Xi's three congresses: from murder to heaven

Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 to save the Communist Party of China through the same method that the party had eradicated in 1982, by counterproductive: being the only, the undisputed, the powerful leader of China.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
16 October 2022 Sunday 23:30
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Xi's three congresses: from murder to heaven

Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 to save the Communist Party of China through the same method that the party had eradicated in 1982, by counterproductive: being the only, the undisputed, the powerful leader of China. Back to Mao Zedong. On the eve of the XX Congress of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping has achieved his last objectives and all the levers of power in China are in his hands and without deadlines. Ten years ago, a bizarre murder convinced the old guard of the need to recover the figure of the "emperor", providential in confusing times.

Xi Jinping controls the Communist Party and the Communist Party controls China. That was the pact forged at the 18th CP Congress, held in Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People in 2012. The atmosphere was tense. Cyclically, cases of corruption among high officials - the party has 96.7 million members - provoked murmurs and popular discontent. Months before the conference, a British businessman was found dead in a Chongqing hotel. The police tried to cover up what happened and might have succeeded if it hadn't been an "election" year. The perpetrator of the crime was the wife of Bo Xilai, the Party's strongman in the city of 31 million people, and one of the Politburo members best placed to succeed Hu Jintao, the CP General Secretary who was to leave his vacant seat at the XVIII Congress, always in the fall. Bo Xilai was expelled from the party and sentenced to life imprisonment. In China, falls from grace are not skids...

The PC Congresses are conclaves that are reached with everything agreed, so the delegates -2,296 this 2022- are limited to staging the unity of the party, an essential image to discourage disorders and guarantee the monopoly of power in a vast and authoritarian like China, which has never known a democratic form of government.

The murder of the British businessman revealed the semi-feudal power of the regional barons and the risk that this entailed for a centralist party in command of a centralist state. The outgoing Secretary General Hu Jintao gave way after two five-year terms, a limit agreed to precisely avoid the repetition of lifelong "reigns" such as that of Mao Zedong, father of the People's Republic who ruled between 1949 and 1976, date of his passing.

The verdict of Hu and other Politburo veterans at the 18th Congress was the promotion of Xi Jinping, the son of a historic Party leader, victimized during the "cultural revolution" – like his sons – despite which Xi joined the PC in 1974, at the age of 21. He was one of the so-called "princes", inheritors of a patrimonial feeling of the party, also nurtured in the schools and institutes reserved for the communist elite. “The sense of ownership never dies. The sense of pride and superiority, neither, ”explained a US diplomat to The New Yorker to understand the keys to Xi's election in 2012. He was responsible for the JJ.OO. in Beijing in 2008, a success of management and foreign projection. And he had an unblemished record when it came to corruption. The ideal profile with a touch of closeness, genuine or cultivated but effective, to dispel the fame of haughtiness of his peers.

Very few CP Congresses have been convulsive and none transparent, even now, when decisive decisions are taken behind closed doors and a secrecy comparable to the best years of the USSR is maintained. The last conflictive congress was the IX, held in 1969, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, the most serious and damaging campaign orchestrated by Mao Zedong (hence the aversion of his successors to a strong man and their desire for a more collegiate leadership) . 80% of the Central Committee was purged and Mao's dolphin, Lin Biao, died in a mysterious plane crash in 1971. The 18th Congress enthroned Xi Jinping with a general feeling that power should be concentrated in one person, something to which Deng Xiaoping, the father of economic reform, had opposed it. Deng passed away in 1997…

Between the November 2012 congress and the 2013 annual meeting of the National Assembly, a surrogate parliament, Xi Jinping pushes for a ruthless commission on corruption (his critics say he was a battering ram to eliminate potential party rivals) and adds all the relevant positions, an unusual concentration since Mao Zedong: general secretary of the Communist Party, president of the Republic -a relatively honorary position-, president of the Military Commission of the PC -domain of the army-, and president of the Control Commission , which oversees the fight against corruption and selects senior provincial officials. In those first five years, the CP eliminates the unwritten limits of two terms and includes in its constitution the recognition of "Xi Jinping thought", of Maoist evocations. The National Assembly withdraws in 2018 the presidential limitation of two terms (although the position that punctures and cuts is that of general secretary of the PC). Nothing moves in China without his consent. Or that tries to project the PC to society and abroad.

Naturally, Xi Jinping has been developing an authoritarian character and a very personalistic style that allowed him at the XIX Congress, in 2017, to break with the recent tradition of "pointing out" a possible successor. The successor was him. In this way, he nipped in the bud the inevitable speculation and movement of factions within the CP. The meeting was placid and without much interest other than the announcement of its "electoral program" for the next five years, eminently economic, a balance reached in 2022 with the plus of China's return to the sphere of great power, the second, today, after the United States. The verdict of history will be seen in this third five-year period, which begins with all the support there has been and will continue to be within the Communist Party of China.