China’s Xi defends party’s hold on power
Centralized leadership touted as key to nation’s economic successes
BEIJING— Facing deepening tensions abroad and anxieties at home, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, delivered an unabashed defence of his policies Tuesday, using a key anniversary to argue that his recipe of guided growth under strong Communist Party control must not waver. Xi made his case to some 3,000 officials and guests gathered in the imposing Great Hall of the People in Beijing to commemorate 40 years since China embarked on far-reaching economic changes after decades of upheaval and malaise under Mao Zedong.
The resonant date had inspired expectations among some analysts and investors that Xi would give clearer priorities to counter economic headwinds and trade tensions that have flared with the United States.
But he offered none, referring only obliquely to the economic and diplomatic challenges confronting China.
Instead, he used the meeting, broadcast live on Chinese television, to stress that only the party’s dominance would allow China to continue its stunning transformation into the decades ahead.
The first lesson from 40 years of reform, he said, was the need to maintain party leadership “over all tasks.”
“It was precisely because we’ve adhered to the centralized and united leadership of the party that we were able to achieve this great historic tran- sition,” Xi said.
Xi’s speech, lasting nearly one and a half hours, came at a pivotal, potentially fraught moment in the country when all the contradictions in its governance appeared in stark relief. Xi’s political power is as great as that of any leader in decades, yet his party’s tightening of controls over the economy and ever more aspects of society suggest a deep-seated insecurity at the highest levels.
Xi’s government has been forced to make some compromises with the United States as President Donald Trump’s trade demands have escalated. But Beijing has also intensified corporate espionage and reacted with unbridled fury when U.S. prosecutors sought to extradite an executive of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, who was recently arrested in Canada. China quickly arrested two Canadians, apparently in retaliation.
Xi said that a country of China’s size and influence was right to hold “lofty aspirations.”
“China will never develop itself by sacrificing the interests of other countries,” Xi said, but added that China also would not “abandon its own legitimate rights and interests.”
Throughout his speech, Xi performed similar rhetorical swerves, promising both greater openness and assertiveness, both strong state companies and prospering private businesses.
The government’s intensifying repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, crackdown on Christians and secretive detention of the Chinese chief of Interpol have all clouded its global standing at a time when it aspires to play a larger international role.