Over the past 10 years, China’s leader Xi Jinping has consolidated power to a degree not seen since Mao Zedong. His rule has brought major changes to China – from his sweeping anti-corruption and poverty alleviation campaigns to a huge military buildup and more assertive foreign policy.
In coming days, Mr. Xi is widely expected to win a rare third term at the pinnacle of the Communist Party, as it holds a series of twice-a-decade political meetings that will formally install its top leadership, including the 25-member Politburo and elite, seven- to nine-member Politburo Standing Committee.
Where is Mr. Xi expected to lead the country next? In a lengthy report to the congress on Sunday, he outlined what the party-run media described as a “blueprint” for the coming five years. The main takeaway, experts believe, is that Mr. Xi intends to stay the course – maintaining or intensifying his ambitious drive for China’s “great rejuvenation,” despite a slowing economy and the controversy some of his policies have generated at home and abroad.
“What is telling [about Mr. Xi’s report] is that there was no reformulation of any of these major policies, in spite of some of the challenges the party has faced recently,” says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Despite speculation among overseas experts that China’s power has peaked, she says, “there is no indication the Chinese think that way. They think they have this trajectory – whether it be toward reunification [with Taiwan] or having a world class military – and they are on track.”
Corruption crackdown
Inside China, one of Mr. Xi’s signature policies has been his no-holds-barred sacking of Communist Party, government, and military officials – including senior party officials and People’s Liberation Army generals – for corruption.
In the three decades before Mr. Xi took power in 2012, China’s market-oriented economic reforms unfolded without a corresponding increase in political accountability or transparency, giving rise to an explosion of corruption. To Mr. Xi, dishonest and greedy officials posed a major obstacle to his bid to strengthen party rule, which he considers a prerequisite for China’s progress. He has taken a top-down approach to demanding greater “discipline” among cadres, investigating millions in the past decade.
Overall, the policy has been popular domestically, although Mr. Xi has also used the anti-graft push to eliminate political rivals, promote allies, and consolidate power in his own hands. And he is far from finished.
Speaking Sunday on a stage draped with bright red curtains framing a huge gold hammer and sickle in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Mr. Xi told nearly 2,300 party delegates that corruption remains “a cancer to the vitality and ability of the Party.” Indeed, some experts say Mr. Xi has created so many political enemies that a continuous purge of the ruling elite is likely.
Income inequality and economic growth
China has made big strides in alleviating dire poverty under Mr. Xi, raising the incomes of millions of people above the country’s official poverty line. Mr. Xi, who declared extreme poverty eliminated in China in 2020, on Sunday hailed this as a “historic feat.” The policy has won Mr. Xi high popularity among Chinese in poor, rural areas.
Nevertheless, income inequality has surged during China’s economic boom, and as of 2020, 600 million Chinese still had monthly incomes of about 1,000 yuan ($140). Mr. Xi is targeting this gap between China’s haves and have-nots with a policy of “common prosperity,” a major focus for his next five years.
“We will promote equality of opportunity, increase the incomes of low-income earners, and expand the size of the middle-income group,” Mr. Xi said.
Chinese and foreign entrepreneurs worry, however, that Mr. Xi’s efforts to tackle inequality have involved sudden, somewhat clumsy, regulatory measures such as his crackdown last year on China’s most successful high-tech companies, which lost hundreds of billions in value virtually overnight.
Mr. Xi has also favored China’s state-run economy over the private sector and ordered a policy of frequent COVID-19 lockdowns – both serious drags on economic growth.
Military spending and national security
China’s military budget expanded to $252 billion in 2020, second only to that of the United States, as the country pursues a significant modernization and upgrading of its armed forces.
On Sunday, Mr. Xi pledged to accelerate his goal of building China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a “world-class” force by 2027, the 100th anniversary of the PLA.
China “will intensify troop training and enhance combat preparedness across the board” while also building “a strong system of strategic deterrent forces,” he said, in what the state-run media says is a reference to strategic nuclear weapons. “We will work faster to modernize military theory, personnel, and weapons,” he said.
The PLA’s mission, Mr. Xi said, is to safeguard China’s “core interests,” including its broad territorial claims over the South China Sea and Taiwan.
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Xi has stepped up pressure to unify mainland China with the self-governing island of Taiwan. On Sunday, he pledged in forceful tones that “complete reunification of our country must be realized, and it can, without doubt, be realized!” – triggering enthusiastic applause from the party delegates.
While seeking peaceful reunification, Beijing “will never promise to renounce the use of force,” he said, a warning that was directed at “interference by outside forces and the few separatists seeking ‘Taiwan independence.’”
But as China has stepped up pressure on Taiwan, with escalated air force incursions and major military exercises around the island, opinion polls in Taiwan show public sentiment has cooled on the idea of unification. This is in part because of the imposition of a draconian national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, which was viewed as undermining its autonomy promised under the “one country, two systems” formula, which Beijing also advocates for Taiwan.
Foreign Affairs
China’s foreign policy under Mr. Xi has had mixed results.
On one hand, China continues to advance its influence and standing in the Global South. This is in part due to Mr. Xi’s massive “belt and road” investment push, which since 2014 has helped to fill a large infrastructure gap in developing nations. Mr. Xi has also closed ranks with other authoritarian states, in particular forging a close, “no-limits” alliance with Russia.
Yet Mr. Xi’s more aggressive regional and foreign policy – and his unleashing of acrimonious “wolf warrior” diplomacy – has contributed to a deterioration of relations between Beijing and developed countries in Asia and the West, above all the U.S.
In his report, Mr. Xi railed against foreign interference, bullying, and hegemony, suggesting he may double down on his combative diplomatic approach with some countries, experts say.
“Xi has been very clear since 2013 that his tenure as leader would be about regaining China’s status on the international stage and resolving other core interests, mainly territorial issues, even at a cost,” says Dr. Mastro from Stanford. “We will probably continue to see, in their minds progress, and in our minds disruptions and harassment, in all these areas,” she says. “That is going to be pretty much guaranteed for the next five years.”
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