Colour revolutions: Chinese President Xi's worst fear and his tightening of security landscape

Aug 07, 2022

Beijing [China], August 8 : Chinese President Xi Jinping is fearful that his country is going to face a "colour revolution", a phrase that encompasses a set of political changes across the postcommunist world which include popular uprising and public anger over corruption and inequality, both of which China has in abundance, media reports said.
According to reports, Xi sees the threat that foreign forces can exploit the situation, and therefore in order to prepare itself to combat the situation, he has enlisted the whole nation to defend against the "colour revolutions."
To address his apprehensions, Xi is building a security fortress for China as he worried about the Chinese Communist Party's grip. Xi thinks that the western powers are backing the color revolution in China. He is also tightening his grip on Taiwan, COVID situation and all the other aspects.
While speaking with then US President Barack Obama and then Vice President Joe Biden, Xi said that China was increasingly becoming a target of "color revolutions", popular unrest in the name of democracy, and blamed on the West, as per New York Times.
Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East had reinforced his concerns. Arab uprisings were a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world.
It instilled deep fears in China that the country was vulnerable to public anger.
Daniel R. Russel, a former senior American diplomat who accompanied Biden to China in 2011 revealed, "Xi couldn't have been more forthright that China is beset by malevolent forces and internally prey to centrifugal forces."
"He would talk all the time about color revolutions. That's clearly a sort of front-of-mind issue for him," said Ryan Hass, the National Security Council director for China when Xi later visited the White House.
In a bid to defuse his worst fears of public uprising and other "color revolutions" Xi has expanded the very meaning of "national security" in China, bolstering the party's control on all fronts against any perceived threats abroad that could pounce on weakness at home, as per the media portal.
He has strengthened, centralized, and emboldened an already pervasive security apparatus, turning it into a hulking fortress that protects him and positions him as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
Xi has built what he calls a "comprehensive" system designed for a world he sees as determined to thwart China -- politically, economically, socially, militarily and technologically.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to support Taiwan against Beijing is likely to reconfirm his worldview that the United States and its allies are ready to exploit Xi's any potential weakness -- and that China must always show steely vigilance.
Since her visit, he has mobilized the military off the coast of Taiwan, sending the warning that China wants to curtail America's backing for what Beijing considers a part of China.