The Chinese Communist Party held its 20th Party Congress in October, with President Xi Jinping firmly in control, a subject that occupied a Oct. 25 panel discussion.
During the panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, seven analysts on China unpacked the week-long congress, which is held twice a decade.
Xi, 69, has been China’s leader for a decade. He also serves as general secretary of the party and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Xi had the party constitution amended in 2018 to remove all limits on leadership, assuring himself of a third term.
Xi delivered an opening address, pledging to continue to strengthen China’s military, increasing national security and stabilizing the situation in Hong Kong. He said all efforts will be made to resolve tensions with Taiwan, ideally through peaceful means, but did not rule out the use of force.
Xi praised the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, promised to continue to protect the Chinese people and to maintain stability throughout the country. He also said efforts would be made to increase the birth rate.
CSIS panelists included David Finkelstein, vice president of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) and director of CNA’s China & Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Division; Lucy Hornby, visiting scholar at Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and former deputy bureau chief in Beijing at Financial Times; and Daniel Rosen, founding partner at Rhodium Group and senior associate (non-resident) with the trustee chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS.
Jude Blanchette, Freeman chair in China Studies at CSIS; Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS; and Bonny Lin, senior fellow for Asian security and director of the China Power Project at CSIS, served as moderators.
Blanchette and Hornby opened the discussion with an overview of the congress.
"I know we all like to say China is complicated and you can't accentualize it down to one man,” Blanchette said. “But it is very hard after coming through this congress and not feel that you can't avoid the overwhelming dominant shadow of Xi Jinping everywhere. Of course, he's not alone in running the system.
“But in terms of both symbolism, but also for the trajectory of China moving forward, Xi Jinping has shown not only the extraordinary power he has, and I think we already had clear signs of that before the congress,” he added. “But most important for me, what I saw at the congress was no desire at all to show even a modicum of compromise to any of the other stakeholders and the real wanton disregard for any of the norms.”
Blanchette said no one on the standing committee “is a credible successor,” and he also noted there is no female representation on the Politburo, which has been reduced to an even number.
“Why does that matter? Because having an odd number gave at least the appearance that there might be deadlock,” he said. “And so having an odd number was the way to overcome that. They don't even need to do that anymore."
Blanchette said Xi is not Mao “but we are definitely in new territory and unpredictable territory in terms of the stability and predictability of China’s political system.”
He said the report that was released after the congress was filled with ideas and concepts, but had few real details.
He then introduced “Comrade” Hornby, who chuckled at that title.
“As a journalist who has sat through many, many of these meetings at the Great Hall of the People, I think it's really important that the party chooses to present itself on a stage,” she said. “The kind of language of theater and the language of symbolism is really important to this party.
"What was interesting to me this weekend, as we saw Hu Jintao, the sort of Shakespearean scene of a confused old man being led off the stage, was how many of my friends who are not China people at all got really into the kind of Kremlinology," she said. "Was he sick? Had he been confused or senile? Was he being unceremoniously and publicly humiliated?
“Suddenly everybody got a taste for what the people on this call do day by day, sort of the kind of compellingness of it," she added. "But I'd like to riff on that. I think that the message that it sends and having watched the footage, I don't think that they had preplanned to evict Hu Jintao. I watched the footage again and again. Looks like he is senile. He’s trying to do something with the papers. Lijun Shu is trying to placate him the way he would placate an older relative who isn’t totally understanding what's going on. And then Xi Jinping basically says enough and calls the staff over and says, ‘Take him away.’ I don't think it was a pre-planned event."
She said it was a reminder of Xi’s power and the need for others to acknowledge that.
“A good way to jumpstart your career is to take a big, splashy movement that seems to be in line with Xi Jinping,” Hornby said. “And I think that you’re going to see, again, more and more of this kind of behavior of going out on a limb in the direction that you are pretty sure that the leader wants you to go. If you go too far, you’ll get your wrist slapped. But I think we're definitely going to see it going forward, and particularly on very delicate arenas like the South China Sea or Taiwan.”
Hornby said she thinks Xi is probably sincere when he analyzes Chinese politics and looks at the instability of his own life.
“He sees that that instability cropped up whenever there was more than one hub of power,” she said. “So I think that he may well be very sincere when he says, ‘I don't want to name a successor. I don't want a second hub of power.’ That is what leads to instability.
“But people who study politics know that the really big factor that leads to instability is when you have a succession crisis, when you have more than one potential successor competing to get the crown while an aging leader is still alive and aging out,” Hornby added.
She said these are “real dangers that are built into the system” that will accelerate as Xi gets older. One or more succession crises are likely in the next five to 10 years.
Lin said China is facing a declining security environment.
“There are major issues in terms of navigating the U.S.-China relationship. And of course, Taiwan is one of the issues that is gaining more increased attention both from China, but also the international community,” she said. “Five years ago the Chinese work report said that China was still in an important period of strategic opportunity for development. I thought a key paragraph there where the 20th Party Congress report says that our country had entered a period of development in which strategic opportunity, risks and challenges are concurrent, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising.”
Lin said it touches on the range of activities China needs to do to prepare for these variety security risks, including countering sanctions, stockpiling food, energy resources, ensuring supply chain security, but also raising overall public awareness of these threats.
She said it was noteworthy that the report no longer mentions cooperation, which was a term previously used to characterize U.S.-China relations.
“Now cooperation has wrapped and is being replaced by a less ambitious term of positive interaction,” Lin said. “This shows that Beijing is not as optimistic about the prospects of working cooperatively with the United States on a range of issues.”
Finkelstein said since the “ink is still drying on the party reports,” he urged caution on drawing too many conclusions.
“But overall, my impression is that this new central military commission seems to have a really good mix of officers with operational backgrounds, political backgrounds and technology backgrounds,” he said. “And as senior flag officers, all of them have had to guide their respective organizations through remarkable changes that were put into motion in 2015."
Rosen said he is struck by the fact that Xi has so much power but still can't implement a property tax. He said China faces several economic challenges.
“In the short term, the most immediate concern everyone has is basic household consumption," he said. "Whether people can leave home to go behave like normal people and do their patriotic duty in driving consumption and consuming. And that, of course, all comes back to zero COVID.”
He said many people were hoping for a signal to indicate some kind of an end point on the zero COVID-19 policy.
“Absolutely none of that,” Rosen said. “In fact, we see additional lockdowns taking place the day after the Congress in Gwangju, for example, all of which signals a continued dark winter for household consumption activity in terms of business investment outlook."
Rosen said there is no clarity, and that is harmful to the Chinese economy.
Kennedy said after the 18th Party Congress, some China scholars anticipated a “whole wave of reform.” That did not happen, and there is no sign of it occurring soon, either, he said.
“I think it's interesting how people there saw things," Kennedy said. "There's an underlying current of conversation among folks about how current politics rhymed with the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “I know that we are fully aware that China is not replicating anything like the Cultural Revolution, but there's a meme among people that this feels like harkening back to an older era. And so you hear that among people. I don't need to ask, just people bring that up.”
Kennedy said it’s apparent Xi remains the dominant figure. His name is often the first word in sentences.
There are explanations for that, he said, as the Chinese people are witnessing the birth of a new kind of social contract that promises growth, stability and an improved quality of life in exchange for their vote and voice in the political system.
The key issue is moving out of the zero-COVID policy, he said. That is something people are talking about and watching closely.
Kennedy said Xi is meeting with other world leaders, including German Chancellor Otto Scholz, who visited China in early November, and President Joe Biden, whom he met with Monday.
