On October 12, the final plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concluded, as it usually does, with the outgoing committee giving its approval for the work report that Xi Jinping will present at the 20th Party Congress, as well as for unspecified amendments to the party’s constitution. What is more remarkable is the near absence of informed leaks about the personnel changes and policy direction that will come forth when the 20th Party Congress opens in Beijing on October 16. This silence underscores the extent of personalistic rule and authoritarian control that Xi has developed. A once predictable political system with norm-bound succession rules has been replaced by the uncertainties that inevitably arise when individuals dominate.

The joint communique issued by the plenum gave no clues on what constitutional changes might be in the offing. In 2017, it involved the incorporation of Xi Jinping Thought into the party constitution. One may expect that the changes will be directly related to Xi. The question is whether they will be titular in nature such as elevating Xi to a newly re-created position of Party Chairman or more substantive such as by enshrining the idea of Xi as both China’s Thought Leader and Chief Executive. The communique issued by the just-concluded plenum declares Xi’s role to have a “decisive bearing” on China’s development, which makes it highly unlikely that he is going away anytime soon.

What is noteworthy is the contextual contrast between the message that the final plenum of the 18th Central Committee put out in 2017 and the one put out by the current one. The 2017 communique was imbued with positivity and hope about the “comprehensive and ground-breaking” achievements that Xi had made in his first five-year term, when China still enjoyed a positive image in the west. The latest communique issued on Wednesday is darker and highlights the challenges of a “complex and severe international environment” and the difficulties of balancing the triad of economic development, social stability and epidemic control.

The party wants the Chinese public to weigh Xi’s achievements against this new circumstance in which China finds itself. This time Xi is portrayed as someone who can “carry out our great struggle, develop our great cause and pursue our great dream”. He is now the leader who can face the difficulties and challenges of steering China “closer to the centre of the world stage” by 2049.

His report to the 20th Congress that begins on Sunday will, hopefully, outline his plans for the next decade. How he will balance his harsh policy of pandemic control with the necessity of more economic opening-up but without either policy affecting overall stability, is what we should be on the lookout for. Whether the world likes it or not, an USD 18 trillion economy and a formidable military still make China, despite problems, a formidable engine of growth and a significant influencer of global happenings. The leadership is aware that double-digit growth may never return, and is grappling with the headwinds that Covid has created as well as the technology war that the Americans have launched to deny China the edge. The question is whether the rising unemployment, rolling lock-downs and falling growth might lead to further reform or to further securitisation of the economy and hardening of domestic supply chains in preparation for the coming contest with America. Xi has previously surprised everybody and may do so again. What happens in Beijing next week will, therefore, be critically important for the world.

Comparisons with Mao are inevitable. There is a fierce debate over whether Xi is taking China back to Mao-ism. Yuen Yuen Ang, an astute observer of contemporary China, has pointed out earlier this year in her essay titled ‘How Resilient is the Chinese Communist Party?’, that whereas Mao incited chaos, Xi fears it. Mao was willing to break state institutions. Xi may have drastically weakened them but the civilian and security bureaucracies still remain the backbone of Xi’s power. His efforts in the previous 10 years have been to reinstate the party’s grip upon them through political campaigns and not, like Mao, to eliminate these bureaucracies. Xi is essentially a man of order.

What should we look for in the coming week? Personnel changes are on the cards. Appointments to the Politburo Standing Committee are one indicator of how dominant Xi is and whether others have the ability to check his authority. More significant will be the broad direction of economic policy, especially how he will handle the housing bubble, whether he will allow the private sector to replace state-driven investment in core technologies and when and how he will draw down Covid restrictions.

On the national security front, there is a general feeling that he will move China further down the road to becoming a national-security state. And in foreign policy there should be no expectation that China will reset its frameworks like the Global Security and Development Initiatives for the restructuring of the international order. For India there will be direct and indirect implications on many fronts and, for that reason, we need to read the outcomes of the 20th Party Congress correctly and not allow the west to interpret its meaning for us.

Gokhale is author of ‘After Tiananmen: The Rise of China’ and former Foreign Secretary

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