Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday laid out a confident vision for a more prosperous nation and its role in the world, stressing the importance of wiping out corruption and curbing industrial overcapacity, income inequality and pollution.
Opening the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Congress, Xi pledged to build a “modern socialist country” for a “new era” that will be proudly Chinese and steadfastly ruled by the party, but open to the world.
Although his wide-ranging address made clear there were no plans for political reform, Xi said China’s development had entered a “new era,” using the phrase 36 times in a speech that ran for nearly three-and-a-half hours.
Photo: Reuters
“With decades of hard work, socialism with Chinese characteristics has crossed the threshold into a new era,” Xi said.
The twice-a-decade event, a week-long, mostly closed-door conclave, is to culminate in the selection of a new Politburo Standing Committee to rule China’s 1.4 billion people for the next five years, with Xi expected to consolidate his control and potentially retain power beyond 2022, when the next congress takes place.
The 64-year-old Xi, widely regarded as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong (毛澤東), spoke to more than 2,000 delegates in Beijing’s cavernous, red-carpeted Great Hall of the People, including 91-year-old former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民).
Photo: EPA-EFE
Security was tight on a rainy, smoggy day in the capital.
As expected, the speech was heavy on aspiration and short on specific plans.
On the economy, Xi said China would relax market access for foreign investment, expand access to its services sector and deepen market-oriented reform of its exchange rate and financial system, while at the same time strengthening state firms.
During Xi’s first term, China disappointed many investors who had expected it to usher in more market-oriented reforms, especially in the debt-laden state sector.
“If Xi gets the political mandate that he is expected to out of the congress, then my hope is that the state sector reforms actually get done,” Damien Ma, fellow and associate director at US think tank the Paulson Institute, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum. “If not, then I would also revise my assessment of the state of reforms in China. There have been talks in Beijing that the state sector will be a focus after the 19th party congress, so we need to see.”
In what was probably an indirect reference to US President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, Xi promised that China would be fully engaged with the world and reiterated pledges to tackle climate change.
Trump earlier this year opted to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement.
“No country can alone address the many challenges facing mankind; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation,” Xi told the delegates, among them Buddhist monks, Olympic medalists, farmers and at least one astronaut.
Xi set bold long-term goals for China’s development, envisioning it as a “basically” modernized socialist nation by 2035, and a modern socialist “strong power” with leading influence on the world stage by 2050, but he signaled there would be no significant political reforms, calling China’s system the broadest, most genuine and most effective way to safeguard the interests of the people.
Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society, locking up rights lawyers and dissidents, and tightening Internet controls as he has sought to revitalize the Chinese Communist Party and its place in contemporary China.
“We should not just mechanically copy the political systems of other countries,” he said. “We must unwaveringly uphold and improve party leadership, and make the party still stronger.”
Xi praised the party’s successes, particularly his high-profile anti-graft campaign, in which more than 1 million officials have been punished and dozens of former senior officials jailed, saying it would never end as corruption is the “gravest threat” the party faces.
Xi has consolidated his power swiftly since assuming the party leadership in 2012, locking up rivals for corruption, restructuring the military and asserting China’s rising might on the world stage.
Focus at the congress will be on how Xi plans to use his expanded authority and moves to enable him to stay on in a leadership capacity after his second term ends in 2022.
That could include resurrecting the position of party chairman, a title that would put him on a par with Mao.
“In all aspects he is on the right track to be our next Chairman Mao,” said Su Shengcheng (蘇生成), a delegate from the northwestern province of Qinghai. “He will lead the party and central committee to continue its way to success.”
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