Meia Nouwens, Haoyu Tong
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, cast aside succession norms and secured a third five-year term in October. But his rule is becoming increasingly personalistic, and with slowing growth and increasing challenges internationally, governing effectively until 2027 will probably be more difficult than in the decade since he came to power.
In November 2002, at the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), then-general secretary Jiang Zemin yielded to the heir apparent, Hu Jintao. This power transition had been arranged roughly a decade earlier by Deng Xiaoping, who had been paramount leader since the late 1970s, and it was the first that might be called orderly after more than a half-century of CCP rule (even if Jiang retained a degree of political control and influence for many years afterwards). This prompted the scholar Andrew Nathan to write a seminal 2003 article on the institutionalisation of Chinese politics in which he noted that by observing norms in leadership succession, following meritocracy in promotions and dividing party from state institutions, the CCP had strengthened its rule. In other words, it had shown an ability – rare in an authoritarian context – to place limits on its top leaders and embrace a collective decision-making process.
At the 20th Party Congress, however, institutionalisation was largely set aside. The congress, which concluded on 22 October 2022, marked the start of Xi Jinping’s unprecedented third term as China’s top leader, with him simultaneously holding the three key posts of general secretary, chairman of the Central Military Commission and president. No viable successor to Xi was promoted to the new seven-person Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, thus completing his decade-long consolidation of power.
A norm-busting party congressAt the 20th Party Congress, Xi broke with two norms that had defined succession politics for over 30 years: 1) that general secretaries retire after two five-year terms (as Jiang and Hu did); and 2) strict adherence to age limits for members of the party elite, including those on the Standing Committee. Since 2002, senior CCP figures had not been eligible for promotion or re-appointment after the age of 68, a norm followed partly to ensure that leaders do not remain in power for life. But Xi, embarking on his third term at the age of 69, is poised to become the oldest general secretary in the post-Mao era.
It is also unclear that experience was a primary consideration in the appointment of key party personnel. Li Qiang, formerly party chief in Shanghai, was promoted to the second-ranking position on the Standing Committee, which means he will probably become the next premier – the head of the government – after the March 2023 National People’s Congress. He would be the first person in more than 30 years to do so without previously serving as a vice premier. Li was a close aide to Xi from 2002–07, when the latter governed the affluent Zhejiang province, and quickly gained power after Xi became general secretary in 2012. His elevation at the congress took observers by surprise both because he skipped over the current slate of vice premiers and because this occurred only a few months after he oversaw the botched COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai.
The end of fragmentationThe 20th Party Congress was notable for the dissolution of competing political factions in elite politics. The four new appointees to the Standing Committee – Li Qiang, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi – are all long-time allies of Xi and none has an independent political power base. The same is true of Zhao Leji and Wang Huning, the two continuing members of the Standing Committee appointed in 2017. The Standing Committee is therefore now a ‘coalition of the weak’ (a term used in the title of a May 2022 book on Chinese politics), led by Xi.
Xi’s domination was made possible by the early retirements from the Standing Committee of Premier Li Keqiang and Wang Yang – both are 67 and could have retained their positions. Such retirements have been very rare since the early 1990s. Perhaps even more remarkable is the demotion of 59-year-old Vice Premier Hu Chunhua (unrelated to Hu Jintao) from the 24-member Politburo to the 205-member Central Committee. Because of his age and experience he had been seen as a candidate to succeed Xi or become premier, but his unusual downwards move means he is now unlikely to rise to the Standing Committee. All three individuals – Li, Wang and Hu – were seen as moderate reformers out of step with Xi’s elevation of ideology in recent years. They were also influential in the Communist Youth League political faction, which Hu Jintao once led.
No policy surprisesThe personnel changes made at the congress were more important than the policies announced. Xi’s work report highlighted policy successes from his first two terms, as expected, and described what the party will do to achieve its goal of China becoming ‘great socialist country in all respects’ by 2035. This includes supporting economic growth; becoming a leader in innovation, and in science and technology; improving China’s global influence; and strengthening national security and defence.
The party’s objectives are similar to those announced in 2017, but Xi has started his third term with considerably more challenges. The economy is facing cyclical and structural headwinds. China will probably not meet its 5.5% annual growth target. The government delayed the release of third-quarter economic data until after the congress ended, probably because the figures would have highlighted economic weakness at a politically sensitive moment. However, the inclusion in the work report of economic-policy concepts such as ‘dual circulation’, ‘common prosperity’ and ‘high-quality development’ signalled that the pace of growth is no longer the most important measure of economic success.
While the word ‘economy’ (经济) appeared roughly as many times in this work report as in the report from the 19th Party Congress, ‘security’ (安全) was mentioned almost three times more often. The 2022 report described technological self-reliance as an important element of security, noting that China’s spending on research and development in the last ten years has risen from 1 trillion to 2.8tr yuan (US$140 billion to US$391bn at current exchange rates) and that China has the largest cohort of R&D personnel in the world. It also noted that China’s progress in biotechnology, energy technology, space exploration, quantum information and supercomputers demonstrates that it ‘has joined the ranks of the world’s innovators’.
And yet the report also stressed that ‘there are many bottlenecks hindering high-quality development, and China’s capacity for scientific and technological innovation is not yet strong enough’. These bottlenecks are becoming more pronounced – and the party’s ambition to overcome them more urgent – as a result of a new round of US export controls on hardware, software and personnel related to supercomputing and semiconductors that Washington announced a week before the start of the congress.
A more challenging international environmentOn Taiwan, the work report largely echoed the language used in a white paper published in August 2022 entitled ‘The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era’. The report stated that China’s refusal to renounce the use of force ‘is directed solely at interference from outside forces and the few separatists seeking “Taiwan independence”’. This language was more specific than in the white paper and could be an attempt to communicate to the broad Taiwanese public that the party does not blame them for this year’s rising tensions. A military conflict across the Taiwan Strait remains unlikely in the coming years: the People’s Liberation Army is in the midst of a rapid modernisation programme; Beijing has good reason to fear the economic consequences of an attempt at reunification by force, and very good reasons to fear the political consequences of a failed attempt; and meanwhile it appears that Taiwan and the US are satisfied with the status quo, in which Taiwan has de facto independence. This could change as a result of presidential elections in Taiwan and the United States in 2024. In the meantime, Beijing will probably step up its influence-and-disinformation campaign targeting the Taiwanese population.
Beijing’s interest in the Belt and Road Initiative appears to be waning – along with its fiscal capacity to support the programme – and it was mentioned only briefly in the work report in the context of promoting ‘high-quality development’ and two other programmes, the Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative. ‘High-quality’ in this context is ill-defined, but the fact it was mentioned alongside the BRI suggests that China’s approach to the developing world is changing, with Beijing becoming a more cautious creditor amid debt-repayment crises in some of the countries to which it has made loans.
Many sentences in the work report were directed at the US, though the country was not mentioned by name. It painted a picture of an external environment in which ‘opportunity co-exists with risks and challenges’, and stated that China needs to ‘be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms’. The US export controls announced in October served as evidence for these points, and play into the party’s narrative that Xi is the right leader to guide China through turbulent times. But with Xi surrounded by political allies and many stabilising institutional elements of CCP rule having been set aside, governing effectively and correcting course when headed in the wrong direction may prove more difficult during the general secretary’s third term than during his first two.
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