called ideological and nationalistic phrases “idle talk.”
But Deng was no theorist. His pragmatic approach was based on folk wisdom. They are still at the top of the People’s Republic’s treasure trove of political quotes. “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice” 不论黑猫白猫，只要能抓到老鼠，就是好猫. Deng said this in 1962 when he defended Beijing’s new policy of allowing farmers to privately farm leased land in an attempt to revitalize agriculture after Mao’s devastating forced collectivization.
Deng borrowed the cat and mouse saying from his friend and communist military leader Liu Bocheng 刘伯承, with whom Deng jointly commanded a division of the 8th Marching Army 八路军 as a political commissar during the revolutionary period. Liu used the saying for military tactics. He always spoke of yellow and black cats 黄猫黑猫, as would Deng later.
The wall newspapers, on the other hand, spoke of white and black cats. The slogan became one of the main accusations against Deng in the campaign by his political opponents that flared up at the beginning of 1976. His 1962 mouse quote was posted on the wall newspaper area of Peking University, serving as proof that he wanted to reintroduce capitalism among farmers.
In March 1976, China’s propaganda authorities also organized foreigners living in Beijing to visit it. Among them was the German couple Florian and Ursula Mausbach, who worked for the Beijing Foreign Languages Press. The trained architect told Table.Briefings how he and his wife worked as German lecturers and translators in Beijing in 1976/77, almost 50 years ago.
They came as young idealists who sympathized with Mao’s China. Mausbach disliked the crude polemics against Deng, who was vice premier at the time. When the campaign escalated, his publishing house also set up a wall newspaper corner and encouraged its employees to vilify Deng there. The German joined in, but hung up an allusive pro-Deng poster. He cited Mao’s words that the party had to unite against schemers, otherwise the mice would dance on the tables.
The couple lived through the following weeks like running a gauntlet. But the courageous Germans were suddenly praised after Deng’s radical left-wing opponents were disempowered after Mao’s death in October and Deng was rehabilitated. When Deng learned of this, he sent them two signed photos of himself – an unusual way of thanking foreigners.
Mausbach, who was President of the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning until his retirement in Berlin, also had buildings built in Beijing, including the German Embassy and school. Today, he is retired, working through his experiences in China in the hope of publishing them.
It is not known whether Xi Jinping ever mentioned Deng’s slogan, which is known in internet slang as the “white-black cat theory 白猫黑猫论.” Bloggers joke that Xi only knows one cat color anyway, and that is red.
As China’s economic reforms entered deeper waters, pragmatist Deng began to favor a different piece of folk wisdom. He borrowed it from Chen Yun, the Communist Party economic tsar and one of his close associates, who often quoted it: “Crossing the river by touching the stones.” 摸着石头过河. Chen demanded that delicate economic and financial decisions be made cautiously and prudently.
All his life, Deng refused to speculate about what awaited China on the other side of the river once it had transitioned from a planned to a market economy. But he used the quote to warn against impulsiveness when introducing new reforms. Market conditions should not be introduced overnight as a shock, but should be tested in pilot projects or special economic zones and then gradually popularized.
But after the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989 (which Deng himself had caused), he did not allow Beijing’s party leadership to refuse further reforms. Instead, he demanded even bolder decisions in 1992, such as establishing China’s first stock exchange. He also banned debates on whether stock markets were capitalist or socialist.
Xi Jinping, who became CCP leader at the 18th Party Congress in 2012, has indeed adopted Deng’s quote about crossing the river. However, as soon as he took office, he made it clear that it was not his goal. He explained that China did not need a shore where Western economic practices, democratic models and legal systems awaited. Xi declared that his goal and dream was to make China a global power and to help Chinese-style communism achieve global recognition, in other words, to make China the shore that others want to reach.
He immediately instructed his Politburo on this in December 2012. The method of moving forward stone by stone to cross a river is suitable for reviewing and promoting locally introduced gradual reform and opening-up steps. In this respect, it is a “reform method with Chinese characteristics and is in line with China’s national conditions.” But it must be combined with increased “design creation from the highest level in a dialectical sense,” 摸着石头过河，是富有中国特色、符合中国国情的改革方法。..摸着石头过河和加强顶层设计是辩证统一的. Xi has made the very highest design 顶层设计, the design principle of his supreme leadership that applies to everything.
Between 2010 and 2012, China’s economic reformers noticed that the economic reforms were no longer making any headway. Well-known reform economists such as Wu Jinglian called for the duality of planned and market economy systems to be overcome as quickly as possible. The brilliant sociologist at Qinghua University, Sun Liping 孙立平, discovered a flaw in the Chinese reform fabric.
Under one-party rule, corrupt party bureaucracies with their state monopolies nestled comfortably on the stones in the middle of the river as new economic and political interest groups. They earned money from the permanent state of the status quo thanks to the state-private mixed economy. “We have become addicted to just lying on the stones. We no longer want to cross the river.” Sun called for a constructive debate on the goal of a fair and equal society with institutional safeguards motivated by recognized value systems and capable of bridging equality gaps in distribution or education.
Like other economists, Sun Liping, who spoke of the “transition trap” 转型陷阱 at the time, initially believed he would find allies in the new party leadership under Xi, as they had taken up the fight against rampant corruption.
The old reformers have fallen silent. There are no longer any controversial public debates about which path China’s reforms should take. The Third Plenum now vows to introduce a myriad of reforms. But chief designer Xi has his own agenda. At the People’s Congress, he announced that China’s reforms should focus on developing “new quality productive forces” in high-tech and innovation. Beijing no longer has any use for black and white cats.
The Chinese are traveling again. According to the Alibaba travel platform Fliggy, bookings at the start of the five-day Golden Week on May 1 were back to pre-pandemic levels.
Although Chinese tourists have once again been traveling en masse to popular destinations such as Thailand, a trend has taken root from the pandemic. Domestic travel destinations away from well-known tourist hotspots, such as the Great Wall, remain popular.
