20th national congress assessing xi’s power

20th national congress assessing xi’s power

The question next week is really about the form and extent of his dominance over the Chinese Communist Party.

For a congregation that is long on ceremony, short on debate, and one that rubber stamps decisions made by a small group of leaders, the quinquennial congress of the Chinese Communist Party next week is drawing much global attention. The reasons are easy to see. One, the more opaque a system, the greater the mystique around it. The closed-door nature of China’s elite politics means that the rest of the world tends to rely on “experts” to read the tea leaves to figure out who is up and who is down in the CCP leadership. But you don’t need to be steeped in Chinese studies to get a sense of what is going on in Beijing. What you see is what you get in China. The broad political and policy trends in Beijing under Xi Jinping have been clear and there will be few surprises at the 20th Congress of the CCP. Two, the growing international interest in the CCP stems from the fact that China, a rich country with a powerful army, has begun to reshape the regional and global order. India, which has been at the receiving end of Beijing’s military stick in the last few years and increasingly reliant on the import of Chinese goods, would want to see if the CCP Congress points to any variations in the trajectory.

Delhi should not hold its breath. The main outcome of the Congress is foretold — the extension of Xi Jinping’s tenure and the legitimisation of his status as the exalted leader of China in the manner of the party-state’s founder, Mao Zedong. Xi has overturned the established convention of a two-term limit that was designed to prevent the concentration of power and the personality cult as well as ensure a steady turnover in leadership. Instead, Xi has crowned himself as the “chairman of everything”. The question next week is really about the form and extent of his dominance over the party. Will he stuff the top decision-making body — the seven-member Politburo Standing committee — with his loyalists or accommodate other factions? Beyond the personnel changes, reporters and experts will pore over the turgid communist prose of the “work report” that Xi will present to the Congress. Here, again, don’t expect any major changes in the CCP’s orientation under Xi over the last decade. He moved left on the economic front by turning against private capital and markets, disappointing the experts who bet that China will become more capitalist while dressed in communist clothes.

On the external front, Xi has unleashed muscular policies on territorial disputes with Asian neighbours. He has also sought to undermine America’s Asian alliances in order to establish Chinese primacy in the region, and make a bid to change the global order in Beijing’s favour. With the US now pushing back, Xi is expected to double down on the confrontation with the US and the West and deepen the partnership with Russia. One of the many unintended consequences of Xi’s policies has been the shattering of persistent illusions in Delhi about befriending China in the name of Asian solidarity and global multipolarity. Events next week in Beijing will only make India’s challenge that much harder in developing purposeful policies to cope with China’s economic and military power.