As holidaymakers crowded beaches at the Chinese seaside resort of Beidaihe, a heightened security presence was the only sign that China’s most senior leaders had gathered for their annual talks.
A summer trip to Beidaihe has been part of the Chinese political calendar since the era of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), and this year’s takes place ahead of a handover of power that will set the country’s course for the next decade.
The Beidaihe talks are never officially acknowledged, but state media recently reported that several top leaders were visiting the town, 285km from Beijing.
Analysts say the secretive, month-long discussions are especially important this summer as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chiefs prepare to pass the baton to a new generation of leaders in the autumn.
They are also dealing with the fall-out from one of the worst scandals to hit the party in decades — the downfall of Bo Xilai (薄熙來), an ambitious but divisive politician whose wife confessed in court to murdering a British businessman.
Beidaihe residents said security was unusually tight, with roads closed and police performing spot-checks on people entering the town.
However, for Chinese tourists flocking to the resort’s public beaches, discussions centered around the best way to stay afloat in the dull-grey waters of the Bohai Sea: inflatable dolphin or shark?
“The talks are for government officials, they have nothing to do with us ordinary people,” said one woman, surnamed Meng, as she squeezed into a yellow inflatable ring. “We’re just here to have fun.”
Beidaihe gives politicians a rare chance to meet informally to engage in “lobbying for promotions, appointments and the approval of policies,” according to Joseph Cheng (鄭宇碩), who lectures on Chinese politics at Hong Kong’s City University.
“It started as just a holiday destination for China’s top leaders,” he added, “but it became a place where important decisions were made.”
This year’s discussions will help determine who gains entry to the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, the elite group of leaders who effectively run China, when seven of its nine members stand down this year.
Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) is expected to succeed the outgoing President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as the head of the committee before taking over as head of state next year, while Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) is set to take the second highest-ranked position of premier.
Analysts say other vice premiers, Wang Qishan (王岐山) and Li Yuanqiao (李源潮), who runs the department that approves party appointments, are all but certain to join the committee.
Among those vying for one of the remaining places are Wang Yang (汪洋), the reformist party head of China’s southern manufacturing powerhouse Guangdong, and Shanghai leader Yu Zhengsheng (俞正聲).
Competition is fierce, with speculation that the number of places on the Standing Committee — which can vary in size — will be reduced to seven from nine this time around.
Some experts believe the bargaining over positions may be tied to the fate of Bo, currently under investigation for “violating party discipline” as his wife, Gu Kailai (谷開來), awaits the outcome of her murder trial.
Bo’s political career is over, but it remains unclear whether he will face criminal charges relating to the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, which four police officers are charged with trying to cover up.
However, analysts say the importance of the summer meetings at Beidaihe has waned under Hu, who ended the practice of having entire government departments moved to the resort for the summer after he became president in 2002.
With the Standing Committee meeting more often, party-watchers say the Beidaihe talks are most important for so-called “party elders” — retired senior officials who still hope to influence the leadership transition.
Of these, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) is said to hold the greatest influence. Several recent media appearances by Jiang are “a signal that he still wants to influence the selection process,” Cheng said.
“Top leaders no longer have time to spend extended periods at Beidaihe,” said Bo Zhiyue (薄智躍), a Chinese politics expert at the National University of Singapore, adding that the meetings were “a gesture of respect for party elders.”
These days, they can rub shoulders with the Russian tourists with whom Beidaihe is increasingly popular.
There are Russian supermarkets and restaurants serving borscht and steak alongside guesthouses with names like North China Grid Company Sanatorium, a legacy from when state enterprises rewarded model workers with holidays.
Crowded public beaches, where tourists pitch tents to shield them from the sun and vendors sell sweetcorn, starkly contrast with empty swathes of sand attached to the villas used by Communist officials.
China’s state-run media are barred from reporting on competition among the country’s top leaders, and beachgoers responded to news of the political intrigue taking place across the sands with shrugs of indifference.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS