Xi Jinping's Dilemma
The fundamental dilemma Xi Jinping faces is that the Party-state system is itself the institutional root of corruption, and he himself happens to be the single greatest beneficiary of that very system. Anti-corruption efforts could, in principle, rest on a strong popular mandate -- public sentiment is there to be tapped -- but Xi Jinping, fearing anything that might endanger one-party rule, dared not draw on that moral resource from the people. Instead, he threw activists who called for the public disclosure of officials' assets into prison. As a result, Xi and Wang Qishan have found themselves fighting a lonely battle against the entire officialdom -- holding the moral high ground, perhaps, but lacking any real institutional backing, isolated and outnumbered. This wavering, two-faced approach has both wounded public sentiment and offended the entire bureaucracy, losing on both fronts and pleasing no one, trapped in the dilemma that “failing to fight corruption will doom the Party, yet fighting corruption will also doom the Party.”
Xi Jinping Does Not Want to Be the Emperor Who Loses the Party
Originally, Xi Jinping intended to hand down a heavy sentence on Zhou Yongkang, using his head to intimidate the officialdom and demonstrate his iron-fisted resolve to fight corruption -- but this plan met its Waterloo. For Zhou Yongkang himself, there was in truth little practical difference between a suspended death sentence and life imprisonment, yet the Party's top leadership simply would not go along with what Xi wanted -- revealing just how isolated Xi and Wang truly were, forcing them into compromise and effectively ending the anti-corruption campaign at the top. Even before this, the anti-corruption drive had already met resistance and pushback from various factions within the Party, signs that the overall tide was turning -- first came the high-profile counterattack, during the “two sessions,” by Zeng Qinghong's secretary against the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection's insinuating articles about the “Prince of Qing”; then Guo Wengui exposed Hu Shuli's private affairs from overseas, insinuating against Wang Qishan, turning the tables using the very same tactics -- becoming a key turning point after which the anti-corruption campaign at the top came to an abrupt halt.
Besides resistance from within the Party, another major reason the anti-corruption campaign's overall momentum reversed was the comprehensive economic downturn, with the real economy in a state of depression. Three long-accumulated problems -- the property bubble, the local-government debt bubble, and the artificial exchange rate that was falling domestically while rising abroad -- were all approaching a critical point of simultaneous eruption, and the economy became the issue overriding all others. Making matters worse, Xi and Wang's anti-corruption campaign had offended the entire bureaucracy, and collective laziness, foot-dragging, and inaction had become the officialdom's “new normal.” Under these circumstances, Xi and Wang had no choice but to moderate the intensity of the anti-corruption drive, combining carrot and stick to persuade officials to keep the bigger picture in mind and share the Party's burdens.
However, Xi and Wang's iron-fisted anti-corruption campaign broke the unwritten rules that had governed CCP officialdom for years, reviving the Mao-era practice of ruthless, life-or-death struggle in which one official's downfall dragged an entire family into ruin -- chilling the hearts of mid- and low-level officials and driving them away in spirit, so that they went through the motions on the surface while doing nothing real underneath. The Belt and Road Initiative, all thunder and little rain, forever failing to be implemented, is a case in point -- leaving Li Keqiang anxious with no way to fix it. And at the top of the Party, Xi and Wang's anti-corruption drive offended nearly everyone, especially since it used the pretext of fighting corruption to concentrate power and pursue personal agendas -- bundling the Youth League faction and the Jiang faction together as obstacles to be struck down together, in order to help Xi's own faction rise to power at the Party's 19th Congress, fabricating the case of the “new Gang of Four” out of Zhou, Bo, Xu, and Ling. This approach drew a united front of resistance from all the other factions at the top, leaving Xi in a rather isolated position.
Can Fighting Corruption Save the Party?
Although Xi Jinping holds supreme power, and although the anti-corruption campaign occupies the moral high ground, there is hardly a single person in CCP officialdom whose hands are entirely clean -- the anti-corruption drive threatens everyone's piece of the pie, making it an enemy of the entire system. Without starting from political-system reform, fighting corruption merely undermines the Party's own foundations and damages its image. To borrow a recent phrase from China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News: “Fighting corruption is a double-edged sword -- it strikes at Party members and cadres who violate discipline and the law, but the pain is felt by the organization, and the damage falls on the Party's image.” Because everyone is riding in the same boat that is the Communist Party, no one will agree to capsize it. This is precisely why Xi and Wang's anti-corruption campaign, for all its apparent thunder on the surface, has in reality been a lone hand clapping -- hemmed in and pushed back by numerous forces, unable to sustain itself.