Communist Party acclaims Xi Jinping as China’s saviour

The Chinese Communist Party has praised Xi Jinping’s role in saving the country from corruption.

Hostesses serve tea before the opening session of the Chinese Communist Party's congress.

Chinese President Xi Jinping saved the party, the People’s Liberation Army, and the entire country from plots to undermine all three, senior officials have claimed at the Communist Party’s 19th congress.

He did this, they claimed, through his muscular anti-­corruption campaign that led to the swift arrest and punishment of strong but dangerous individuals, families and factions.

Liu Shuyi, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which oversees financial markets, claimed a group of Mr Xi’s rivals “had high positions and great power in the party, but they were hugely corrupt, and plotted to usurp the party’s leadership and seize state power”.

He listed them as Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Ling Jihua, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong and Sun Zhengcai. The first two were celebrated party leaders, now jailed for life — with Bo viewed as Mr Xi’s main rival five years ago.

Ling, also jailed for life, was chief of the party’s general office. The next two were People’s Liberation Army generals. Xu died two years ago after being charged, Guo was jailed for life. Sun, a former Chongqing party boss once seen as a successor to Mr Xi, is awaiting trial.

Mr Liu said that Mr Xi had “with the historical responsibility of a proletarian revolutionary, cleared up huge risks for the party and the country”.

Wang Ning, the head of the People’s Armed Police, said Mr Xi had “rescued the party and the army at a critical moment”.

Delegates have been preoccupied with praising the party general secretary, Mr Xi, since he opened the congress on Wednesday with a 3½-hour speech on “socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era”.

Beijing party chief Cai Qi said this “thought leadership” marked China’s third great leap forward in applying Marxism-Leninism, following the breakthroughs of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

Shanghai mayor Ying Yong, pointing to Mr Xi’s leadership as the “fundamental factor” in China’s success, recalled lessons learned while working under Mr Xi in Zhejiang province.

An increasing weight of informed opinion is pointing to the replacement of Mr Xi’s closest lieutenant, Wang Qishan — who has at 69 reached the age when officials are expected to retire — as leader of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s most powerful agency, by the party’s personnel head Zhao Lehi or Mr Xi’s chief of staff, Li Zhanshu. Both are contenders for the Politburo Standing Committee, with Mr Li also tipped to head the National People’s Congress or parliament.

The CCDI is already taking on a more ambitious role — responsibility for political discipline and rooting out corruption among all officials, not just party members, and overseeing the governance of all institutions from universities to corporations — as it re-establishes itself as a nationwide supervisory commission.

A much-studied footnote to Mr Xi’s speech said this new body would interrogate suspects through a more formal detention structure than the present secret, often brutal system.

However, veteran Chinese journalist Qian Gang, reviewing Mr Xi’s speech, noted he had removed the formula upheld at least in principle in such speeches by his predecessors, that the party must “act within the scope of the law”. Instead, Mr Qian observed, a Mao Zedong era phrase was reinstituted, that “party, government, army, society and education — east and west, south and north — the party leads all”.

The party also announced Mr Xi would chair his seventh “leading small group” — the cluster of semi-formal think tanks, commissions or secretariats that have taken over from the Politburo Standing Committee the key task of framing new national policies.

This new group will be focused on “governance by law”; its fundamental goal will be to centralise the legal system, and make it more responsive to the Core, as Mr Xi is sometimes described.