The Big party congress is called (its number) Big in Chinese. It happens only once every five years. Top leaders of the country are decided by the party congress and the first plenum right after the congress. These meetings, the 20 Big and the first plenum, just happened from October 16th to 23rd. The new leaders are in.
Many people already knew that 20 Big was to cement Xi’s third term as the emperor. There was absolutely no doubt about it: by the CCP procedure, if someone were to succeed Xi at the end of his second term, that person, 10 years younger than Xi, who is 69 years old, would have already been elected to the Standing committee of the Politburo in 19 Big. But there is no such person in the current Standing committee (which consists of Xi and six other people, together they are the most powerful seven of China) .
Everyone was still trying to guess who would be the six people after 20 Big. These six, along with Xi, will rule China for the next five years.
In the past decades, the committee has been a compromise between different factions of the CCP. There are three factions: Jiang’s Shanghai Gang, The Youth League and Xi’s gang.
Jiang (Zemin) is one of the two living former presidents of China. He was the Mayor of Shanghai until June 1989, when Deng chose him to lead the country after the 1989 democracy movement. He brought to Beijing his people. In the current committee (from 19 Big), Wang Huning and Han Zheng were from Jiang’s gang. Both are close to retirement age. But Mr. Wang is widely expected to stay in the committee, because he has become a close ally of Xi over the years. As Jiang is 96 years old now (current and former presidents live a long time in China) and did not even attend the 20 Big, his faction is almost non-existent. Many of his people have been purged out of key positions by Xi in the name of “anti-corruption”. (Don’t buy the ‘anti-corruption’ propaganda, Xi’s family was also corrupted. His sister and mother accumulated vast amount of money, as reported by Bloomberg in 2012.)
The Youth League is a state controlled organization for Chinese youth from age 14 to 28. Almost anyone who attended high school had belonged to the Youth league. Some of the leaders of this organization, after leading the Youth League, went on to lead provinces, and even led China. The most famous one is Hu Yaobang, whose death sparked the famous 1989 democracy movement in China. Another Hu Jintao(not related to Hu Yaobang), became the president of China after Jiang finished his term. Both Hu were chosen by Deng Xiaoping, and the party (especially Mr. Jiang) respected Deng’s choices. It seemed that Deng was trying to set up a succession mechanism by using the Youth League as springboard to select and groom future leaders of China. But Deng did not choose anyone after Hu Jintao. So, in the 17 Big, at the end of Hu Jintao’s first term, Xi was chosen to enter the Standing committee to succeed Hu. Hu did not back Xi, it was Jiang who backed Xi. Hu’s first choice was Li Keqiang, the current prime minister, also a former leader of the Youth League. But Hu accepted the compromise and Xi became the president. Hu was so committed to the transfer of power that, when he retired, he gave up his position as the chief of the military. It never happened before.
And then we have Xi’s gang. After Xi became the boss of China, he actively put people loyal to him into key positions. So in the 19 Big, out of the 6 members, 2 were from Shanghai Gang, 2 from the Youth League, and 2 from Xi’s gang.
Would Xi follow the tradition and keep some Youth League people? If he would, the collective ruling system with some internal balance set up by Deng would still be working, despite Xi’s Emperor status. But if Xi purges the Youth League, and only selects people from his own inner circle, he would be going back to Mao’s era, where the political system only serves one person.
Many were hoping Li Keqiang could stay. Or for Hu Chunhua to become the prime minister. He is a vice prime minister, also from the Youth League. Many consider him a successor to Xi, had Xi retired now. This Mr. Hu (also not related to other the 2 other Hu) is also famous for being a liberal reformer. He was the upcoming generation of current CCP leaders who actually went to university through the college entrance exam. In fact, he scored number 1 in his province in the first college entrance exam reestablished by Deng Xiaoping, at age 16 (normal age for that exam is 18). Of course, he went to Peking university, one of the best in China. Had he become leader of China, it would mean that China’s leaders finally came out of the damage of the cultural revolution, a period when formal education was destroyed.
As we saw in news of the past year(s), Xi is a leader that does not understand nor care about the economy. He is only ideological. He often did things to damage the country’s economy, while the prime minister and his team (including Mr. Hu Chunhua) tried to contain the damage. So far, Xi had successfully destroyed the videogame industry, the education/tutoring industry, the tech industry, and he tried to destroy the real estate industry. And his COVID policy is further destroying the economy, killing private business, with a high unemployment rate for college graduates. Many people are watching closely if the Standing committee would include some capable reformers and technocrats that can run the economy.
The list was unveiled on Sunday 23 October 2022, at the first plenum of 20 Big.
On Saturday, at the closing ceremony of 20 Big, foreign media reporters just went into the conference hall, after some closed door voting. And they saw something shocking. It was captured by a few reporters on camera. First, a video was uploaded on twitter almost in real time, showing a frail Mr. Hu Jintao pulled up from his chair and led out of the room. This started intense discussion and everyone was speculating what was happening. Chinese state media on Twitter insisted that Mr. Hu had health issue.
Of course, inside China, no one can talk about the video or mention Hu Jintao by name (his name is banned). Two days later, more footage was uploaded to Twitter, showing that Mr. Hu was trying to read a file in front of him. But the person to his left, a Xi’s loyalist, stopped him. This got Xi’s attention, and Xi summoned his own bodyguard, and seemed to have instructed him to take Hu out.
Many speculated that the file Hu wanted to read was the list that would be unveiled the next day. And then, the list was unveiled, and it shocked many Chinese and triggered a stock market meltdown.
