Cracks have appeared in Fortress Xi Jinping. The gathering crisis of the communist party's attempt to remake itself from within, excluding popular or democratic participation from without, has finally come to a head.
As with any crisis, however, there is both threat and opportunity: indeed, it is precisely the seriousness of the threat that reveals the depth of the opportunity.
The threat is that Xi Jinping has become so fed up with the party's entrenched special interests that he's about to reinstate a totalitarian personal dictatorship to wipe it out. This would be equivalent to applying massive doses of radiation to destroy a cancerous tumor, only to kill even more healthy tissue in the process.
While Xi's cult of personality clearly originated with his genuine conviction that China needs strong leadership, it has grown to the point of endangering the party's long-term effectiveness in governing both itself and its subjects. That would appear to be the crux of an internal memorandum of the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) urging legitimate self-criticism as the key to governance.
For Xi's party supporters, the grave danger is that even if he strong-arms the bureaucracy into pushing through the right policies today, he will have acquired so much additional power in the process that no one will be able to stop him from carrying out the wrong policies tomorrow.
Thus, the opportunity: if Xi takes this criticism from within his camp, rather than the true opposition from without, as just what's needed to save his administration for not only the remainder of its current term, but also the next starting at the 19th party congress next fall, he can effectively end China's political crisis practically before it even begins - provided he truly doesn't wish to make himself a little Mao.
Publicly, don't expect him to back down: he must continue to project a confident and powerful image, if much more measured in the blatant self-aggrandizement - at least for the time being.
Privately, however, he has no choice but to win back the shaken trust of those party moderates who were always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt - until he really went a little too far.
A new equilibrium in Chinese politics could already be emerging. At the National People's Congress (NPC) earlier this month, for what appeared to be the very first time, Premier Li Keqiang snatched the limelight from the dominant Xi, who had long overshadowed and even apparently marginalized him in managing (at times micromanaging) the economy.
As well, a rare public admission of misstatement by Heilongjiang governor Lu Hao concerning the plight of coal miners in his province could indicate a new openness about the magnitude of the problems of downsizing state-owned zombie firms.
Chinese and foreign observers alike need more such indicators of normalcy and transparency in actual state functions in the coming months of painful economic restructuring, in order to retain confidence that Xi's administration isn't just losing it.
Being an astute and seasoned politician, Xi should realize by now that he must cede more power to Li and other ministers who he simply hasn't trusted to date to carry out the difficult work of restructuring. The more he keeps out of their way, the less insecure his own position becomes, too - not least because Li and the reformers still need his political cover.
It's too early to be so sanguine, but perhaps Cultural Revolution lite won't be China's fate after all.
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