Xi Jinping has stacked the senior Chinese Communist party ranks with loyalists, showing China’s ever more powerful leader favours loyalty over merit – and wants rule insulated from criticism or questioning.
The appointments, which were revealed on Sunday, have raised concerns that Xi has surrounded himself with “yes men” as he leads China through what he called the “choppy waters” of the future, some of which are of his own making. The country is facing domestic economic troubles and worsening global tensions as Xi doubles down on threats to annex Taiwan.
At the conclusion of the party’s twice-a-decade congress on Sunday, the new members of the most powerful political bodies were revealed to include Xi acolytes in the most senior positions, with factional rivals swept away.
The already poor female representation at the top was also erased. For the first time in 25 years there was no woman on the politburo; there has never been a woman on the highest seat of power the politburo standing committee.
As expected, Xi was reappointed for a precedent-breaking third term as head of the party, and chair of the military, having abolished term limits in 2018. A decade of political purges, increased surveillance and tightened social control has resulted in the 69-year-old leader consolidating personal power to a level not seen since Mao Zedong.
Sunday’s appointments, which also brought domestic security chiefs and military figures into his circle of power, showed Xi had now effectively rooted out potential opposition to him being leader for life, analysts said.
“The new politburo is an emphatic statement of Xi’s dominance over the party,” Richard McGregor, a senior east Asia analyst at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute thinktank, told Reuters.
“Xi has dispensed with the old factional system, such as it was. He has crushed expectations that he would nurture a successor. He has ignored the informal age caps on officials serving in top positions.”
Sung Wen-ti, a lecturer in political science at the Australian National University, said the lineup was an “an unmistakable sign that the era of winner takes all politics is upon us”.
“Xi has reiterated several times that the performance indicators that matters above all in Xi’s new era is political loyalty,” said Sung. “He felt no need to assign a spot to an alternative faction, which shows his priority is projecting dominance over magnanimity, when he is facing international pushback.”
On Sunday morning, the seven members of the new politburo standing committee (PSC), Xi’s inner circle, were presented to the press. Filing on stage in order of descending rank behind the president, the men ranged from a friend with ties to his family going back decades, to more recent aides who have proved their commitment to his rule and a hardline ideologue who is his chief political theorist.
Out of the door went senior figures considered to be prospective rivals to Xi, including Li Keqiang, who was premier, and Wang Yang, widely seen as a candidate for the next premiership but now removed from the 204-member central committee entirely, sending him and Li into retirement.
Hu Chunhua had been tipped as a prospective new PSC member, but Xi found no place for the 59-year-old who was perceived by some analysts as a potential threat to the leader. Hu was considered to be the least Xi-aligned prospect, having risen through the ranks as a member of the Communist youth league, Xi’s rival faction linked to former leader Hu Jintao. Hu was escorted from the stage at the closing of the party congress on Saturday, apparently reluctantly, in an episode that sealed Xi’s pre-eminence.
“The more Xi is surrounded by “yes” men … the greater the concern that Xi will only hear what people think he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear,” said Prof Margaret Lewis, an expert on Chinese and Taiwanese law at Seton Hall University. “This is a worrisome trend and it’s hard to see it reversing course as Xi’s leadership continues.”
The Xi era so far has led to China becoming increasingly isolated from the west amid tensions over human rights abuses, regional expansionism and aggression, and economic troubles exacerbated by the weaponisation of trade and Beijing’s commitment to a zero Covid policy that has proved damaging to the country’s economy and beyond. Xi’s commitment to annex and “re-educate” Taiwan were this week enshrined in the party constitution.
In a short speech on Sunday, Xi said China would remain open to the world but reasserted his belief in China’s dominance, and warned again of the need to navigate “choppy waters” and “dangerous storms” in China’s future.
“Foreign investors and businesses have desperately searched for signs that liberals or ‘reformers’ will play a role in shaping the economy or bringing back an old economic order that prioritised foreign investment and liberalisation of the economy,” said Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy.
“It is clear from the outcome of the 20th party congress that national security and the party’s political security will take precedence over economic growth.”
Xi also eschewed convention on Sunday by not replacing retiring vice-premier Sun Chunlan, the sole female PSC member. It is the first time in 25 years there has been no woman in the decision-making body.
Dr Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the US-based Jamestown Foundation, said the party had at least in the past paid lip service to gender diversity in its ranks. He said there was at least one female candidate, Shen Yueyue, a former executive deputy head of the powerful Organisation Department, who qualified for elevation but had a background in the Communist youth league.
“To Xi, the most important priority is to exclude the Communist youth league or people who might threaten him [in the politburo. He wouldn’t care about whether there are women or not,” Lam said.
Lam also said the exclusion of Hu, previously widely seen as a top candidate for premiership owing to his incumbent role as a vice-premier of the state council and rich experience in regional governance, sent a message of “deliberate humiliation” to the Communist youth league faction.
The inclusion of the minister of state security, Chen Wenqing, an intelligence officer, in the politburo was another sign Xi was confident of his control over all factions, said the China analyst Alex Joske.
“Past ministers of state security have traditionally been seen as a ‘compromise candidates’ without their own political heft, because no faction wants the other to monopolise such powerful intelligence and security functions that could be used against political rivals,” said Joske, the author of Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World.
“Xi Jinping has heavily purged the security apparatus since becoming leader, which points to both how he recognises it as a potential threat and an incredible source of power. In the wrong hands, it could be used to mount resistance to Xi. The outcome of this party congress suggests that Xi now believes he has the total loyalty of his security tsars.”
