Wind and rain hit China dream

It may be, as Xi Jinping averred in his new year address, that China’s people “marched forward in high spirits” during 2023. “This year,” he added, “we have marched forward with great confidence.” Reality, however, suggests otherwise, and as the world anticipates Beijing’s likely reaction to whatever the outcome is of Taiwan’s crucial presidential election on January 13 there seems little doubt Mr Xi, after 10 years in power, is confronting a period of unprecedented uncertainty.

As veteran correspondent Rowan Callick wrote on Monday: “When Xi Jinping eased down a bottle of Yanjing Beer as the new year ticked over, he’ll have been relieved that 2023 was over … Over the past year his Chinese Communist Party’s core achievement – presiding over a path towards broadbased domestic prosperity – found its wheels falling off, illustrated by youth unemployment hitting such levels – well above 20 per cent – that data was suddenly made a state secret.” Population, as Callick pointed out, has shrunk for the first time in six decades. India took over mid-year as the world’s most populous nation. “Many in China,” Callick wrote, “are now anticipating they will get old before they get rich” – the reverse of a key CCP aim.

No less significantly, there is what Callick termed “disarray” in Mr Xi’s hand-picked leadership team. The Chinese leader’s foreign and defence ministers both have been removed without explanation. There was further evidence of that disarray on Sunday when it was disclosed that not only had Mr Xi got rid of defence minister General Li Shangfu amid reports of a searing corruption scandal but another nine generals of the People’s Liberation Army who were serving as military lawmakers also had been dumped from the National People’s Congress. Three of those purged were, significantly, from the PLA’s vital rocket force, which has charge of all China’s tactical and nuclear weapons. It is anybody’s guess what this shuffling of the chairs on the CCP deck means. But none of it suggests anything other than that the essential unity in the upper echelons of the PLA that Mr Xi has been able to count on for the past decade is no longer what it used to be, with corruption and the subsequent purges at the core of the instability. How that will feed into Mr Xi’s determination, which he reiterated in his address, to fulfil the “historical inevitability” of the “reunification” of Taiwan and China remains to be seen.

Mr Xi’s more pressing challenge is to lead China out of the deep economic doldrums it is in, with a spate of weak new readings highlighting the many headwinds facing the world’s second-largest economy, and the Chinese leader himself warning that “on the path ahead, winds and rains are (likely to be) the norm”. In an extremely rare admission, Mr Xi even conceded “some companies are facing business pressures; some people are running into difficulties finding jobs and in their daily living”.

Such frankness from within its own CCP leadership is rare in the totalitarian state that China is. It should serve as a wake-up call to countries such as Australia as, cap in hand, they seek to rebuild their relationship with Beijing. The Albanese government has good reason to pursue improved relations with Beijing. But the pressures revealed within the Chinese regime, and the profound economic challenges confronting the country, suggest the need for extreme caution in doing so. Mr Xi’s claims of “high spirits” and “great confidence” do not necessarily bode well for Australia and the rest of the free world.