Xi unveils new leaders, no obvious successor

BEIJING» China’s ruling Communist Party on Wednesday elevated five new officials to assist President Xi Jinping as he embarks on a second five-year term, and by stopping short of designating an obvious successor strengthened his position as the country’s most powerful leader in decades.

As expected, Xi was given a renewed mandate after the first meeting Wednesday of the new Central Committee that was elected at the party’s twice-adecade national congress.

“We will mobilize the whole party, and the whole country in a resolute push to deliver on our pledge and eradicate poverty in China,” Xi, China’s president, said in comments to reporters at a brief ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.

The new leaders will face challenges that include reining burgeoning levels of debt, managing trade tensions with the U.S. and Europe, preventing war over North Korea’s nuclear program and navigating ties with Southeast Asian nations wary of Beijing’s influence.

Five members of the new seven-strong Politburo Standing Committee introduced by Xi were newly appointed Wednesday. Going by the party’s norms on retirement ages, none of them are deemed suitable to succeed the 64-year-old Xi as party leader after his second five-year term.

The absence of an obvious successor pointed to Xi’s longer-term ambitions, said Joseph Fewsmith, an expert on Chinese politics at Boston University.

“It suggests that Xi will likely serve a third term, and that he is likely to name his own successor,” Fewsmith said. “We have not seen that for two decades.”

In contrast, before Xi took power in 2012, he had been in the Standing Committee for five years. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, had a seat in the body for 10 years before becoming party leader. Under recent party precedent, party leaders have served just two five-year terms.

The party already had elevated Xi’s status on Tuesday at its closing session by inserting his name and dogma into the party’s constitution alongside past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

“No one doubts Xi bestrides the landscape like a colossus. Organized or even unorganized resistance is inconceivable,” said Jeremy Paltiel, a China expert at Canada’s Carleton University.