Party time for Xi Jinping
The key 19th congress in Beijing is likely to further raise the Chinese leader’s stature.
The biggest, most splendid show by far in Beijing today is in a Soviet-style exhibition centre where Communist Party members in their thousands are queuing to bask in the glory of Five Years of Inspiration and Advancement.
These are the five years since the previous national party congress was held. Far more significantly, they are also the first five years of the rule of Xi Jinping.
If China is witnessing, in the days leading up to the 19th congress, the final stages of a Game of Thrones whose subplots many find intriguing, there is no doubt about who will sit on the great throne at the centre of it all.
For the two questions that count in China today are: Who is Xi and what is he going to do?
And despite the increasing assertions of party-state power in the past five years, the answers to those questions remain hanging. Xi certainly likes to be in control — of the economy, public debate and various other spheres. But it remains unclear to what ultimate end.
Visitors to the grand show — admission free, but ID or passport numbers are recorded — in the Beijing Exhibition Centre, which was opened by Xi last week, gain some clues.
Vast red banners there proclaim that the party is “tightly united around Xi Jinping as the Core” — a crucial title recently conferred on him. The President is described as leading, in the words of one of his favourite slogans, “the great rejuvenation” of China.
Throughout the exhibition there are hundreds of massive photos and videos that show him leading the way in every sphere of life — from the military, with the commander-in-chief wearing combat green, to the arts, where his erudition about the ancient classics is cited.
Even artefacts such as a pair of army binoculars once used by Xi are on display. In the many photos of him with ordinary people, he appears more natural and relaxed than with his peers — which was also a facet of Mao Zedong.
The other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the peak body of the party and thus country, have mere walk-on parts. It is most likely that at the congress starting on October 18, the PSC — whose size Xi reduced from nine — will be diminished further to five, reducing the likelihood of anyone emerging over the next five years with the experience or authority to replace him.
Xi has anyway largely supplanted the PSC’s role by expanding rapidly that of “leading small groups” on key issues from the internet and cybersecurity to economic reform, six of which he personally chairs.
He thus seems set to continue at the top following the 20th congress in 2022, which would take him through to 2027, by which time he would be seen as an elder statesman, as he pursues his drive for greater global stature for China and himself, in line with the country’s economic clout.
This would involve breaking a post-Mao party convention, but not its constitution, by remaining in charge for more than two terms.
Xi’s dominance is such that this is unlikely to stand in his way. But he is likely to accede to another convention, that once a leader who is not in the top party or government job reaches 68, it’s time to step aside. This would mean that his closest lieutenant, Wang Qishan, who has led the party’s corruption purge (and political power play), will retire — to thunderous applause, naturally.
The widespread assumption that Xi needs Wang is likely only to firm up Xi’s resolve to have Wang step down. Deputies — with the great exception of Mao’s premier Zhou Enlai — have rarely lasted the course in China.
Li Keqiang is set to maintain his position as premier. He has loyally implemented Xi’s programs to date — except for a brief period of apparent disagreement over economic reform, when Xi concluded the argument by having People’s Daily publish a paper he had penned or at least authorised.
The congress will elevate an element of Xi’s sloganising to the stature of Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, an honour denied to Deng’s successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
Much of the sound money is on Xi garnering a personal mention in the party constitution attributing to him by name an element of his “thoughts” — perhaps taken from his Governance of China collection of 79 speeches in 516 pages, translated into 22 languages, with 6.4 million copies distributed around the world.
All party members are required to study it. People’s Daily describes it as “the most influential book written by a Chinese leader” in the past 40 years — since Mao’s death.
Xi has ordered an entirely unexpected crackdown on independent thought and its expression, in all media including social media and at all educational institutions.
University lecture rooms usually contain CCTV cameras so that professors can be assessed on their political correctness. Facial scanners are being installed on the doors of campus accommodation.
WeChat group hosts are being held legally responsible for the orthodoxy of the views expressed by those posting on their chats. A new law requires the national anthem to be sung at all formal occasions while banning its use for “inappropriate” purposes, including at funerals, commercially or as part of background music.
The essence is control, preferably through party rather than government mechanisms, with Xi evincing considerably more faith in the former. More than ever since Mao, the Chinese state is now contained within the party, rather than the reverse.
Party branches are becoming mandatory in all organisations operating in China, including non-governmental organisations, religious groups and businesses — with lines of accountability thus running ultimately to Xi, the party’s general secretary.
A large photo in the great exhibition shows a big group of model workers at Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou attending a party branch meeting.
The show appears to have been set up at great expense: it includes robots, interactive displays, models galore, vast video screens and dioramas; it features many photos of new members taking their oath to the party, fists raised, and of veterans renewing their loyalty. The show highlights Xi’s battles with the bureaucracy and heavy industry to reduce pollution, which remains a public concern. It cites him presiding more than 38 meetings of leading small groups to champion unspecified “reforms”.
