China After the Party Congress: Welcome to Xi’s People’s Republic of Control
Beijing has just played host to the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The gathering’s significance is considerable, witnessing not only the recoronation of Xi, but also a generational turnover of CCP leadership and a topline articulation of the party’s accomplishments to date and its priorities for the next five years.To get more news about
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Of course, the first and most high-profile outcome was the re-election of Xi as party general-secretary —a move that was widely anticipated following the 2018 amending of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) constitution to permit Xi to stand for an unprecedented third five-year term as head of state. Xi, like his two immediate predecessors, aspires to occupy concurrently the senior most leadership positions in all the three major constituent bureaucratic components of the party-military-state: the CCP, the PRC and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Having now secured the top party post, Xi is well on track to be re-elected PRC president at the 14th National People’s Congress, scheduled to convene in March 2023. As for the PLA, last week he was reappointed chair of the CCP Central Military Commission (CMC) and in March he will be formally reappointed to lead the PRC’s CMC. (Membership of the two CMCs is identical although the fiction of two separate commissions is maintained to preserve the party-state distinction.)
The Party Congress also heralded a major transition among senior CCP leaders. The outcome was a wave of retirements and corresponding promotions of senior party and military elites. The turnover on the Politburo Standing Committee was 57 percent (4 of 7), turnover on the Politburo was 54 percent (13 of 24), while turnover on the Central Committee was 64 percent (132 of 205). Meanwhile, on the Party CMC turnover was 43 percent (3 of 7).
Two key takeaways from this significant changeover of personnel are: first, those retiring include individuals believed to have strong reformist or market-oriented tendencies; second, the new slate of leaders are Xi loyalists who are likely to be staunch supporters of his agenda of centralized control and hardline policies.
In a series of speeches and documents at the Party Congress, Xi and his colleagues claimed credit for an array of policy successes over the past 10 years and outlined a set of ambitious goals for the next five years. The initiatives launched over the past decade along with the rhetoric coming out of the congress underscore that Xi’s paramount priority has been and continues to be strengthening and centralizing the party’s control over the government, the military, the economy and society. While the world tends to perceive the PRC under Xi as confident, assertive, strong and bent on expanding China’s power and the CCP’s influence beyond the PRC’s borders and around the globe, party leaders see themselves as vulnerable and exposed.
Although Xi is the PRC’s most powerful and ambitious leader since Mao Zedong with regional and global designs, he remains insecure and inward focused. In the 20th Party Congress work report, Xi warned the 2,000 plus delegates: “[W]e must … be more mindful of potential dangers [and] be prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios … .” While Xi and his fellow Politburo colleagues are concerned about external threats, they are especially worried about internal threats — challenges emanating from societal problems, political dissent and unrest among China’s vast populace of 1.4 billion citizens.
Indeed, the ultimate irony of the People’s Republic is that China’s communist rulers are more fearful of their own people and domestic instability than they are about threats from outside their borders. Consequently, the CCP is focused on strengthening control over all sectors of society. This requires the maintenance of a sizeable and muscular coercive apparatus and a massive and pervasive propaganda machine. The overarching goal is to assure continued CCP rule through careful control and constant surveilling of the Chinese people as well as routine control and regular shaping of China’s national narrative giving credit for all successes to the party.
China After the Party Congress: Welcome to Xi’s People’s Republic of Control
