Xi Sets Out What He Is Thinking

MAO TRANSFORMED CHINA. Deng Xiaoping transformed China.

Xi Jinping?

Xi has placed his marker at the 19th Party Congress — ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’. Significantly, state media are starting to report it appended to his name: ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’. Xi’s formal induction into the pantheon of Party ideology alongside Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory cannot be far behind.

Xi Jinping Thought comprises 14 bullets points that, in short, reiterate that the Party leads everything. However, the sense of marking an epoch is as palpable as it is deliberate.

Xi portrays his China as one that will have become a global leader with international influence, a modern economy, advanced culture and world-class armed forces.

This future will come in two 15-year phases, 2020-2035 and 2035-2050.

The first phase will focus on turning fast growth into high-quality development, the deliverance of a ‘moderately prosperous society’. The second will turn China, by then likely the world’s largest economy, into Beautiful China, some nirvana-like flowering of a great modern socialist country-cum-superpower, and to do so, conveniently, in time for the 2049 centenary of the revolution that brought Mao and the Party to power. (Poverty is to be eradicated by the centenary of the Party’s founding, 2021.)

The first phase involves moving ahead with the rebalancing of the economy towards consumption-led growth that has been haltingly underway for some time. The financial system will become more market-based, and state-owned enterprises will be turned into world-class, globally competitive firm. China will become more open to foreign investors. Rule by law will be enhanced. Greater environmental protections introduced. The modernization of the PLA will be completed by 2035, giving China a world-class military, for which read on par with or better than the United States’.

Diplomatically, China will pursue global development in partnership with other countries, though it will create an alternative (and Beijing-led) global order architecture to be the framework for that. Alongside that, it will seek to strengthen its cultural soft power. Meanwhile, internally the anti-corruption campaign will continue to ensure the Party does not rot from the inside. And loyalty to the party and central leadership group must be absolute.

If this sounds like a political laundry list drawn up by a committee that is because, at heart, it is. Nor does it contain any new initiatives. Though delivered by Xi as his ‘work report’ and bearing his indelible stamp, the three and a half hour speech and its underlying text is the result of a year of consensus building involving thousands of officials.

Its purpose is to show the Party’s rank and file the signposts to the long-term actions expected from them by the leadership in all policy areas. That leadership, though, is now firmly Xi’s. The next question is how long he will feel he needs to exercise it.