China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has created a new ruling elite packed with loyalist officials primed to elevate his agenda of bolstering national security and of turning China into a technological great power.
Xi Jinping secured a historic third term as China’s leader and filled his inner circle with close allies, achieving after a decade in power complete dominance over the ruling Communist Party.
The party’s Central Committee elected Xi as its general secretary for another five-year term, bringing the country back towards one-man rule after decades of power-sharing among its elite.
“I wish to thank the whole party sincerely for the trust you have placed in us,” Xi told journalists at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People after the closed-door, rubber-stamp vote was announced.
Xi, 69, was also reappointed head of China’s Central Military Commission, keeping him in charge of the People’s Liberation Army.
He is now all but certain to sail through to a third term as the country’s president, due to be formally announced during the government’s annual legislative sessions in March. The Politburo will have no women members for the first time in 25 years.
Some of Mr. Xi’s most immediate challenges lie in the economy, with the housing market sinking, exports stalling and debt rising. Mr. Xi tried to reassure. “China’s economy is resilient, has ample potential and has ample room for maneuver,” he said.
This means he is likely to take over as premier from Li Keqiang who will retire next year.
Close aide Ding Xuexiang and Guangdong party chief Li Xi, a longtime confidante of the president was among other allies named in the Standing Committee.
“The new Politburo Standing Committee confirms decisively that Xi has consolidated power at the top of the Communist Party to an extent unseen since the Mao era,” said Neil Thomas, a senior China analyst at Eurasia Group.
“Xi has installed allies onto all seven seats of the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, allowing him to dominate the political system for the foreseeable future.”
Alfred Wu Muluan, a Chinese politics expert at the National University of Singapore, said: “It is all Xi’s people, signalling he wants to rule even beyond a third term.”
Xi abolished the presidential two-term limit in 2018, paving the way for him to govern indefinitely.
Xi was swiftly congratulated on Sunday by some of China’s allies, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The United States offered no immediate response.
But the extraordinary events, with Xi seemingly unfazed as Hu was lifted from his chair and escorted out, fuelled frenzied speculation among observers and analysts as to whether there were political factors at play.
Xi has promoted a narrative in his first decade of power that he has rectified huge problems that beset China and the Communist Party during the reigns of Hu and his predecessors.
These include graft within the party and unequal distribution of wealth.