On Sunday, in Beijing, the “elected” Standing committee members went on stage with Xi:
For CCP, the optics matter. The fact that Xi looks larger than the other six is intentional. Hehehe.
The order of appearance also matters.
The one behind Xi will be the next prime minister. He is Li Qiang, 63 years old, the Mayor of Shanghai, who showed up on our newsletter 56 about Shanghai lockdown. When Xi was the governor of Zhejiang province, Mr. Li was Xi’s personal secretary. Once Xi went to Beijing, he started to promote Li quickly. Appointing Li to be head of provinces and eventually the Mayor of Shanghai, which is a necessary step to transit him into core power. Despite Xi’s best effort, Li still is inadequately prepared for the job: Li should have served as vice prime minister for five years before taking the prime minister job. But he did not. Time was running out. The fact that Xi put personal loyalty above work ability is too obvious. And the cruel and disastrous lockdown of Shanghai not only did not harm Li Qiang’s career, but helped prove that he is loyal enough.
The one following Mr. Li is a member of the Committee from big 19, one of Xi’s gang, Zhao Leji,65 years old. After him, Wang Huning, 67 years old, already mentioned.
After Mr. Wang is Cai Qi, 67 years old, currently mayor of Beijing. Also a former subordinate of Xi in Zhejiang province, Mr. Cai proved his loyalty to Xi by a famous purge of “low quality population” of Beijing. Cai claimed that Beijing, already having 23 million people, was too big and needed to be controlled. In November 2017, a fire broke out in the suburb of Beijing where “low quality people” lived. Cai took that opportunity to start a 40 days campaign to evict people in those areas. It does not matter if people rented their apartments legally, as long as they didn’t have Beijing registration and lived in those neighbourhood, their belongings will be thrown out to the streets and their factories will be bulldozed and they have to leave, in the middle of a very cold winter. The cruelty was shocking, when young children were left on the street with their families in the cold. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were hushed out of the city where they have lived for a dozen years to help build the capital city. Many of them were in tears. Social media was outraged and quickly censored. And of course, this guaranteed Mr. Cai’s bright political future.
After Mr. Cai is Ding Xuexiang, 60 years old, who worked with Xi in Shanghai and was brought to Beijing by Xi. The last one, Li Xi,66 years old, is supposedly connected to Xi through their fathers.
All four new comers were quickly promoted by Xi to race to the committee. Bloomberg has a report with graphs to show how Xi promoted them.
Now with people loyal to him, many of them having no other political merit but Xi’s support, Xi is surrounded with yes men. They are not only the oldest Standing Committee, but also with the least education and experience. Most of them went to universities during cultural revolution with political recommendations, like Xi himself.
The 24 members Politburo is also filled with Xi’s men. Even Mr. Hu Chunhua, who is slightly younger (59 years old) and capable, was pushed out. And it is not just Mr. Hu. The Politburo is filled with only Xi’s men.
Joerg Wuttke, Vice President and Chief Representative of BASF China, and President of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China sums up the 20th Party Congress and shares the “independent voice of European businesses in China” on the future economic and foreign policies under Emperor Xi Jinping: “China Used to be a One-Way Street of Happiness and Rising Prosperity, But That’s Over Now”.
You can read the full interview here.
Here are some excerpts:
Q: Mr. Wuttke, what are your most important findings from the 20th Party Congress?
A: ….. We have to state clearly today: Ideology is once again taking precedence over the interests of the economy in China.Q: Li Keqiang or Wang Yang, people with a more pro-business and pro-reform background, have left the Politburo. Has this faction been cast out?
A: The reformers have been totally cut off. They are veterans, they have certainly dissented with the President from time to time, but in the end, they simply belonged to the wrong circle. Even more disappointing, in my view, is that Vice Premier Hu Chunhua has also been cast out. I think very highly of him, he has done a lot of good for the investment climate for foreign companies. He is only 59, but now he didn’t even get into the Politburo, which would have been normal after two terms as Vice Premier.Q: What do you read into this?
A: It shows me that the opening up of the Chinese economy is not going to continue. We are now dealing with a situation where, in the next five months, the entire economic policy elite, which includes highly respected figures like Liu He, will step down in one fell swoop. This is dangerous, especially at a time when the Chinese economy is already crippled.Q: But you would say that the growth model that has driven China over the last three to four decades is dead?
A: Yes. That was brought home to us symbolically with the forced departure of ex-president Hu Jintao.
That Xi was going to be Emperor is expected. What was previously unknown is how arrogant and ignorant Xi is. The fact that he purged veteran and capable bureaucrats from the core leadership and surrounded himself with yes men makes him a very dangerous leader.
Xi makes it clear that he will not compromise and that his word and only his word matters. In a way, it makes ‘understanding’ China next 5 years very clear: what Xi says is what will happen.
Taiwan beware. Chinese Economy beware. And ZERO COVID is not going away any time soon.
The financial analysts understood all this: the stock market crumbled on Monday.
Many conspiracy theories alleged that the USA was launching a financial attack on the wonderful economy of China.
Luckily, according to rumors, China’s state banks swooped in to save the market.
Meanwhile, ordinary Chinese are anxious to migrate out of the country. This topic dominates social media, especially Wechat/Weixin and Twitter. Even those without much money are looking for ways to get out with student visa or work visa. People are comparing this moment to 1949, when CCP took over China, and many people ran away to overseas or to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Those who stayed, or returned from overseas, suffered tremendously under Mao’s ruling.