(Bloomberg) — The Chinese Communist Party’s twice-a-decade leadership congress will begin on Oct. 16, state media said, bringing President Xi Jinping a step closer to a precedent-defying third term in power.
Most Read from Bloomberg
The proposed 20th Party Congress’s start date was announced Tuesday after a meeting of the top-decision making Politburo, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The seventh plenum will be held from Oct. 9 to prepare for the congress, the statement added.
The party will conduct an in-depth analysis of the international and domestic situation, review the past five years and push forward with common prosperity, according to report, referencing Xi’s drive to narrow the nation’s wealth gap. That initiative’s sweeping reforms in the education and technology sectors has alarmed some investors.
Xi is expected to extend his decade in power at the event, after lifting presidential term limits in 2018 and despite passing the party’s unwritten retirement age of 68. If that rule holds for other cadres, two members of the supreme Standing Committee and nine on the Politburo will vacate their seats at the closed-door huddle in Beijing.
Read: Why China’s 2022 Party Congress Will Be a Landmark: QuickTake
The week-long pageant will also be scrutinized for signs Xi, 69, plans to ease the Covid Zero policy that’s kept deaths low but triggered anger and economic hardship. China’s third quarter earnings will be released on Oct. 18, in the middle of the congress. While the forecast is for a strong rebound from the near contraction in the April to June period, the country is currently battling its broadest outbreak of the pandemic, which will weigh on consumption and spending.
The October date sets Xi up for a strong return to the international stage at a series of key summits, after a near three-year spell of not leaving China due to Covid rules. Indonesian President Joko Widodo said earlier this month that Xi would attend the Group of 20 leaders summit in November in Bali, along with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
A major Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok is also scheduled for Nov. 18-19, which Xi is likely to attend. Hong Kong has a series of landmark international events scheduled for November — any easing in Covid policy at the congress could make it easier for the city to scrap pandemic restrictions that have isolated the hub.
READ: Xi Starts March to Third Term in China Facing Problems at Home and Abroad
The gathering of some 2,300 party delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing will give Xi the chance to reshuffle scores of top government positions. Two other members of the Politburo’s seven-strong elite inner cabinet — National People’s Congress Chairman Li Zhanshu and Vice Premier Han Zheng — would be expected to retire under the succession norms Xi has brought into question.
Premier Li Keqiang, 67, announced in March he’ll leave his post after this year, raising doubts his future as No. 2 on the Standing Committee, despite being young enough to retain the position.
International affairs will also weigh on the agenda. While stability had been the party’s guiding principle going into this year, a Washington-led diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics in February, calls for Beijing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August gave Xi a turbulent path to the event.
The congress itself is heavily stage managed with little room for surprise, despite being billed as a decision-making body. It’s only when Xi strides along a red carpet at the summit’s close with the new leadership line-up following him in order of importance that China’s 1.4 billion people will learn who will be running their economy, military and foreign policy.
(Updates with details from Xinhua statement in third paragraph.)
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
