Nearly 2,300 delegates from the Chinese Communist Party are gathered in Beijing on Sunday for a congress which should, barring major surprises, award a historic third term to Xi Jinping as head of the country.
“This rally is the most important political event in China for decades” because it will determine the main directions of the country for the coming years, underlines in a note the firm Trivium China.
A third five-year term for Xi Jinping at the head of the Communist Party, and therefore of the country, facing the challenge of a “zero COVID” policy harmful to the economy, is “the announcement that everyone will be waiting for” , adds the firm.
Except for a dramatic change, a new coronation, which should take place on October 23 the day after the end of the congress, would make him the most powerful leader since the founder of the regime, Mao Tse-tung (1949-1976).
At 10:00 a.m., the five-year congress of the CPC will open at the People’s Palace, a huge building of Stalinist architecture located on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on statements by the head of state in power since 2012.
Xi Jinping, 69, will take stock of the past five years and deliver his roadmap for the next five, during a speech that promises to be a river: that of 2017 lasted three and a half hours.
” Fatigue “
One of the main questions will revolve around whether or not to maintain strict health measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese president’s “zero COVID” strategy.
This policy has reinforced social control over Chinese citizens, all of whose movements are now recorded by computer, in this country already criticized on the international scene for human rights violations.
If the official press hammered home this week that “folding down” in the face of the virus would be “irresponsible”, the economic cost of this strategy and the popular discontent it arouses are undeniable.
“It’s a paradox”, observes Valarie Tan, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies (Merics) in Berlin: “Xi will come out of Congress very powerful, but the country he is in charge of is in difficulty”, because “China is facing multiple crises on many fronts”.
The quasi-closure of the country vis-à-vis the rest of the world and the repeated confinements have put a stop to growth, which this year should be the weakest in four decades, excluding the COVID period.
“After almost three years of zero COVID, you see a certain fatigue and social discontent, which comes to the surface through social media posts,” notes Valarie Tan.
“Despite social discontent, despite some anger and resentment, there will be more social control and it will be enforced more strictly,” she predicts.
An anger that sometimes goes beyond social networks: this week and despite the reinforced security measures in the capital, a man hung two banners hostile to the Chinese leader and zero COVID on a bridge in Beijing.
One called on citizens to go on strike and oust “the traitor dictator Xi Jinping”.
Beyond 2027
Not enough to disturb the 2,296 party delegates, from all the provinces and for some dressed in their traditional outfits, who will appoint the new Central Committee by next Saturday, a kind of party parliament with some 200 members, including the office policy and its 25 heads is the decision-making body.
In reality, they will only validate the decisions taken upstream by the various factions of the Party: this is moreover how Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, chosen as a man of compromise between the factions before imposing his stranglehold over the years, in particular via a formidable anti-corruption campaign which enabled him to dismiss rivals.
A crucial point will be the composition of the future Standing Committee, this group of seven or nine personalities at the highest peak of power.
Xi should not leave room for a possible successor there because “he does not want to have someone blowing down his neck”, estimates the researcher Jean-Pierre Cabestan, based in Hong Kong and associated with the circle of French reflection Asia Center.
Specializing in Chinese economics and politics, the firm MacroPolo also expects Xi Jinping to form this Committee “with an eye already potentially looking beyond 2027”.