What does Xi Jinpingâs growing power mean for China and the world? Scott Kennedy on the historic expansion and potential limits of the Chinese presidentâs authority. âA New Day in Chinaâ What does Xi Jinpingâs growing power mean for China and the world? Scott Kennedy on the historic expansion and potential limits of the Chinese presidentâs authority. [Zhang Kaiyv]( Zhang Kaiyv Making Xi Jinping now even more powerful, the Chinese Communist Party Congress re-elected him last week to a third term as its general secretary. That makes Xi the first leader to serve three terms since Mao Zedong, who founded the Peopleâs Republic of China in 1949. The Party Congress also assures Xiâs re-election as Chinaâs president next year to an unprecedented third, five-year term. His allies have been given all the spots in the partyâs Standing Committee, the highest-ranking party organ, and nearly all analysis of the congress concludes that Xi has dramatically concentrated and centralized power in himself and the CCP leadership. But China is an enormous country, of some 1.4 billion people, with the worldâs second-largest economy and thousands of companies trading around the worldâalong with a rapidly growing military thatâs continually increasing its operations throughout the Asia-Pacific. So what will Xiâs consolidating power in Beijing mean? Scott Kennedy is a senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and the author or editor of several books on China. In Kennedyâs view, Xiâs increasing dominance will lead to critical changes and a measure of resistance. More power will shift to the party, at expense of all the countryâs other institutionsâeven the government. For the outside world, Xiâs entrenched control will mean even more of his more aggressive and confrontational approach in the Asia-Pacific region and to Western countriesâan approach that breaks with the policies of his predecessors. But it remains an open question, Kennedy says, how well Xiâs concentration of power will succeed. Institutions in the enormous state bureaucracyâand outside of the governmentâhave accumulated their own power over decades now, and they will continue to pursue their own goals. And itâs not clear that the party has the capability to manage or perform all the tasks and functions other institutions have been carrying out. The most pressing questions, to Kennedy, are when and howâand how wellâthe party will be able to move the countryâs sprawling public-health system out of its zero-Covid policy, which has shut down even Chinaâs largest cities over a few coronavirus cases and caused massive economic losses. âââ Michael Bluhm: What do you expect to be the biggest changes coming out of the Party Congress? Scott Kennedy: Xi Jinping solidified his hold on power for a very long time. And he signaled that the policy trajectory that he has moved China along since he took power is going to continueâeven if that rubs certain groups in China, the U.S., and the West the wrong way. Heâs set on a path to maintain the Communist Partyâs hold on powerâwhich is job number oneâand to continue moving toward what he sees as Chinaâs inevitable economic success and the recovery of its international influence. Xi knows that a lot of people disagree with what heâs doingâand heâs decided that theyâre all wrong. The speech he gave at the beginning of the party congress included not a single change in substance or tone. The new leadership lineup announced on Sunday is full of his political allies. There is no balancing faction or ideology in the Politburo or the Standing Committeeâthe partyâs most powerful organs. We should expect China to try to move in the direction Xi says he wants to move in, whatever the consequences for the rest of the world. But thereâs often a gap between what leaders want and what actually occurs. And that doesnât mean that the U.S. and the rest of the world are powerless and just need to sit and watch or prepare for war or decoupling the United States from China. A lot of commercial and political diplomacy can still be done. Bluhm: How important do these changes at the Party Congress seem to you? [Advertisement]( Advertisement Kennedy: The most interesting change in this Party Congress is that itâs the third one where Xi Jinping was elected general secretary of the party. That breaks a precedent since Mao Zedong in the 1970s; no other leader had served more than two terms. In many ways, Xi Jinping has broken the norms that were established since then. Now thereâs no term limit for the top leader. The previous expectation was that members of the Politburo who were 68 and older would retire; thatâs been thrown out the window. The idea that the incoming premier would have previously been a vice-premier in charge of some national policy area is likely going to be overturned; the most likely new premier, Li Qiang, has only held positions in the provinces. Heâs currently Shanghai party secretary, but heâs never been a vice-premier. The political applecart has been overturned in many ways, to try to achieve this larger continuity in Xiâs hold on power and the direction he wants to take the country in. Chinese politics is now much more top-down and centralized in one manâs hands than in half a century. If you think Xi is taking the country in the right direction, then youâd be happy with the outcome of this Party Congress. But if you think no one person should have so much power in a complex worldâbecause concentrating power so heavily in a single office and person makes it less likely that people in that system will raise concerns and doubts or challenge policiesâthen youâre going to be worried; youâre going to expect a variety of mistakesâand difficulties changing course when those mistakes are realized. [Akira]( Akira More from Scott Kennedy at The Signal: âUnder Xi Jinping, thereâs been a shift away from the approach China took in its first 30 years of reform and opening, which was to strengthen institutions of government as well as to enable the rise of non-government sources of authority and accountability. That means civil-society institutions, nongovernmental organizations, lawyers, journalists, credit-rating companiesâinstitutions that are supposed to check unrestrained government power and to provide public goods. Xi is turning away from that and saying, All authority begins and ends in the Communist Party. Heâs reduced the independent power of government institutions and non-state sources of authority and public goods. Does the party have the ability to provide that type of complex governance, in a country of Chinaâs size, with all kinds of industries, connected to the rest of the world? Xiâs bet is that it can. One of the biggest bets theyâre making is that the party can do it all alone, with almost no support from these alternative institutions.â âCan Beijing find a pathway out of the pandemic? The current strategy, which is summed up in the term zero-Covid, is about eliminating transmission of the virusâand everything else be damned. You can die of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and so on in China; but you canât die of Covid. Most of the world has already moved on to a different strategy: ameliorating the negative health effects of contracting the virus through vaccinations and therapeutics. China is going to need to make this transition. Can the party engineer that? Theyâve taken a lot of credit for keeping the number of fatalities from Covid very low. But theyâve also incurred lots of other costs, economic and otherwise. We donât know when theyâre going to make this transition or how effective theyâll be at it. To me, that overlays every other policy issueâeconomic policy, climate, relations with the United States, Taiwan. Everything is secondary to what theyâre going to do about zero-Covid.â âXi is much more powerful than his predecessors; the party is much more powerful than the government has been; and that means a lot for the direction that Chinaâs likely to go in. You canât underestimate Xi Jinpingâs ability to make decisions and have them carried out. Weâre in a new day in China as a result of this concentration of power. On the other hand, China is a very big place. It has millions of bureaucrats at the national and local levels. And the further from Beijing you get, the more local circumstances matter. Thereâs a famous phrase in Chinese: The sky is high and the emperor far away. Now, the sky may not be quite as high and the emperor not quite as far away as before; but China is still a damn big place, and a lot happens beyond Xiâs gazeâand the gaze of cameras connected to his leadership.â [The Signal]( explores urgent questions in current events around the worldâto support it and for full access: The Signal | 1717 N St. NW, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}](
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