Four Days for a Century of History: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Monday kicked off its biggest meeting of the year, which is set to set President Xi Jinping’s historic vision in stone. In power for nine years, the strongman from Beijing is about to win a third term as the CCP in a year – further strengthening his stature as the most powerful leader in the country since the founder of the communist regime, Mao Tse- toung, in power from 1949 to 1976.
Without waiting for the XXth Congress in autumn 2022, the PCC gathers until Thursday its Central Committee, its “parliament”, which has not yet met this year. As usual, this plenum takes place behind closed doors, away from the eyes of foreign media. In a brief dispatch, the New China Agency simply announced that the conclave had started Monday morning.
On the agenda: a resolution on the history of the Party, which celebrated its hundredth anniversary last July. Xi Jinping “explained” the content of this resolution to the Central Committee, according to New China. “This resolution is clearly in line with Xi Jinping’s approach aimed at prolonging his presence at the head of the party after the 20th Congress”, observes Alice Ekman, analyst responsible for Asia at the Institute of Studies of European Union Security (EUISS). Hence the need for him to impose his vision of power: to strengthen the authority of the Party in order to avoid the fate of the communist regime in the defunct Soviet Union.
The private brought back to life
Xi Jinping could take advantage of this resolution to “clean up the moments in history that he does not like”, in particular the excesses of the economic reforms launched at the end of the 1970s, assumes in a podcast the sinologist Chris Johnson , from the Center for Strategic International Studies, a Washington think tank. During its century of existence, the CCP adopted only two resolutions on history: one in 1945, four years before Mao took power, and the other in 1981, when Deng Xiaoping launched the reforms. which have made China the second largest economy in the world.
Deng took the opportunity to turn the page on Maoism by criticizing the excesses of his predecessor, such as the forced industrialization of the “Great Leap Forward” and the chaos of the “Cultural Revolution”. Xi Jinping “will he do to Deng what Deng did to Mao by criticizing the excesses of the policy of reform and openness?” Asks Chris Johnson. This would fit into the logic of bringing the private sector to heel in recent months, such as the digital economy or real estate, of which one of the big names, the developer Evergande, is on the verge of bankruptcy as a result. new government debt regulations.
“The weight of the CCP in the economy has grown very rapidly over the past three years. The process of liberalization initiated by the previous leaders is fundamentally called into question ”, observes Alice Ekman, author of“ Bright Red, the Chinese Communist Ideal ”.
” One sleepless night “
There is little doubt that Xi Jinping is seeking to further increase his influence in the country, the first struck almost two years ago by the coronavirus epidemic. The Chinese media keep repeating that the “zero Covid” policy followed by the authorities is the right one, despite the epidemic resurgences observed in several regions. In a very long dispatch broadcast on Saturday, the China news agency reports that the president spent “a sleepless night” in January 2020 just before imposing a quarantine in Wuhan (center), the city at the epicenter of the epidemic .
“Time has shown that this strict approach is the only viable option,” writes the official news agency. For New China, Xi Jinping is “a determined and active man, a man of reflection and deep feelings, a man who has inherited a history but does not hesitate to innovate and a man who has a vision for the future and is determined to work tirelessly ”.