China congress: Xi Jinping recruits the entire power elite

Xi Jinping has swung the support of every key family and faction behind his drive for centralised control.

Xi Jinping, centre, stands with Hu Jintao, left, as Jiang Zemin is assisted into his seat at the opening ceremony of the 19th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing yesterday. Picture: AP

President Xi Jinping has swung the support of every key family and faction in the country behind his drive for centralised control — a crucial message he delivered yesterday on the opening day of the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th national congress.

Mr Xi’s two predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, Deng ­Pufang, the son of Deng Xiaoping, former premiers Li Peng, Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao, and 100-year-old party stalwart Song Ping joined him on a stage suffused in red and dominated by a gold hammer and sickle.

Not all party veterans approve whole heartedly of the way Mr Xi has remade China, including through his relentless purge of people deemed politically disloyal and corrupt. But that the entire power elite was there behind him as he ­delivered a 3½-hour speech in ­Beijing’s Great Hall of the People testified — albeit Mr Hu and Mr Jiang did glance at their watches — to the extent of his authority.

The most lively post-speech speculation in Beijing hinged on whether Mr Xi’s “Thought” may not be elevated in the party constitution during the congress to join “Mao Zedong Thought” and “Deng Xiaoping Theory” as a ­testament to the degree of his ­personal dominance.

For in his 65-page speech, Mr Xi focused for several pages on this “Thought on socialism with

The Great Hall of the People yesterday. Picture: AFP

Chinese characteristics for a new era”. If this phrase is to be the “thought” entrenched in the constitution at this congress, without Mr Xi’s name being invoked as part of it, then this would indicate an unexpected degree of resistance to the march of his personality to the level of Mao and Deng. But that will become clear by the end of the week-long meeting.

Mr Xi, who is CCP general ­secretary, applied significant focus to the People’s Liberation Army — the party’s army — and to the environment.

He spoke of realising the ­Chinese dream of building a powerful military to obey the party’s command, and which can fight and win. “A military is built to fight,” he said. Improved combat capability would enable the military to “manage crises and deter and win wars”.

He proclaimed the goal of “building a beautiful China”.

“Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us,” he warned.

Mr Xi spoke substantially about ideology, including “the importance of Marxism as a guiding theory”. His aim was to “build the party into a vibrant Marxist governing party,” a task for which theory was fundamental.

“The noble ideal of communism and the shared idea of socialism with Chinese characteristics are our source of strength and ­political soul,” he said.

Delegates in traditional costumes queue in the rain. Picture: AFP

He talked of the development of “consultative democracy” through which China’s core institutions of party and state “adopt a co-ordinated approach to ­promoting consultations” — a concept replacing tentative steps, now largely abandoned, to ­develop representative democracy from the grassroots up.

He stressed the party’s policy that all religions in China “must be Chinese in orientation” and “adapt themselves to socialist ­society”.

He urged “the cultivation of fine tastes, style, and a sense of responsibility and the rejection of vulgarity and kitsch in literary and artistic creation”, with the party strengthening the standards of artists and writers, and supporting those with “moral integrity”.

“We have made sweeping ­efforts to strengthen party leadership and party building,” he said.

This was essential because what people most resented was corruption, “the greatest threat our party faces”.

No place had been out of bounds, he said, no ground left ­unturned and no tolerance shown in the fight against corruption, which remains “grave and ­complex”.

He had ensured “the central government exercises its overall jurisdiction over Hong Kong and Macau”, where “we will strengthen the ranks of patriots”.

Jiang Zemin checks the time during Xi Jinping’s speech. Picture: AP

He had “resolutely opposed and deterred separatist elements” advocating Taiwanese independence. He repeated he would be prepared to start talking with ­Taiwan again if President Tsai Ing-wen conceded the “1992 consensus” of one China in two forms.

Internationally, he said “China champions the development of a community with a shared future for mankind,” including through “the evolution of the global governance system”.

“China’s cultural soft power and the international influence of Chinese culture have increased significantly,” he said.

China would build its capacities for economic co-operation and competition, championing “open, inclusive and balanced” economic globalisation.

The Chinese nation “with an entirely new posture, now stands tall and firm in the East”.

Economically, he pledged to move Chinese industry up the ­global value chain, fostering a culture of innovation, improving the regulatory framework while also seeing interest and exchange rates “become more market based”.

He stressed housing was for ­living in, not speculation.

The demise of the Soviet Union, whose communist party helped China’s party develop, meant references to the Russian Revolution a century ago this month, were limited to a passing acknowledgment.

“A 100 years ago, the salvos of the October Revolution” brought Marxism-Leninism to China, in whose “scientific truth … Chinese progressives saw a solution to China’s problems,” Mr Xi said.