A strong Xi worrying for regional peace

The 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party concluded last week in Beijing on a predictable note. It firmed up further the grip of the all-powerful President XI Jinping over the party and the country. His reelection as party general secretary for another five-year term came as no surprise, either. President Xi was widely believed to be working to oust anyone from the higher echelons of the lone ruling party of China who could potentially pose a threat. This was done by launching a cleansing drive weeks before the Beijing plenary. It saw several tall provincial overlords mercilessly ejected out on charges of corruption. But Xi did not stop at that. He has since packed the all-important decision-making body of the CPC with yes men. Five new members ‘elected’ to the Politburo Standing Committee are unlikely to pose a challenge to him when his second term ends in 2022. Indeed, it was a measure of his total control over the party machine that there were now genuine grounds for wondering if he would change the party constitution to give himself a third five-year term. The manner in which the week-long proceedings of the Party Congress were orchestrated to serenade Xi showed that he brooked no dissent.

Expectedly, he had his name enshrined in the party Constitution, to match the honour previously granted only to Mao and Deng Xiaoping previously. His supposed ideological contribution called ‘Thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’ now finds place along with Deng’s ‘Socialism with Chinese characters.’ Deng broke the Maoist mould of economic planning, transforming China by emphasising pragmatism in economic sphere -- remember his words about the irrelevance of a cat’s colour so long as it caught mice. Xi has grown the Chinese economy immensely, though of late rising disparities and increasing aspirations have forced him to heed the need for higher domestic consumption and better wages for the Chinese workers. A relatively slowing economy with growing protectionism in the US, China’s biggest export market, might see Xi shift gears, albeit slowly. He has promised to make China a front-ranking global power by 2050, and a moderately prosperous nation in the next decade. Under him, an economically confident China has got more assertive in its relations with its neighbours, underscored by his aggressive designs on the South China Sea. The manner in which the nascent movement for minimal democratic freedoms in Hong Kong was crushed too indicates that despite rising incomes and higher living standards, the CPC is averse to relenting on the one-party rule. While the core of the communist philosophy lies in its economic system, it is however in the political sphere that the Chinese communists are deadest against giving the people a modicum of basic freedoms. Xi has now ensured that even the tallest leaders of the CPC remain fully subservient to him. Hopefully, he would not exploit his absolute power to harass the neighours far and near in order to ignite afresh narrow nationalistic sentiments at home.