China after the Party’s October 2022 Congress

China concluded its 20^th Party Congress that placed most power in the hands of Xi Jinping, the Secretary General, who also heads the country’s military commission and is the president. The China that emerges following this meeting will be energised to pursue Xi’s agenda. How is Pakistan likely to be affected by the way China is likely to conduct business at home and abroad? This is an important question for several reasons. Shunned by the US, Pakistan has been turning to China for support in both economic and international affairs. The latter was exhibited by China’s refusal to follow India’s initiative in the UN that would have kept Islamabad on the ‘grey list’, administered by FATF.

The 20^th Chinese Party Congress was called into session on Oct 16, with 2,295 delegates in attendance. It was in session until Oct 23 when it ended by endorsing what Xi had planned for his country and also elected new leadership. Xi was voted to continue with the three jobs he currently holds. As expected, he will continue to be the Party’s Secretary General, the President of the People’s Republic of China, and the head of the armed forces. These jobs will be his for another five years, giving him tenures for fifteen years. He would thus become the second longest-serving leader of China after Mao Zedong, the founder of the CCP and the supreme leader of the country until his death in 1976. Deng Xiaoping who succeeded Mao as the supreme leader made the Communist Party change its constitution so that the president was limited to two five-year terms. The constitution was followed by Presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, each leaving the stage after serving two terms. Xi had the party remove the term limit.

What China watchers were looking forward with great anticipation was the content of the opening address given by Xi on Oct 16, and the leadership lineup with which the Congress was to close on Oct 23. The long speech covered a great deal of ground, reiterating China’s policy towards Taiwan; the role of the private sector in developing the Chinese economy; bringing out of poverty the few who were still poor; making the distribution of income less inequitable; and a clear indication of how Beijing was to manage its relations with the world outside. The speech took 104 minutes to deliver and was distributed to the media as a 72-page document. It omitted two phrases that had appeared in earlier statements.

First, the country was in a “period of important strategic opportunity”, implying that China did not face imminent risk of major conflict and could focus more on economic growth. Second, peace and development remained important objectives for the Chinese leadership. This time, Xi warned of “dangerous storms” on the horizon and indicated that he believed international hazards have worsened, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine. In the Communist Party, the leader’s words are chosen carefully and shape the country’s policies, legislation and diplomacy. “Our country has entered a period when strategic opportunity coexists with risk and challenges, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising,” he told party leaders present in the grand hall in Beijing.

China’s constitution bars Li Keqiang, the premier for the last decade, to get another term. China experts looked at two persons as possible successors to Li and possibly also to President Xi after he is scheduled to leave office in 2028. He will then be 74 and may want to remain in office until 2033. Speculation focused on Wang Yang, the leader of the Communist Party’s top advisory body, and Hu Chunhua, one of the four vice premiers in the old order. Both men have coincidentally spent five-year terms leading Guangdong Province, a leading hub of entrepreneurship and foreign investment in the country. Wang has more of a reputation for pursuing free-market policies while in Guangdong. Hu, 59, was young enough to be viewed as a potential successor to Xi. According to Keith Bradsher, who covers China for NYT, in any case the power of the premier has diminished since Xi has created a series of Communist Party commissions to draft policies for ministries, including a commission that dictates many financial policies.

The government and the Communist Party took extraordinary steps to ensure that no disturbance occurred during the party conclave. An official with the Ministry of Public Security announced at a news conference in September that the authorities had arrested 1.4 million criminal suspects nationwide since the end of June, helping to “create safe and stable political and social environment for the successful convening of the 20^th Party Congress”. According to one newspaper account, “All but the most effusive sentiment about the government must be kept at bay, too — hence the profusion of propaganda that has appeared on bridges, on billboards, in 60-foot-tall flower arrangements. The longer the slogan, the more inspiring, the thinking goes. ‘Unite More Closely Around the Party’s Central Committee That Has Comrade Xi Jinping As Its Core, Take Practical Steps to Welcome the Successful Convening of the 20^th National Congress,’ reads one mega-screen above a department store.”

The party Congress concluded on Oct 23 when Xi walked on to the stage accompanied by six other members of the Standing Committee. Only a couple of those who made it to the top echelon of the Chinese system of governance were expected by China watchers to make it as the members of the powerful Standing Committee. Among them was Li Qiang, the party secretary of Shanghai who may be the country’s next PM. He has worked at the top level in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces considered as pillars of the national economy. His image was tainted by the harsh lockdown imposed on Shanghai under President Xi’s zero-Covid policy. By shutting down Shanghai, China’s most important economic centre, Xi set back the country’s economic progress. The year 2022 is likely to see the slowest rate of economic growth since 1980 when Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world outside its borders.

With Xi firmly in control of all aspects of policymaking, China will have zero tolerance for outside interference. Washington has been warned that its meddling in West Pacific would be strongly resisted. Beijing would not be dictated on how it approaches the Taiwan question. At one point after Russia sent in troops into Ukraine, it appeared that Beijing would stay close to Moscow. However, the way President Vladimir Putin has conducted himself in Ukraine was not to the liking of President Xi. He has clearly indicated his unhappiness with the atrocities committed by Russian troops in conducting their Ukraine operations.

Developments in China and Russia suggest that the global order is moving towards a bipolar system, with Beijing and Washington as the two poles. Pakistan has placed itself firmly on the side of China. Islamabad is following an approach that is totally different from the one it had adopted in the previous lineup when Washington and Moscow were the two poles. Then it was firmly on the side of Washington. Now it has placed itself in Beijing’s orbit.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2022.

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