On 16 October 2022, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will convene its 20th Congress to elect the country’s leader. Xi Jinping is most likely to secure a third term then as the President of China.
Xi Jinping has transformed the Chinese leadership from a collective leadership, with the general secretary being primus inter pares on the politburo standing committee to what can be termed as a singular autocrat.
A decade ago (in 2012), at the CCP’s 18th Congress, he assumed position as the general secretary of the CCP and chairman of the Central Military Commission. In March 2013, he was elected as the president of China.
Xi Jinping’s control on the Asian superpower was meteoric. He has single-handedly carved out his position as the most powerful ruler of China since Mao Zedong, who founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
He side-stepped the premier’s economic policy-making responsibilities, by taking on the mantle of various incisive groups within China, including a new group formed in 2012, after he came to power, for “reform and opening up”, as well as an existing group on finance.
On his own steam, he took on the role of cleansing the Chinese apparatus of corruption and disloyalty by investigating and sacking millions of officials and replacing them with his allies and loyalists.
He planted his allies to take control of party human resources management, so that personnel appointments of apparatchiks would assuage his control and influence. He cracked down on the police force and justice system to cleanse it off disloyalists.
From 2015, he ordered the parliament and other bodies including the cabinet and supreme court to brief him on their annual work reports. He amended the party constitution, in 2017, to include Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Having an appellative philosophy made him as ideologically prepotent as his most powerful predecessors Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
And, perhaps, the most significant of his moves, was his repealing of the constitutional arrangement for term limits for president, thus plotting his own leadership for life.
Xi’s rise is a story of ruthless ambition, prepared to do all it takes to annihilate dissent and to superimpose himself and his ideology on every walk of Chinese life. He has asserted a unified leadership rather than the traditional collective leadership, abolishing factionalism and founding a centralised faction for himself. He has steadfastly sustained the position that Xi Jinping is the core of the CCP’s Central Committee, and that this premise is the unequivocal political responsibility of all.
Xi holds all top civil and military positions. If Xi continues to lead China for as long as he pleases, incumbent politburo members will lose their chance of promotions. This can be the cause of much unhappiness and irascibility in the ranks.
Meanwhile, Xi’s tenure has seen the awesome rise of China as a military power as well as increased belligerence on its part, much to the consternation of the Western block and China’s neighbours. He has a dream for China’s peerless greatness.
Despite the humongous wealth that his family has amassed, he seems not interested in personal enrichment but in making China the nonpareil power in the world. His vision is that China experiences the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” in his lifetime.
With this end in mind, he has come down hard on civil society movements, independent media and academic freedoms. He has been merciless in dealing with dissent in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, arrantly snubbing international protestations about Chinese handling of these regions and their peoples.
He has made it his career’s objective to secure reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, and has challenged the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to acquire the capability for a successful invasion of the self-governed island nation.
His tenure has been marked by increased Chinese economic and diplomatic might across the globe, through the bolstering of the Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI), that was founded in 2013, to improve connectivity and cooperation on a transcontinental scale. Today, the BRI spans nearly 150 countries, with a total investment of USD 47 billion (as of 2020). Chinese institutions have publicly committed as much as USD 1.4 trillion to finance belt and road projects through to 2049.
On the economic front, Xi’s policies have had negative implications. His attempt to control what is viewed as the profusion in the market, and cracking down on the power and influence of companies, particularly in the tech sector, and his prerogative to reduce carbon emissions, coupled with the recent power crisis, the bursting of the real estate bubble, zero-Covid measures, demographic decline, the limits of capital-intensive growth, and a gradual deceleration in productivity growth, have weakened the Chinese economy.
Since 1978, the Chinese economy has been growing at an average of 8 percent, but GDP rose by just 0.4 percent over the past four quarters, compared to the national target of 5.5 percent growth. Youth unemployment was nearly 20% in July 2022.
Lowy Institute has prognosticated that China will likely experience a substantial long-term growth slowdown. Even with continued broad policy success, annual economic growth will slow to about 3 percent by 2030 and 2 percent by 2040, while averaging 2–3 percent overall from now until 2050.
Xi’s endeavour to supersede economic gains for political control is probably coalescing the advent of a recession. This will reverse the trend that Deng Xiaoping’s liberalised economic regulations had set off.
There is increasing worry among the international community, that China is on a slowing trajectory, or what is worse, it could be on the brink of economic collapse. If Chinese demand falls, prices will slump for everything from oil to steel. And all markets will sink, including global financial markets. The fact is, with China being the factory of the world and its predominance as the world’s resources guzzler, if China sneezes the world will catch the flu.
On the geopolitical front, Xi’s obduracy over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the human rights abuses in Xinjiang have won him no international accolades. The hegemonistic tussle with the US for global power and influence is not making things any easier. And the US is seeking to take increased measures at deterrence – economic, military and diplomatic. To add to the antagonism, China’s explicit rhetoric in favour of Russia and Xi’s close ties with Vladimir Putin have not helped China’s case with the US.
Xi’s tenure has seen simmering tensions with not only the US, but also with its neighbours in South-east Asia, as well as with South Korea and Japan, due to his obstinate territoriality. Indo-Pacific powers like India and Australia are confronting the problem of China’s redoubtable truculence by increasing military spend and forming alliances with the US like Quad and AUKUS.
For Xi, the obsession for the centrality of his leadership over economic priorities and his lack of goodwill with affluent democracies, may cost the Chinese economy dearly into his probable third term. His ledger is also tarnished by the mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, the recent power crisis, and a nationalism that has taken precedence over international relations.
Xi’s dream of a ‘Great China’ may likely come at a great cost to the Chinese nation as well as the world.
montes-musings.blog 
good research
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