A picture-perfect line-up of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party Politburo’s Standing Committee before the global media at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing today marked the culmination of a rather painstaking process of Xi’s coronation as China’s most powerful leader. China is the world’s largest and also the fastest growing economy (in purchasing power parity). This, along with US President Donald Trump’s America First policy, makes Xi the world’s most influential leader.
The last two quarters have seen China show an upswing with its growth rate hitting 6.8 per cent compared to the targeted 6.5 per cent. This promises further expansion of Xi’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As part of his commitment to double China’s GDP of 2010 by 2020, Xi’s BRI aims to build China’s global connectivity to make it the centre of all human activity thereby seeking the rejuvenation of China’s ancient dream of being the Middle Kingdom.
In November 2012, when Xi was first appointed as General Secretary of the Party he was known more for being married to Peng Liyuan—his second wife who had been China’s most famous folk singer before she first met him in 1986. Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao was a relatively weak leader with increasing political dissension seen during his last years in office. So Hu allowed Xi to take two other top positions—President of the Republic and Chairman of China’s most powerful Central Military Commission (CMC)—in quick succession by March 2013.
Nevertheless, Xi’s previous team did not carry men of his choice. Xi himself was seen as a consensus candidate after his powerful rival and party secretary of Chongqing municipality Bo Xilai had been disgraced in factional fights. But the last five years saw Xi unleashing his anti-graft juggernaut punishing over 1.5 million officials. As he said in his opening speech to the 19th Party Congress last week, these included not only ‘flies’ and ‘foxes’ but also ‘tigers’—implying members of the CMC and Politburo. Last week also saw open talk of an anti-Xi coup being the trigger for the sudden removal of heir apparent and Politburo member Sun Zhengcai from all positions.
The New Standing Committee of the Politburo introduced today has Xi’s proteges who will not just carry forward his current programmes and legacies, but will also be useful if Xi decides to break with the established norm and seeks a third term which, with every passing day, has emerged a stronger possibility. The last five years have seen Xi appointing his proteges to lead China’s 31 provinces, four provincial-level municipalities and four provincial-level autonomous regions that constitute the pool for grooming national leaders.
This saw Xi replacing as many as 47 leaders including 27 governors and 20 provincial party secretaries. Of these only 21 had retired—due to the age limit or corruption charges. The other 26 were simply replaced on Xi’s discretion. A few of them were rewarded for ditching their older factional loyalties to swear by Xi’s leadership. But most of these newcomers have worked with Xi during his long years in China’s Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. Some of them have now found place in the Politburo and its Standing Committee.
Compared to these leadership changes, much deeper will be the implications of the unanimous vote of the delegates at the 19th Party Congress yesterday where they decided to incorporate “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” into the party constitution. Earlier, only the names of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping found a place in the constitution along with their philosophies. Even between Mao “Zedong Thought” and “Deng Xiaoping Theory”, the ideological hierarchy of semantics makes “Thought” a much-higher expression. This implies that questioning Xi Jinping will now be seen as challenging the rule of the Communist Party.
Even beyond China, this coronation of his new team promises to establish Xi as the first amongst equals among today’s alpha male leaders—including Russia’s Vladimir Putin who has been at the helm since 1999, Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been the leader of Turkey since 2003, as also newcomers like India’s Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump, Shinzo Abe who was re-elected this Sunday for his fourth term as Japan’s prime minister and Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte. For China, however, which is seen as boldly recreating Xi Jinping in the imagery of Mao Zedong, this new line of leadership clearly belies Chairman Mao’s famous saying: “women hold up half the sky”.
The new Standing Committee reinforces China’s patriarchy. Since 1949, the party’s Standing Committee has never had a single woman amongst its members, let alone a female president or Party general secretary. China’s male leaders stand in stark contrast to both Hong Kong and Taiwan which are being led by strong women leaders—Carrie Lam and Tsai Ing-wen—who have not been easy on Beijing. Even China’s neighbours like South Korea, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have produced women leaders of world repute.
The Chinese women continue to suffer not just from lower wages but also earlier retirement age. Along with its oppressed minorities and skewed development, such social imbalances will become increasingly threatening. Xi will have to do much more than simply “uniting Chinese people of all ethnic groups” as he attempts building a “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful model social country” by 2049.
Swaran Singh
Professor, School of International Studies, JNU
Email: ssingh@jnu.ac.in