At party congress, Xi’s silence speaks volumes
Slogans left out of key report draw scrutiny
As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, laid out his priorities this past week for a breakthrough third term in power, officials parsed his words for signs of where the country was headed. What he did not say was as revealing.
The omission of two phrases from his key report to a Communist Party congress exposed his anxieties about an increasingly volatile world where the United States is contesting China’s ascent as an authoritarian superpower.
For two decades, successive Chinese leaders have declared at the congress that the country was in a “period of important strategic opportunity,” implying that China faced no imminent risk of major conflict and could focus more on economic growth.
For even longer, leaders have said that “peace and development remain the themes of the era,” suggesting that whatever may be going wrong in the world, the grand trends were on China’s side.
But the two slogans, so unvarying that they rarely drew attention, were not in Xi’s report to the congress, which began last Sunday and ended Saturday — not in his 104-minute speech summarizing the report or in the 72-page Chinese full version given to officials and journalists.
Their exclusion, and Xi’s somber warning of “dangerous storms” on the horizon, indicated that he believed international hazards have worsened, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine in February, several experts said. Xi, who is nearly assured reelection Sunday as general secretary, sees a world made more treacherous by US support for the disputed island of Taiwan, Chinese vulnerability to technology “choke points,” and the plans of Western-led alliances to increase their military presence around Asia.
“China’s external environment now can be described as unprecedentedly perilous, and that’s also the judgment of China’s high echelon,” Hu Wei, a foreign policy scholar in Shanghai, said in an interview.
In the Communist Party, the leader’s words matter enormously, shaping China’s policies, legislation, and diplomacy. And the report to the party congress, every five years, is the fundamental guide for officials. Each phrase, each tweak, each omission is weighed to signal priorities.
In his report, Xi said several times that China intended to contribute more to global peace and development through its own initiatives, and discussed “strategic opportunities” for trade and diplomatic gains. But his assessment of global trends was laced with warnings.
“Our country has entered a period when strategic opportunity coexists with risks and challenges, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising,” Xi said. Although China has room for international growth and initiative, he added, “the world has entered a period of turbulence and transformation.”
“This marks a meaningful, and perhaps major, shift in their assessment of the global order,” said Christopher Johnson, the president of the China Strategies Group and a former CIA analyst of Chinese politics. “He’s basically hardening the system because the likelihood of conflict is going up.”
During the congress, Xi did not publicly mention the United States or President Biden’s new national security strategy that describes China as the preeminent threat to US primacy. But to Chinese officials, the implied focus will be clear.
The party is promoting Xi as the nation’s “navigator” for the intensifying threats. The outcome of the congress Saturday made clear that Xi will stay in power beyond the 10 years his predecessor served, and also install a new leadership team dominated by his firm allies.
That new team, to be unveiled Sunday, is likely to elevate officials who Xi believes will serve his call to “struggle,” by their loyalty to him and the party, and their ability to advance programs to upgrade high-tech, military modernization, and social controls.
In his report, Xi laid out some of his plans to secure China’s global rise, many building on current policy directions.
He called for accelerating steps to become more self-reliant in core technologies and pressing ahead with military modernization, including, Xi hinted, upgrading China’s relatively limited nuclear weapons abilities.
Beijing, he said, would also become more active in international affairs and promote its own solutions for global security and development challenges. He repeated that China wanted to win control of Taiwan peacefully but could use force if compelled.