Although the perceived importance of this Congress is a rare instance of consensus between domestic and international China commentators, a counter-interpretation may be more revealing: nothing of actual significance will happen in Beijing this week.
Xi Jinping and others will make ‘important speeches’ — the standard state media description of speeches at these meetings. Moving beyond this label to the content, one will find strong admonitions against corruption, calls for further economic opening and claims that the state is dealing with hot-button issues like climate change and protectionism. All of these efforts will have comfortably remote deadlines for implementation. As a result, the content of this week’s ‘important speeches’ will forever remain in the realm of rhetoric: they are considerably more important as speech acts than as policy.
‘Reform’ will undoubtedly be a keyword in these speeches. Yet as we approach four decades of reform, one unanswered question is what exactly ‘reform’ means today. China has now been in the era of reform a full decade longer than the Maoist era from which it is supposed to be reforming. Adding confusion to complexity, recent trends in economics, politics and culture suggest ever more determined efforts by the Party-state to exercise ever greater control, running counter to the original idea of reform. Is reform now to be reform away from previous reform? Do not expect clarification at this week’s meeting.
There will undoubtedly be a fair amount of fawning over Xi Jinping. In a familiar Congress ritual, ‘ethnic minority’ delegates with elaborate costumes marking their difference will express their love for China, the Party and Xi — the three are increasingly viewed as interchangeable. Are these rituals a sign of power, or of weakness? A leader and a Party confident of their legitimacy would not require the continual input of this much symbolic capital — the fawning praise that we will see this week is less a sign of strength than of a lack of other forms of legitimation.
The leadership cult has a long tradition in the People’s Republic of China. Despite some criticism in the post-Mao era, this tradition has never been fully abandoned, as can be seen in the recently much-discussed section of the Party Constitution that features the ‘theoretical contributions’ that each leader has made. The failure to fully confront and overcome the legacy of the cult of personality after Mao has opened the door to the rise of the ‘cult of Xi’ — a cult that will perhaps receive a boost through the incorporation of Xi’s thinking into the Party Constitution. Regardless of whether this happens or not, however, there will be no doubt about who is in control.
Finally, at the Party Congress at the end of a leader’s first five-year term, a successor is ideally designated to take power five years later. There is speculation that Xi may not name such a successor and may remain in power for longer than his expected two five-year terms.
Xi can certainly do so: an honest assessment of the political system in Beijing reveals that there are no real legal checks on leaders. What is then most surprising is not that a leader might deviate from this ideal image of succession, but rather that there was one time (and one time only) that a power transition matched this ideal narrative. To characterise Xi’s failure to designate a successor as deinstitutionalisation then drastically overestimates the degree of leadership succession institutionalisation in the Chinese Party-state. We are not witnessing a democratic system shifting toward authoritarianism, but rather a self-described dictatorship returning to a harder vision of dictatorship.
This week, speeches will be made, praise for the leader will be effusive and Xi will consolidate power further. By the end of the Congress, despite all of the discussion of personnel and policy, little will have actually changed. Any changes in politics, culture and society over the next five years will be shifts toward increasing control by the Party state — a trend that has already been undeniable since Xi’s rise to power five years ago.
As China scholars and analysts, we all want to have unique insights on emerging developments in China: this week, the Party Congress is grist for the mill. Yet this overvaluation of the meaning of the Congress and corresponding over-interpretation of personnel and policy runs the risk of playing into Xi’s game, portraying this meeting as a major turning point in China’s course under his ‘great man’ leadership. And it misses the fundamental point that the Party Congress is at the end of the day an overhyped symbolic ritual through which many delegates nap, waking up only to give a rubber stamp to processes that were already well underway.
Kevin Carrico is Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the Department of International Studies, Macquarie University.
1 “nothing of actual significance will happen in Beijing this week.”
Can this be true when 5 of the 7 members of the Politburo’s Standing Committee (PSC), aged 68 and above, are due to retire, leaving only President Xi (64) and Premier Li Keqiang (62)? One significant question is will Mr Wang Qishan, the anti-corruption Czar and a powerful ally of the President, emerge as the new Premier?
Will Mr Li Zhanshu, a member of the Politburo and a former Governor of Heilongjiang and Guizhou, be elevated to the PSC? The other significant unknown is, of course, who will replace 11 of the Politburo’s 25 politicians, who are due to retire?
