The New Normal

Abstract

Since 2012, politics in the People’s Republic of China has been remade. Both institutional and rhetorical changes characterize this neopolitical “new normal,” which coincides with Xi Jinping’s rise to the top of the party-state hierarchy. But these changes extend well beyond Xi himself. Political authority has been centralized and folded back into the Chinese Communist Party, while complaints, self-criticisms, and confessions have begun to air publicly. Repression and humiliation have been used against critics as wide-ranging as Hong Kong booksellers, feminist activists, and rights lawyers, among others. Most ominously, the government has embarked on a massive detention and reeducation scheme in Xinjiang, with the number of those interned estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands or even surpassing a million. This chapter investigates China’s neopolitical turn—its limits, sources, and implications.