China’s goals: Solid economic growth, tough stance on HK
BEIJING — China sent a forceful message Friday advancing top leader Xi Jinping’s sweeping agenda for the country’s economic and political ascent while drawing a hard line against challenges to Communist Party rule.
China’s leaders used the opening of the annual legislative assembly, the National People’s Congress, to unveil proposals that would drastically weaken the prodemocratic opposition in Hong Kong. They set a goal of at least 6% economic growth for this year along with announcing a robust rise in military spending. And they released a longterm plan that promised to ease China’s dependence on foreign energy, technology and markets.
The volley of actions reflected Xi’s conviction that momentum is in China’s favor as much of the world struggles with the pandemic and its economic and political aftershocks. After initially failing to contain the coronavirus last year, China imposed strict controls that all but wiped out the virus within its borders. That success has allowed for a relatively quick economic rebound and has bolstered the Chinese Communist Party’s belief that its authoritarian system has worked while the United States’ democratic system has faltered.
In the months leading up to the legislative meeting, Xi has sought to emphasize confidence in China’s authoritarian path. “The East is rising, and the West is declining,” he said at a closed-door meeting last year to discuss China’s next long-term development plan, which was released at the Congress.
By pushing through new rules for Hong Kong, Xi is taking aim at a thorn in his party’s side: opposition to Chinese rule that erupted in monthslong demonstrations in 2019.
The proposed election overhaul would effectively lock the beleaguered democratic camp out of election contests in the city. A Politburo member who introduced the draft rules said that they would help root out people who Beijing deemed not loyal to the country.
Opposition forces in the city had coalesced into a “severe threat to national sovereignty, security and development interests,” the Politburo official, Wang Chen, told the nearly 3,000 delegates seated in neat rows. “This must be met with staunch opposition and forceful measures to contain and defuse the risks.”
He said that Beijing would overhaul the membership of the territory’s Election Committee, a body that chooses the chief executive, whose approximately 1,200 members are selected by groups that have typically been loyal to Beijing and the city’s business elite. China will also set up a new, separate procedure to vet candidates for various levels of elective office in Hong Kong.
Willy Lam, a professor of Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that the move could mean not a single pro-democracy candidate would be elected to Hong Kong’s legislature.