BEIJING — China today opens a twice-a-decade party conference at which leader Xi Jinping is expected to receive a third five-year term that breaks with recent precedent and establishes himself as arguably the most powerful Chinese politician since Mao Zedong.
Xi is expected to issue a lengthy address at the opening session, but little change is foreseen in his formula of strict one-party rule, intolerance of criticism and a hard-line approach toward COVID-19 including quarantines and travel bans even as other countries have opened up.
As with most Chinese political events, little information has been released beforehand, and the congress’ outcome will be announced only after several days of closed-door sessions.
At a two-hour news conference Saturday, congressional spokesperson Sun Yeli reaffirmed the government’s commitment to its “zero-COVID” policy despite the economic costs, and repeated its threat to use force to annex self-governing Taiwan.
But Sun offered few details about what, if any, changes would be enacted to the party’s charter at the meeting, which is expected to last about a week. The congress is the 20th in the history of the century-old party, which boasts some 96 million members, over 2,000 of whom will attend the Beijing meetings.
The changes will “incorporate the major theoretical views and strategic thinking” concluded in the five years since the last congress, said Sun, a deputy head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department who is not well known outside party circles.
The amendment or amendments will “meet new requirements for advancing the party’s development and work in the face of new circumstances and new tasks,” Sun said.
Xi has left little room for further political aggrandizement, having placed himself thoroughly in charge of domestic affairs, foreign policy, the military, the economy and most other key matters overseen by party working groups that he leads.
The congress comes as China’s economy is facing major headwinds amid a near-collapse in the real estate sector and the toll on retail and manufacturing imposed by COVID-19 restrictions that upped the regime’s already-intense monitoring of the population and suppression of free speech.
October 16, 2022 at 11:23AM
https://www.columbian.com/news/2022/oct/15/china-expected-to-grant-xi-five-more-years-with-little-changing/
China expected to grant Xi five more years, with little changing - The Columbian
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