As seen on TV: Xi Jinping’s go to to Hong Kong, 23 June 2022
Anthony Kwan · Getty
When Huawei’s highly effective founder, Ren Zhengfei, stated in August, ‘We should make survival our principal aim’ he was ostensibly speaking about his group’s revenue collapse following US sanctions. However his pessimistic remark was interpreted extra broadly — unexpectedly at a time when Chinese language Communist Social gathering (CCP) leaders had been in conclave within the seaside resort of Beidaihe, getting ready for his or her twentieth Congress.
The congress, which opens on 16 October, will take the unprecedented step of re-appointing Xi Jinping as common secretary, ending the two-term restrict established after Mao Zedong’s demise in 1976. It’s being held at a time when the nation faces challenges at residence — declining progress, air pollution, Covid-19 and a strict lockdown coverage — and overseas — deteriorating relations with the US and neighbours within the China Sea, the struggle in Ukraine and tensions with Taiwan.
See how completely satisfied a sheep [is] when it’s untied, the way it runs away, and you’ll perceive simply how a lot sheep don’t like being tied
The twentieth Congress opens precisely 5 years after the earlier one, maybe to reassure the 96.7 million social gathering members, 2,300 congress delegates and even extraordinary residents that the management is treating this occasion as a matter after all. The congress solely takes place when its key orientation and the composition of the management staff are settled. As a result of, opposite to what we frequently hear within the West, there is debate throughout the CCP’s higher echelons: it’s hushed, even secret, but it surely’s actual. And this yr there are extra causes of friction than Xi anticipated.
The financial system and social points are key factors of pressure. Right here, Xi’s report seems respectable: common progress of 6% (double-digit progress is a factor of the previous); absolute poverty eradicated (although the IMF ranks China 72nd globally by way of per capita wealth); profitable and much-needed infrastructure tasks (railways, motorways, airports); and progress up the commercial (…)
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(5) Interview with Actual Clear Politics, 19 September 2022.
(7) Reuters, London, 15 September 2022.
(8) Quoted in David Ownby, ‘Solar Liping on why sheep don’t wish to be tied up’, Studying the China Dream, 8 September 2022, www.readingthechinadream.com/.
