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The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress

The Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress

On Sunday, seven nearly identically dressed men in navy suits, white shirts, and conservative ties (all but one of them red) marched in order of political importance onto the stage of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The display ended months of suspense and rumors about the Chinese leadership, and revealed the new power structure at the top of the Chinese Communist Party. To no one’s surprise, Xi Jinping retained his position for a third term as party general secretary and head of the party’s Central Military Commission; barring a highly improbable catastrophe, he will be named president when the National People’s Congress—the highest state, as opposed to party, organ—meets in March. This third term, made possible by an earlier change in the constitution and unequaled since the days of People’s Republic of China founding father Mao Zedong, essentially allows Xi to remain head of party and state for as long as he wishes.To get more news about 20th national congress, you can visit shine news official website.

Also as rumored, Premier Li Keqiang—though at sixty-seven young enough to remain on the seven-member Standing Committee of the top party organ, the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)—was not retained. An informal tradition known as “seven up, eight down” is that if PBSC members are sixty-eight or older at the time of a party congress, they must retire; if 67 or younger, they may enter the committee or, if already here, can stay. Li’s position as premier will likely go to the number two entrant onto the stage, Li Qiang. Li, sixty-three, was party head in Shanghai, where his strict enforcement COVID-19 lockdown procedures impressed Xi but made him very unpopular with citizens.

Third in rank order was sixty-five year old Zhao Liji who, as head of the party’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission vigorously pursued Xi’s signature campaign against corruption. He is likely to be named head of the National People’s Congress. Fourth in line was Wang Huning, sixty-seven and the party’s leading political theorist, who is believed to be named head of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body that has been imperfectly compared to Britain’s House of Lords. Fifth-ranking Cai Xi, sixty-six, previously served as party chief in Beijing and will likely head the party’s extensive propaganda and censorship apparatus.

Number six, Ding Xuexing, is at age sixty the youngest member of the PBSC. Ding, who served as Xi’s chief of staff and head of the Party Central Committee’s General Office, is expected to be named first vice-premier of the National People’s Congress. Last at number seven was Li Xi, sixty-five, formerly party secretary of Guangdong province. He is Zhao Leji’s putative successor as head of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission.

Taken together, the most important criterion for elevation to the PBSC appears to be loyalty to Xi. All six men have some past ties to Xi and none with the Communist Youth League faction that is associated with Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. Indeed in a moment of high drama, two muscular men escorted a bewildered-looking Hu—who had been seated next to Xi—out of the meeting. Xi looked on impassively, with state news agency Xinhua’s later explanation that Hu had taken ill being met with considerable skepticism. To dampen rumors, censors quickly removed Hu’s name from social media. Li Keqiang, dropped from the PBSC, had been Hu’s protégé. In yet another signal of the end of the Communist Youth League’s influence, incumbent vice-premier Hu Chunhua, fifty-nine and heretofore reputedly in line for appointment to the PBSC, not only failed to be appointed to the PBSC but was even dropped from the twenty-four-person Politburo. (Though its size has not been codified, the Politburo has traditionally had twenty-five members. There has been no official explanation for the reduced number this year.) He had been an aide to Li Keqiang and, like Li, had Communist Youth League connections

There were no indications of a successor to Xi, who could decide to run for a fourth term five years hence, but Ding Xuexing, at age sixty and known for his unswerving loyalty to Xi, would still be eligible to serve in ten years for at least one five-year term. Moreover, Xi, at sixty-nine, has already waived the seven up eight down age rule for himself and Ding could as well.

In what must have been difficult for former president Hu Jintao to listen to, Xi’s speech to the more than 2,000 delegates contrasted the baleful situation of corruption, bureaucratism, hedonism, and extravagance when he took over with China’s achievements since he assumed office ten years ago. Xi outlined a bright future for China, at times seeming to promise all things to all people: China would open up further to the outside world while becoming more self-reliant; the rights of domestic entrepreneurs would be protected even as the role of state-owned enterprises would be expanded; and economic development would forge ahead at the same time as “common prosperity,” meaning redistribution of wealth, from its more affluent to its poorer citizens would take place.

Still, concerns were evident. A major worry is that recent declines in economic growth, which preceded the outbreak of COVID-19 but were exacerbated by it, may result in China falling into the middle-income trap and unable to reach the level of prosperity envisioned in Xi’s plans. The target of doubling the size of the nation’s economy by 2035 would require an average of 5 percent annual growth over the next fifteen years that many economists, both inside and outside China, regard as unrealistic. The last-minute announcement that trade data would not be released on October 18 as scheduled invited speculation that the numbers would not be good and that the statistics were being manipulated. When issued the day after the congress closed, whether massaged or not, the data showed a creditable 3.9 percent increase that nonetheless left growth for the first nine months of the year at 3.0 percent vis-a-via the planned target of 5.5 percent. While giving no specifics, Xi advocated self-reform as the answer to the question of how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall: the party would boost its ability to purify, improve, renew, and excel. Self-reform and purification may not be enough to reverse the trend, however, particularly given Xi’s plans to expand the role of state-owned enterprises, which tend to be economically inefficient, rather than taking more pragmatic steps that would facilitate a strong recovery.


by freeamfva | 2022-11-04 10:27 | Comments(0)

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