EC China’s Political Tea Leaves

The 19th Party Congress in China is winding down. President Xi was the core leader before the Congress, and his priorities drove the agenda for the past five years. Expectations for a dramatic shift in policy or priorities seem unfounded. 

There is declaratory policy and operational policy, and much of the speeches and analysis have focused on the former. What does China say it is going to do?  

There seems to be a consensus that the 19th Party Congress was about President Xi consolidating power. This seems to have largely been accomplished before the Congress. Institutional rivals, like the Communist Youth League, have largely been neutered. Xi had already emerged as the third great leader after Mao and Deng Xiaoping. Former Australian Prime Minister Rudd, in an op-ed piece in the Financial Times yesterday suggested that Xi has now eclipsed Deng.  

Be that as it may, one of the important aspects of the 19th Party Congress is not about policies but about personal. In particular, the issue is who will be on the Standing Committee, the executive arm of the Politburo’s Central Committee. This will be clear tomorrow.  

However, we learned today that Wang Qishan was not named to the Central Committee. This is potentially important. Wang is 69 years old, and under the informal rules (eight down, seven up), he was due to retire. Some observers suggested that Xi would allow him to stay, which would ostensibly create a precedent for Xi to stay after this five-year term. Wang has had a number of posts, but most recently has overseen the crackdown on corruption as the Head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. It is still to be seen if Wang, a confidante of President Xi is given another post that allows him to still influence the party.  

Tomorrow the top leaders of the Politburo and its Standing Committee will be announced. The important element here is that given the opaqueness of Chinese politics, insiders and outsiders are looking for clues into Xi’s successor. The successor is picked at the start of the second five-year term.  Some suspect that Xi is not interested in picking a successor now, either because he wants a third term or to be strategically flexible. In Chinese politics, this would be conveyed very subtly. If the other people that join Xi on the Standing Committee were born before 1960, it would indicate that no successor has been named, given the age limits.