Profiles
The apocalyptic scenes from Shanghai this past week — a city of 26 million in full lockdown, empty streets, residents confined to apartments, widespread complaints of food shortages, COVID positive children taken away from parents — were for the rest of the world reminiscent of 2020 and the height of the pandemic. Since then, much of the world has emerged from months of lockdowns and, by vaccinating their populations, has come to live with the virus.
Not so China, the only country in the world still holding on to its “zero COVID” strategy, despite vaccinating much of its population. On April 8, China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said most of the more than 100,000 recent cases in Shanghai, which remains in complete lockdown, were mild. Regardless, even asymptomatic cases have been forced to stay in massive central quarantine facilities. Children who tested positive were taken away from their parents, prompting a nationwide outcry. Those confined to their homes are struggling to get enough fresh vegetables to feed their families and relying on government supplies.
Some have suggested the government’s fears of deaths among the elderly, of whom one-third remain unvaccinated, prompted these stringent measures that have come with huge economic costs. Others, however, suggest the answer to the extreme approach lies not in public health, but in politics.
Year of change
This November, the top leaders of the Communist Party of China will gather in Beijing for their once-in-five-year National Congress. The stakes are high for General Secretary and President Xi Jinping, who will mark 10 years at the helm and begin a third five-year term. The 20th National Congress will decide China’s political future for the next decade and possibly beyond. Despite the many current challenges, Mr. Xi heads into it in a strong position and in firm grip of China’s military and security establishment with no immediate rivals. Yet, how he rides over the current obstacles will determine how much he gets his way come November.
It is a “foregone conclusion” that Mr. Xi will rule for a third term and there is “a high likelihood of a fourth term”, says Willy Wo-Lap Lam, Hong Kong-based political scientist. “Even beyond 2032, when he will only be 79 which is the same age as [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden now, it is possible he will stay on, even if not as General Secretary of the Party but keeping the most powerful position in China, which his Chairman of the Central Military Commission,” the third crown he wears, Mr. Lam observed this week speaking at the Heritage Foundation.
In China’s recent history, congresses have played a key role in shaping not only the political direction of the CPC but more broadly the country’s political climate. The first ever congress, held in 1921 in Shanghai, established the CPC as an underground outfit. Indeed, police raided the first ever gathering, so the congress had to be concluded in secret on a boat on a lake near Shanghai.
The Seventh Congress, in the CPC’s revolutionary base of Yanan in 1945, established Mao Zedong as the party’s ideological luminary. Right before the congress, the party passed its first resolution on history that established Mao’s thought as the leading ideology. The 11th Congress, in 1977, saw the CPC change direction and end a decade of Maoist chaos and excess during the Cultural Revolution. A second historical resolution, four years later, turned the page on Maoism as the guiding ideology and acknowledged Mao’s mistakes, bringing China into the Deng Xiaoping-led reform era.
The Succession question
Past congresses have usually offered the platform for political heirs to emerge. Indeed, Mr. Xi had, following the 17th Congress in 2007, come out as the surprise heir to Hu Jintao, outmanoeuvring Mr. Hu’s protégé Li Keqiang, who instead became the second-ranked leader when they both took over in 2012. At the congress five years later, Mr. Xi stunned China’s political world by not anointing his successor then, as was the norm. Then the following year, he changed China’s constitution and dumped, as Mr. Lam puts it, the “institutional reforms” put in place by Deng to ensure smooth successions such as term limits. Mr. Lam doesn’t expect any successor to be appointed this year too, which effectively means Mr. Xi will be in power for the next decade at the very least, because heirs are usually groomed over one term.
The CPC, in November last year, passed its only third ever historical resolution, establishing Mr. Xi as the third major leader after Mao and Deng and calling on the party to “resolutely uphold his core position”. If this underlined Mr. Xi’s dominance, the outcomes of the 20th Congress, which will see sweeping changes in the Politburo and Central Committee and the retirement of many officials, will provide clearer clues of the actual extent of Mr. Xi’s power, which is not without limits.
For instance, the choice of the next Politburo Standing Committee — and how many of Mr. Xi’s acolytes occupy the top posts — will be one such indicator, as also the selection of the next Premier. Among current Vice Premiers who may be chosen are Wang Yang and Hu Chunhua both of whom, like Mr. Li, share close ties with former leader Hu Jintao. Mr. Xi could break with protocol and choose another official who isn’t a Vice Premier or is above the retirement age of 68, moves which would underline his influence.
If signs are that Mr. Xi may be in tight control over all the levers of power, he is not in an ideal position with the country currently dealing with “a convergence of headwinds”, according to China scholar Jude Blanchette at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Fragile recovery
At home, China’s economic recovery remains fragile, complicated by the after-effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which has also posed a geopolitical headache for China, widening its rifts with the West. Questioning the costs of Mr. Xi’s strong support to Vladimir Putin, Hu Wei, a scholar at the Public Policy Research Center of the State Council or Cabinet, warned last month “China will become more isolated” and “encounter further containment” from the U.S. and Europe. Relations with neighbours, including India, remain fraught. Ties with the U.S., which nosedived with Donald Trump, have remained tense with the Biden administration as well.
If congress years in the past have been marked by intense political manoeuvring, this year’s event takes place amid looming economic challenges within China, which remain the CPC’s biggest concern.
In recent days, headlines in the Chinese media have listed a series of economic troubles. The real estate sector, a driver of GDP growth, remains in strife. Sales of top 50 developers fell 47% in the first quarter, financial magazine Caixin reported this week, even lower than during the 2020 peak of the pandemic.
So is the tech sector, which lost $1 trillion in value during the crackdown by Mr. Xi’s regulators, who also launched probes into giants such as Alibaba and Tencent. Private sector sentiment is the lowest since the reform era began. For now, the government has loosened the purse strings to keep the economy ticking and to create jobs, although its continuing COVID lockdowns have borne huge economic costs. China now remains the only country still closed off from the rest of the world, with the government continuing to insist on “zero COVID”.
That is, however, one major positive that Mr. Xi will highlight in the view of some observers in Beijing: his legacy in dealing with the pandemic and two years of “zero COVID” in China offering a sharp contrast to the West and the millions of deaths abroad. Hence the sweeping lockdown of Shanghai, no matter the economic costs and grievances of residents.
Victory over the virus, the party has declared, must come at any cost. This is especially true during the year of the congress, when the stakes are higher than ever.