2 “Xi Jinping and others will make ‘important speeches’”.
President Xi will probably predicate his speech on what were achieved in the past five years and what are his plans and directions for the next five.
3 “As a result, the content of this week’s ‘important speeches’ will forever remain in the realm of rhetoric: they are considerably more important as speech acts than as policy.”
This was not true in 2012 in the case of President Hu Jintao Read his speech below:
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zt/18th_CPC_National_Congress_Eng/t992917.htm
4 “Yet as we approach four decades of reform, one unanswered question is what exactly ‘reform’ means today.’
In 1980, China was basket case with a GDP just below 500 billion yuan and millions of people were living below the poverty line.
In 2016 China’s GDP went parabolic to over 74.4 trillion yuan, which was the 2nd largest in the world and China is today the largest trading nation on Earth. Over 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty.
In 2010 China’s GDP reached about 46 trillion yuan and the plan is to double it to 92 trillion by 2020. Because of the high growth achieved between 2010 and 2013 China now only needs a growth of 6.5% to realize this goal.
The GDP growth in the first quarter of 2017 was 6.9%. President Trump will kill just to get half that growth.
Reforms? What reforms? In my view, it means this: (to borrow an adage from the Deep South in the United States) “If it ain’t broke, why change it?”
5 “There will undoubtedly be a fair amount of fawning over Xi Jinping.”
Why not give the man a fair go? During President Xi’s first term about 58 million people were lifted out of poverty. That is nearly twice the population of Australia and New Zealand combined. In the same period about 45 million Americans were surviving on Food Stamps.
The GDP growth under President Xi in 2013 was 7.8%, 2014 (7.3%), 2015 (6.9%) and 2016 (6.7%), compared to an average of less than 1.8% in the same period for President Obama, who notoriously increased the US National Debt exponentially by US$5 trillion during his first term waging endless wars and another US$5 trillion in his second term, to reach nearly US$20 trillion at the end of 2016. The unfunded debt was US$222 trillion in 2014 and US$8.5 trillion went missing in the Pentagon.
In 2014 on a PPP basis, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest economy, according to the IMF.
In 2016, under President Xi’s watch, out of the world’s 100 Biggest Banks 16 were from China. And the world’s first four Biggest Banks were all from China.
In November 2015, President Xi pledged in a speech in Singapore that a strong China will never bully any weak nation and a rich China will never humiliate any poor nation.
Can President Trump make the same pledge to bring peace to Planet Earth? No, because barely 75 days into office, he fired 59 cruise missiles into Syria, while treating President Xi to a chocolate cake dessert at Mar-a-Lago, a cavalier act which did not impress his guest at all. No wonder Senator Corker alluded that the White House has turned into an adult daycare centre.
6 “The failure to fully confront and overcome the legacy of the cult of personality after Mao has opened the door to the rise of the ‘cult of Xi’”
How can this be true? Did Presidents Hu Jintao or Jiang Zemn or Zhou Ziyang or Hu Yaobang or Hua Guofeng become cult leaders? No.
7 “this tradition has never been fully abandoned, as can be seen in the recently much-discussed section of the Party Constitution that features the ‘theoretical contributions’ that each leader has made.”
In the United States each departing President builds a Presidential Library to showcase his term(s) in office. In China the convention is to incorporate the philosophy of each departing President into the Constitution for posterity. There were the “Mao Zedong Thought”, the “Deng Xiaoping Theory”, the “Jiang Zemin Three Represents” and the “Hu Jintao Scientific Outlook on Development”.
8 “There is speculation that Xi may not name such a successor and may remain in power for longer than his expected two five-year terms.”
If he is good for China and the BRI is taking off to link trade among Europe, Russia, Central Asia, Middle East and Asia to create prosperity for all in the Eurasian Renaissance, he deserves a three five-year term.
After all, President Putin who is the best thing to happen to Russia since Peter the Great is on his third term. President Roosevelt had an unprecedented fourth term in office despite an unwritten rule in American politics that no U.S. president should serve more than two terms.
9 “the Party Congress is at the end of the day an overhyped symbolic ritual through which many delegates nap, waking up only to give a rubber stamp to processes that were already well underway.”
If this is the best China analysts can do, who needs them?