China and the world will find out who will lead the country along with President and Party Secretary General Xi Jinping when the Communist Party concludes its twice-a-decade Congress this weekend.
The country’s senior political leadership will be announced on Sunday when Xi, who is expected to be confirmed for an unprecedented third term as president, takes the stage in the Great Hall of the People, followed by members of the Elite Politburo (PSC) Standing Committee. highest decision-making body of the party, in descending order of importance.
The 69-year-old leader has emerged as China’s most powerful since Mao Zedong, and his grip on power appears despite China’s slowing economy, public anger over restrictive pandemic measures, and a growing gap with Western countries over alleged human rights abuses in places like Xinjiang and Hong Kong and Beijing’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The line-up — who is there, who isn’t, and who will replace Prime Minister Li Keqiang when he retires in March after completing a maximum of two terms — will provide an indication of Xi’s political strength as he moves away from the post-Mao tradition of collective leadership.
“The new PSC line-up will tell us whether Xi only cares about personal loyalty or whether he values a certain diversity of opinion at the top,” Ben Hillman, director of the Australian Centre on China in the World at Australian National University, told Reuters news agency.
“It is possible that the new PSC will consist exclusively of Xi loyalists, which means consolidating Xi’s power but poses major risks for China. A group of “yes” men at the helm will limit the information available for decision making.”
Major reshuffle
Around 2,300 delegates attended the party conference, which began on October 16 in the Chinese capital.
Most discussions took place behind closed doors, but over the course of the week, delegates will have appointed around 400 members to the party’s highest institution at national level, the Central Committee. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported this week that almost half of existing members would be replaced.
The 25 members of the Politburo, seven of whom are appointed to the PSC, are then appointed by the 200 voting members of the Central Committee.
These decisions are likely to have been discussed among the party’s elite in recent months and it is expected that at least two of the seven current committee members will retire because of their age. The “Seven Up, Eight Down” Convention states that all civil servants aged 67 or younger can be promoted at the time of a party conference, while anyone aged 68 and over is expected to retire.
However, reports in the Wall Street Journal and SCMP this week suggested that there could be up to four vacancies on the committee.
A larger turnover would be an advantage for Xi,” Nis Grunberg from the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) in Berlin told AFP news agency, explaining that this would allow the Chinese head of state to “promote more of his supporters from the Politburo to the Standing Committee.”
A new set of rules setting the criteria for promotions and downgrades, published in September, suggests that loyalty will be an important requirement — some of the 15 criteria focused on loyalty to party leaders.
Usually, the role of prime minister who takes care of the economy goes to the person holding number two or three in the party.
This time, the 63-year-old Shanghai party leader Li Qiang, who has long had ties to Xi but the target of the city dwellers’ anger over Shanghai’s lengthy lockdown was considered a leading contender for this job, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources close to party leaders.
Another loyalist seen by party observers as a candidate for promotion is Ding Xuexiang, 60, Xi’s chief secretary and head of the powerful general office of the Central Committee, which manages the administrative affairs of the top leadership.
The SCMP reported that Guangdong Party Secretary Li Xi and Chongqing Party Secretary Chen Min’er, another favorite of Xi, could also be promoted.
Hu Chunhua, 59, a current Deputy Prime Minister, is considered well-qualified by traditional standards of the prime minister’s role, but the SCMP said his lack of relationship with Xi would likely work against him.
“Xi’s incredible consolidation of power means that elite promotions are not so much a balancing act between rival factions as a loyalty competition within Xi’s dominant faction,” Neil Thomas, senior China analyst at Eurasia Group, told AFP.
Despite the extent of the expected reshuffle, there is likely to be little evidence of Xi’s successor.
Most analysts expect Xi to remain in office for a fourth term, meaning that many of those who get a tip this year will be too old to accept the top job once Xi resigns.