In highlighting Xi’s global role championing “a shared destiny for humankind”, it features videos of him receiving foreign leaders who walk up to him, and the photos are dominated by those with US leaders including Donald Trump, and with “special friends” led by Russia’s Vladimir Putin; Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is also featured.
The Belt and Road Initiative receives lots of attention, not least Xi’s speech launching it at Kazakhstan University four years ago.
Women in uniforms resembling those of flight attendants host guided tours of the exhibition for special party groups, underlining important breakthroughs of the past five years. One told her group that “international conferences hosted by China” such as the BRI launch “have fully illustrated the greatness of China, and its ability to influence the world”.
The exhibition shows Xi sitting next to Barack Obama at a US-organised conference to reduce nuclear proliferation, and it says “provided guidance on this issue”.
A party member at the exhibition, who says he is a businessman but would not give his name, tells The Australian he is impressed with “the new thinking that China could not have contributed 10 years ago”.
He says contact with the outside world at all levels remained hugely beneficial: “Like a general manager of a company, a national leader who is open-minded, including to new technologies, will provide good guidance. China is not conservative, as it was before.”
He adds: “The outside world needs to understand China better, to reduce misunderstandings. It does not intend to solve problems by force. And Xi is a leader of outstanding personal charisma, that’s why he is the Core of the party, the country and the people.”
After years of experimentation, he says, “the international community is now studying the China model”.
Another party member touring the show says: “What is impressing me the most is to see that China is growing stronger and stronger.”
The show features a Chinese Foreign Ministry hotline that people can call at any time from anywhere in the world to seek help while overseas. The Australian calls to ask whether travellers might be extricated from a terrorist situation, only to be told in a good-humoured way that the local police should be contacted first in such circumstances, and that Beijing can’t help anyone who is not a Chinese national.
The section of the exhibition drawing the biggest crowd, even more than the huge area featuring Xi’s guidance of the People’s Liberation Army, is that devoted to the anti-corruption campaign. The feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has pursued 1.41 million cases in the past five years, it says, with 54,000 cadres punished through the courts.
Pictures under a general heading “Punish the few, educate the mass” shows the latest target, politburo member Sun Zhengcai, alongside the biggest “tigers” bagged by the campaign, Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang. Former Sinpec head Cai Xiyou is seen weeping.
Xi is seen urging: “Maintain high pressure on corruption.” A slogan says what is “bad luck for the corrupt, is good luck for the Chinese people”. A caption stresses that by snaring powerful targets, “a major hidden political risk was eliminated” — although it doesn’t say for whom.
Cadres are shown taking an exam on party rules so that they do not lapse.
The exhibition claims that party spending on travel costs and entertainment had been cut from $1.4 billion in 2012 to $920 million last year, including 770,000 party cars being taken off the roads. It shows Shanghai CCDI staff with tape measures checking the size of cadres’ offices.
It says Xi had personally ordered the closure of party-owned and run clubhouses, restaurants, golf courses and training centres.
A glass case displays no fewer than 16 books authored by Xi, and nearby are commendatory quotes about the kind of leadership the party needs — citing Engels, Lenin, Mao and Deng, and stressing the need for the centralisation of authority.
Mao asks: “Can a walnut have several cores? No, it only has one.”
Alongside, Chinese “netizens” lavish praise on “Xi Dada” — “Uncle Xi … the good chairman of the people. He thinks of the people all the time … he carries the expectations of the laobaixing (the ordinary folk) … We feel assured with such a person holding the helm.”
The message is coming into focus. The congress will ensure that any who have failed to concentrate get the point, big-time.
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By the numbers
• The 19th five-yearly national congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing from October 18.
• Participating in the week-long meeting will be 2273 delegates representing the party’s 89 million members. Twenty-seven others, including 14 from the troubled party branch in Chongqing, were chosen by regional branches but have been barred for their inadequate “political standing” — as they have come under investigation by the party’s feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the single most powerful agency in China.
• Official criteria for being chosen as delegates include political soundness, discipline, moral integrity and loyalty to the party.
• About two-thirds of delegates are party officials, still dominating proceedings, while 34 per cent — 3.2 percentage points up on the 18th congress — are “model party members who work on the frontlines”, of whom 12.4 per cent, are “professional technical personnel”.
• Only 24.1 per cent of all delegates are women. The politburo of 25 includes just one woman and the peak body, the Politburo Standing Committee, has never included a woman in the party’s 96-year history.
• The average age of delegates is 52.
• Xi Jinping, the party’s general secretary — China’s most powerful public office — was elected as a delegate by the provincial congress in Guizhou, in China’s south, “by a unanimous vote, with long and warm applause”, Xinhua reported.
• All party members, including congress delegates, are participating in extensive study programs in preparation for the event, even through the “golden week” holiday that began on National Day, October 1. Xi told party leaders at such a study session in Beijing last Friday that “we must combine the basic Marxist theories with China’s specific reality in a better way”.
Rowan Callick
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