Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is set to secure a third term as president at a rubber-stamp National People’s Congress that starts tomorrow, with unchallenged status despite criticism over his handling of COVID-19 and the economy.
Xi is certain to be reappointed as president after he locked in another five years as head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the military — the two more significant leadership positions in the country — in October last year.
Since then, 69-year-old Xi has faced unexpected challenges and scrutiny over his leadership, with mass protests over his “zero COVID” policy and its subsequent abandonment that saw countless people die.
Photo: AFP
However, those issues are likely to be avoided at the congress, a carefully choreographed event that would also see the unveiling of a Xi ally as the new premier.
The congress is expected to last about 10 days and culminate with Xi’s presidency being endorsed by the 3,000 delegates casting votes in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
“Public opinion is probably not very good about him — ‘zero COVID’ has damaged people’s faith,” said Alfred Wu (吳木鑾), an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
However, Xi still has a “pretty strong” position at the top of the party that makes him virtually unchallengeable, Wu said.
China maintained some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 curbs until late last year, pounding growth and social life under a constant barrage of testing mandates, quarantines and travel restrictions that Xi championed.
Public resentment exploded in November last year into the most widespread public demonstrations in decades, followed by the rapid dismantling of the policy and a maelstrom of infections and deaths that went mostly unreported by authorities.
The country is still tentatively emerging from the outbreak, after three years in which business, employment and education were subjugated to the government’s demand to shut out the virus at any cost.
The gathered lawmakers are likely to set some of China’s lowest economic growth goals in decades on the opening day of the congress, experts said.
However, there is no sign that the position of Xi — who has stacked the party’s top bodies with loyalists, and expunged rivals in last year’s Congress reshuffle — is in any doubt.
Xi confidant and former Shanghai CCP secretary Li Qiang (李強) is set to be named premier.
Instead of threatening Xi’s rule, last year’s protests “gave him just the out he was looking for,” China Strategies Group chief executive officer Christopher Johnson said.
“If abandoning zero-COVID went well, he could ... say he listened to the people. If it went poorly, he could blame the protesters and the ‘hostile foreign forces’ that his top security chief publicly suggested were behind them,” he wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs last week.
Xi has an opportunity to flaunt his response to pressure, said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London.
“He acted decisively when the protests included calls for him and the CCP to step down. He quashed them and removed the basic cause,” Tsang said.
However, it could be time for Chinese leaders to reflect on “what certainly looks like a cumulative record of failures” to respond to crises in recent years, Oxford University professor emeritus Vivienne Shue said.
Delegates to the congress are expected to approve a slate of personnel changes, and discuss issues from economic recovery to improved sex education in schools, Chinese state media reported.
As well as announcing China’s GDP target for the coming year, outgoing Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) is expected to use his speech at tomorrow’s opening ceremony to pledge a bump in military spending.
Apps and Web sites that use artificial intelligence (AI) to undress women in photos are soaring in popularity, researchers said. In September alone, 24 million people visited undressing Web sites, the social network analysis company Graphika said. Many of these undressing, or “nudify,” services use popular social networks for marketing, Graphika said. For instance, since the beginning of this year, the number of links advertising undressing apps increased more than 2,400 percent on social media, including on X and Reddit, the researchers said. The services use AI to recreate an image so that the person is nude. Many of the services only
IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL: About 80 percent of Russians approve of Putin, a survey shows, but that might be misleading due to his intolerance to criticism Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday moved to prolong his repressive and unyielding grip on Russia for at least another six years, announcing his candidacy in the presidential election in March that he is all but certain to win. Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting an immensely costly war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his people’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia — including one on the Kremlin itself — and corroded its aura of invincibility. A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be
TAKING STOCK: It was not yet clear how damaging the espionage, dating to 1981, has been, as authorities are still assessing the situation, the State Department said A former US ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested and charged with spying for Cuba over a 40-year span, the US Department of Justice announced on Monday, detailing a shock betrayal by a suspect who called the US “the enemy.” US Attorney General Merrick Garland laid out the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a onetime member of the White House’s National Security Council now accused of using his positions within the government to support Cuba’s “clandestine intelligence-gathering mission” against the US. The charges against Rocha, 73, expose “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign
As pro-EU parties prepare to take power in Poland, a new star has shot to fame: a parliament speaker whose wit has drawn thousands of new followers to the chamber’s social media channels. Polish Marshal of the Sejm Szymon Holownia is no stranger to a wide audience as a former TV personality who notably hosted the Polish edition of the Got Talent! franchise. The 47-year-old left show business for politics four years ago, and now enjoys the spotlight chairing plenary proceedings following his success in the Oct. 15 parliamentary elections. “Ladies and gentlemen, stock up on popcorn ... because I suspect there will