Chinese leader Xi Jinping has emerged from a five-year congress with even more power over the ruling Communist Party. AFP examines how Xi should deal with the country’s key issues.
– Slowing Economy –
China’s slowing economy is likely to dominate Xi’s next five years in power, but his decision to fill the Communist Party’s top leadership with loyalists has fueled concerns that he is prioritizing ideology at the expense of growth.
After decades of high growth, China’s economy is running out of steam, and analysts widely expect the country to struggle to meet its 2022 growth target of around 5.5 percent.
And Xi’s move suggests that the days of the liberal reformers who ran the world’s second-biggest economy are over.
While China’s private sector has grown rich on easy credit and juicy profits over the past few decades, Beijing’s next term could return to old-school economic management, with a new emphasis on propping up heavy industry and a continuation of the crackdown on big tech .
Xi has championed the development of a more consumer-oriented economy – a policy known as “dual circulation” – and has sought to address China’s yawning wealth gap under the banner of “shared prosperity.”
As the United States promises to prioritize maintaining a “lasting competitive advantage” over China as the two superpowers battle for tech dominance, Beijing could come under increasing pressure internationally as domestic growth slows.
– Tensions around Taiwan –
After years of escalating tensions with Taiwan, an increasingly emboldened Xi may decide the time has come to fulfill Beijing’s long-standing ambition to retake the self-governing democratic island.
US officials have argued that the world is closer than ever to conflict over the island – and that China could invade as early as this year.
China has made a “fundamental decision that the status quo is no longer acceptable and that Beijing is committed to moving forward with reunification at a much faster timeline,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this month.
Beijing insists its policy towards Taiwan has not changed, but rhetoric and actions towards the island have become more outspoken.
The Communist Party for the first time enshrined its opposition to Taiwan independence in its constitution at its just-concluded congress, which gave Xi a third term in power.
But any attempt to invade Taiwan would wreak havoc in global supply chains — the island is a major supplier of semiconductors, an essential part of almost all modern electronics, from smartphones to kitchen appliances to cars.
It would also provoke outrage in the West, deepen China’s isolation, bring Beijing and Washington closer than ever to direct military confrontation, and erase Taiwan’s hard-earned democratic freedoms.
– Zero Covid –
Xi will also have to decide on the future of China’s strict zero-Covid policy – and whether the country is now ready to open up to the outside world after two years of closed borders and strict quarantines.
Politics weighs on the economy, with officials this week blaming the epidemic for rising unemployment.
“Consumption is unlikely to recover to pre-Covid levels with the current level of Covid control,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China.
And as Covid rules slowly ease in China’s semi-autonomous Hong Kong region to attract more international capital, Xi may decide the economic costs outweigh the benefits of tight control.
But the Chinese leader’s speech to party loyalists last week gave no sign that the rigid policies – which have forced millions into lockdowns over just a handful of cases while the rest of the world learns to live with the virus – are about to give way would.
And with the success of the zero-Covid policy so closely tied to Xi’s legitimacy, it looks unlikely to be eased anytime soon – no matter what the cost to the economy.
– human rights –
China under Xi has seen the near-total obliteration of civil society, with scores of activists fleeing the country and opposition to the government all but wiped out.
And in the far-western region of Xinjiang, more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are being imprisoned in what the United States and lawmakers in Western countries have called genocide, according to human rights groups.
The situation is unlikely to improve over the next five years as Xi’s power becomes increasingly unassailable and the leadership remains on the heels of international pressure.
Xi’s next term is likely to see him “continue his profound assault on human rights across the country and around the world,” wrote Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson.
