PremiumFew conferences of a ruling party anywhere in the world are likely to be as momentous as the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, scheduled to commence on October 16. Why should that be the case? After all, the re-election of Xi Jinping as party general secretary is a foregone conclusion. The general secretary automatically heads the Standing Committee of the Polit Bureau, the highest decision-making body of the party, as also the Central Military Commission — the People’s Liberation Army is, technically speaking, the armed wing of the Communist Party, and its status as the nation’s defence force derives from the total permeation of the state by the party. The general secretary will also be duly elected as the president of the People’s Republic. Since these outcomes are pre-determined, why all the fuss over the party congress?
For one, it ain’t over till it’s over. In the shadowy world of China’s power politics, don’t really expect the unexpected, but don’t rule it out, either. Xi has defanged his critics in the party, using his anti-corruption campaigns to arrest, intimidate and silence those inclined to challenge his authority. It is unlikely that a threat remains in the party’s woodwork to come out at the last minute to make a difference. Xi, the princeling, as children of those who were party leaders at the time of the Revolution are called, who has graduated to king, is likely to receive yet another coronation.
For another, Xi Jinping, has chosen to shape China’s history in a mould of his choice. It firmly puts the Communist Party fully in command, of strategy, policy and enforcement. China might describe its economic system as Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, but it is quintessentially capitalist, in that labour is a commodity, Karl Marx’s own touchstone for capitalism. A key trait of capitalism is that its genius for creative destruction comes from, and is articulated through, myriad, independent, decentralised decisions by economic agents, once the policy landscape has been shaped by the state.
When Alibaba founder Jack Ma publicly criticised China’s stifling regulation, late in 2020, he was chafing at constraints on that needed decentralised decision-making. Xi’s policy choices shut Jack Ma up, pulled the plug on the public issue planned for Ma’s Ant Financial — and made China’s high-flying tech sector a quiescent vassal of the state and the party, providing facial recognition software repressing the Uighur nationality in Xinjiang; artificial intelligence that lets the party censor Chinse social media; and games for China’s young that promote unambiguously manly or womanly qualities, eschewing gender fluidity and the androgynous styles of K Pop, deemed impediments to reversing China’s course of population decline.
In the mass re-education campaigns for the Muslims of Xinjiang, the relegation of their native tongues to second-class status in Inner Mongolia and Tibet and the promotion of party cells in every factory and every business, Xi has chosen a form of total control that he hopes would prevent a collapse in China of Communist control, of the kind that occurred in the Soviet Union. And, of course, he controls the army. To justify his controls, he calls for common prosperity, drawing on gathering discontent over huge inequalities in the country.
Yet, when the limits of acceptable conduct become too rigid, they also tend to become brittle. Xi’s ascent to a third term as party supremo is likely to set the stage for either stifling further innovation, repressing Chinese growth, or a violent rupture of the party-imposed constraints.
Xi promises to make China great again, in an echo of Trump’s risible revanchism, although the words he uses are different. That greatness entails territorial reclamation of what China deems to be its historical expanse. This brings it in conflict with India, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos and even Nepal and Bhutan, apart from, of course, Taiwan.
All the Southeast Asian countries would be happy to see India emerge as a counterweight to China. India’s size — economic, military, geographic and demographic — makes India the natural counterweight to China. And this is why the US was keen to liberate India from the technology-denial regime in which the West had placed India in the aftermath of nuclear tests, and entered into the nuclear deal with India.
As India grows its economy, international partnerships and geopolitical salience, China has to decide whether to expand its common ground with India or try and stifle India’s growth. On reclaiming a rules-based world trading order or on climate justice, India and China can make common cause, as also on seeking a multipolar, rather than a US-dominated, world. But progress on such cooperation depends on China settling its border with India, on consensual terms. Xi Jinping has given no indication of privileging strategic common ground over Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims.
The party Congress also matters due to its likely endorsement of China’s determination to meet America’s strategy of denying China advanced technology with redoubled efforts to develop its own alternatives. India will need to develop its own route to technological access beyond blackmail by any power.
Two immediate areas of concern also will figure, even if not directly, at the Congress. The Zero Covid strategy that China has been following has been killing China’s growth and disrupting global supply chains that snake through China, contributing to shortage, inflation and slower growth around the world. A re-elected, reassured Xi might be emboldened to reverse course on Covid, without fear of being seen to be vacillating.
Continued support for Russia over the war in Ukraine is another area. True, it is not personal chemistry between Putin and Xi that underwrites China’s stance in the matter. Rather, it is China’s need to maintain a Russian geopolitical power centre as a going concern, in order to escape being the sole focus of US military attention, that explains the support. But Xi’s personal role is not irrelevant either.
As China continues on course to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy, and scrambles to develop matching technological and military capability, it matters to the world what kind of determination China’s leadership would bring to that challenge. The Party Congress holds the answer.