Communist party meet starting today to cement Xi’s reign

BEIJING: A key three-day Communist Party of China (CPC) meeting to be held in Beijing from Monday is set to cement President Xi Jinping’s authority and pave the way for him to retain power for an unprecedented third time in 2022.

The sixth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee will review - and almost certainly pass - a key resolution on the “major achievements and historical experience of the party’s 100 years of struggles”.

The historical document is only the third of its kind since the CPC was founded in 1921 with the first two issued under China’s iconic leaders Mao Zedong in 1945 and the second by Deng Xiaoping in 1981.

This year’s plenum will be conducted by the current 19th central committee, which was elected in 2017 and will remain until late 2022 when the next party Congress will be held

More than 300 members of CPC’s central committee are expected to take part in the closed-door meeting in Beijing.

Monday’s meeting has been preceded by China’s news agency, Xinhua, publishing an essay, paying glowing tributes to Xi, describing him as a tireless, selfless and scholarly servant of the people.

Xi is “a man of determination and action, a man of profound thoughts and feelings, a man who inherited a legacy and dares to innovate, and a man who has forward-looking vision and is committed to working tirelessly”, Xinhua said.

It spoke about how on the “…eve of Lunar New Year 2020, with the Covid-19 epidemic clouding festivities, Xi had a sleepless night”. Headlined, “Xi Jinping, the man who leads CPC (Communist Party of China) on a new journey”, the essay portrayed him as a man with “little time for himself”, for whom “happiness is achieved through hard work”.

A political science expert said that the meeting will “…re-enhance the four consciousnesses and re-affirm the four matters of confidence to ensure CPC will move forward in unison”.