China’s New ‘Starting Point’ Shows Xi Jinping Is Here to Stay

(Bloomberg) -- President Xi Jinping appeared more certain than ever to rule China well into the current decade, as senior Communist Party officials declared that the country had reached a new “historical starting point” under his leadership. 

A rare resolution passed earlier this week by the party’s Central Committee confirmed that Xi’s “original ideas” and “transformative practices” had led China into a new era, Wang Xiaohui, executive vice propaganda minister told a briefing Friday in Beijing. The declaration, which had not been released in full as of Friday afternoon, suggested that Xi, 68, was just getting started as his second five-year term as party leader winds down. 

Only Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping have authored such doctrines before and both documents helped those party titans lead China until their dying days.

“Certainly, Xi Jinping sees himself on par with those two leaders, which I think tell us that he sees himself as a fundamental transformational leadership for China,” Jude Blanchette, Freemman chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Bloomberg Television. “I think we need to accept that he’s large and in charge for the foreseeable future.”

The powerful Central Committee approved Xi’s magnum opus at a four-day meeting that began Monday, according to a communique published late Thursday. Getting the group of almost 400 members to sign off on his doctrine was a clear sign Xi has the power base needed to clinch a third term at the next leadership congress, which the communique said would be held in the second half of 2022.

Xi showed the nation was “standing at a new historical starting point, looking back at the past and looking forward to the future,” Wang said. The readout’s call to implement the president’s doctrine to achieve goals through 2049 was another sign he was likely to secure a third term -- breaking a two-term precedent set by his immediate predecessors. 

The historical resolution stands among a series of milestones that Xi has passed on his path to enduring rule. Those include getting himself declared the “core” of the party in 2016, writing his name into the party charter in 2017 and abolishing a constitutional provision limiting presidents to two terms in 2018. 

“Xi now joins the pantheon of elite Chinese leaders who have not only commanded the party, but also gained the equivalent of sainthood within the broader system,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney and author of the “The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers.” Next year’s leadership reshuffles might “give the world a hint of what trade-offs Xi has had to make along the way,” McGregor said.

The Central Committee’s communique sounded a note of caution, warning that “we must be absolutely certain that we make no catastrophic mistakes on fundamental issues.” But it made no specific reference to past political traumas, such as the Cultural Revolution or Great Leap Forward, which Wang described as matters settled in previous resolutions. 

At Friday’s briefing officials blasted Western democracy as a “game of the rich,” while contrasting it with Xi’s call for “common prosperity.” China needed to “both grow the pie and divide it better,” they said. 

Officials said the Central Committee had also committed to:

• Following a new development paradigm based on innovation and green growth.
• Developing both the public and private sectors.
• Fighting monopolies and the disorderly expansion of capital.
• Realizing common prosperity.
• Incentivizing people to get rich through entrepreneurship.
• Improving social security and raising the share of direct taxes.
• Acting “step by step” to reach peak carbon emissions, carbon neutrality.

While officials at the briefing celebrated Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative as a “public good,” the trade-and-infrastructure program was notably left out of the communique. The document also credited Xi with moving Hong Kong from “chaos to governance,” and added that Beijing had “firmly grasped a leadership role and initiative in cross-strait relations,” referring to its fraught relationship with Taiwan. 

The lack of a reference to the Belt and Road program indicated it “has become a liability rather than an asset to Beijing’s foreign affairs,” said Jie Yu, a senior research fellow on China at Chatham House.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg