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Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping made his debut as the new leader of the ruling Communist Party of China(CPC) on November 15 with a strong mandate to continue the country’s economic miracle, improve the lives of the 1.3 billion Chinese people and to tackle problems ranging from a growing income gap to corruption.
Appearing before a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing together with six other newly elected leading members of the Party, the 59-year-old CPC General Secretary told reporters with great confidence, “We are greatly encouraged by both the trust all the comrades of the Party have placed in us and the great expectations the people of all ethnic groups in China have of us, and we are keenly aware that this is also an important responsibility for us.”
“Our people have an ardent love for life. They wish to have better education, more stable jobs, more income, greater social security, better medical services and healthcare, improved housing conditions, and a better environment. They want their children to have sound growth, have good jobs and lead a more enjoyable life,” he added.
“To meet their desire for a happy life is our mission,” Xi stressed.
The seven officials, all members of the Standing Committee of the CPC’s Political Bureau, compose the top leadership of China’s ruling party. Xi was also named chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission.
At the National People’s Congress to be held next spring, some of them will be elected or appointed to high-ranking government posts with five-year terms, formally taking the reins of the world’s second largest economy.
While Xi is expected to assume the presidency to succeed Hu Jintao, 57-year-old Vice Premier Li Keqiang, who is second in rank among the top seven, is widely assumed to replace Wen Jiabao as premier.
With extensive experience at the grassroots level, Xi “understands the feelings of ordinary people and is closely in touch with them,”said Shi Yongming, an associate research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies. Also, he is good at handling international relations and capable of coping with complicated situations, Shi added.
Xi started his career as Party secretary of a village before rising steadily through the ranks. As China’s vice president since 2008, he has assisted President Hu Jintao in state affairs including foreign relations. His widely watched trip to the United States in February helped bolster mutual understanding between China and the United States. He also showed a people-friendly image as he returned to an Iowa town that he visited 27 years ago as a local official from north China’s Hebei Province. Of the seven new senior officials, only Yu Zhengsheng, former Party Secretary of Shanghai, majored in technology at college. The other six majored in social sciences such as economics, political science and history. In the previous Political Bureau Standing Committee, only Xi and Li were students of liberal arts. The other seven held degrees in areas such as hydraulic engineering, geology and geophysics.
“The new leaders are full of vigor,”said Shen Beili, a delegate to the 18th CPC National Congress from the International Department of the CPC Central Committee.“They will build on the achievements of their predecessors to scale new heights.”
Shen said she pins great hopes on these leaders. “Under complicated and changing international and domestic circumstances, they will undertake arduous tasks as they lead Chinese people in building a moderately prosperous society. But I’m confident they will accomplish a lot,” she added.
The leaders were elected by members of the 18th CPC Central Committee at its first plenary session, held the day after the conclusion of the 18th CPC National Congress on November 14. At the congress, more than 2,300 delegates approved a report by Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the 17th CPC Central Committee, charting the course for China’s development in the years ahead. They also cast votes to elect the 205-member 18th CPC Central Committee.
Convened at a time when the world’s economic future is tied to China’s growth, the 18th CPC National Congress was not only a landmark event for China but also had global implications. Most importantly, the congress showed the CPC’s commitment to delivering prosperity and equity to all Chinese people. As it pushes for more balanced development with new leaders in place, China will continue to serve as a global economic powerhouse as well as a staunch guardian for international justice.
Mindful of the opportunities and challenges lying ahead, the new leaders will put the policies agreed upon at the 18th CPC National Congress into practice, observers said.
“The congress is significant,”said Philip Ogunmade, a journalist with THISDAY, the largest newspaper in Nigeria. “China is growing so much. Its development is a miracle. And it took up the opening-up [policy]. Like before, the opening up will continue under the new leadership.”
Better lives
Wan Yu, a delegate from northeast China’s Jilin Province, said she was excited and heartened after hearing the report delivered by Hu Jintao. Wan, principal of a school for orphans in the provincial capital Changchun, told Beijing Review she was glad that the report gave priority to improving people’s livelihoods and enabling them to benefit substantially from China’s development. In her view, these messages are a blessing to orphans, a vulnerable and often marginalized group. “Grand goals such as a moderately prosperous society and social harmony come down to raising people’s living standards,”said Xie Chuntao, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. Hu Jintao’s report to the 18th CPC National Congress called for further improvements in crucial social services such as education, social security and healthcare.
With the bar having been raised, pressures on the new leadership are daunting, said Kerry Brown, Executive Director of the China Studies Center of the University of Sydney. “There are great challenges of social cohesion, inequality and balance in the hardware and software of society,” Brown said.“For the new leadership, these challenges will only grow in complexity as China becomes a middle-income country.”
The report also set the goal of doubling China’s 2010 GDP and the per-capita income of urban and rural residents by 2020. It was the first time for the CPC to include per-capita income in China’s 2020 blueprint for a moderately prosperous society. Previous targets merely called for GDP growth.
The per-capita disposable income of urban residents in China rose 8.4 percent to 21,810 yuan ($3,498) in 2011 from a year earlier after deducting inflation, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Meanwhile, the per-capita net income of rural residents grew 11.4 percent year on year to 6,977 yuan($1,119).
Despite the global economic slowdown, the CPC has promised to make this goal a reality—a pledge that highlights its devotion to the well-being of Chinese people, Xie said.
Fewer than 2 billion people worldwide currently enjoy the standard of living as envisioned in a moderately prosperous society, said Hu Angang, a renowned economist with Tsinghua University and a delegate to the 18th CPC National Congress. When the goal is realized, 1.3 billion Chinese will join this group of affluent people, marking an unprecedented improvement in the well-being of mankind, he said.
“My core argument is that China’s success is a success for the world and China’s failure is a failure for the world,” he said, adding that China will not fail.
In a report published in early November, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said China will overtake the United States by 2016 to become the world’s largest economy.
The International Monetary Fund also predicted in April that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States by 2016 in terms of purchasing power parity. Paradigm shift
While placing emphasis on economic growth, the CPC will spearhead a change in China’s development model. The outdated model under which China pursued GDP growth at the cost of resource depletion, environmental degradation and a widening income gap will give way to a new model defined by the Scientific Outlook on Development. The political theory, which was written into the CPC Constitution as one of the Party’s guiding principles during the 18th CPC National Congress, advocates comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development and a peoplefirst approach.
Hu Jintao gave greater prominence to environmental protection by incorporating ecological progress into the country’s overall development plan together with economic, political, cultural and social progress. He coined the catchphrase, “Beautiful China,” in his report to the 18th CPC National Congress.
Bridging the wealth divide will surely top the Chinese Government’s agenda. Ogunmade, the Nigerian journalist who was in China to cover the CPC congress, said he was amazed by the transformation of Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province from a fishing village to a modern metropolis in less than three decades after a visit there. But he expected China to grow more evenly.
“It should not be only in Guangdong or Beijing; I think all provinces should be developed as well. We believe that the new leadership will take this move further, so that when we come here five years from now, other provinces [will] have grown like Guangdong,” Ogunmade said.
As it rebalances its economy, China will deepen reforms politically to promote social harmony. Hu Jintao vowed in his report to support the exercise of state power by the people through people’s congresses, improve the system of consultative democracy, expand community-level democracy and deepen the reform of the administrative system.
Under the leadership of the CPC, China has advanced political reforms in an incremental way over the past years, Xie said. For instance, the National People’s Congress adopted an amendment to the Electoral Law in March 2010 granting equal representation in legislative bodies to rural and urban residents.
Apart from elections, China emphasizes democratic consultation: The ruling CPC regularly consults other political parties, and villagers now also have opportunities to freely air opinions on village affairs to forge consensus, Xie said.
Administrative reforms, designed to get rid of approval procedures that have become obsolete in the market economy, will help prevent abuse of power and corruption, Xie added. Global vision
While vowing to pursue sustainable development and strengthen CPC self-discipline, Hu Jintao set China’s diplomatic priorities in his report to the 18th CPC National Congress.
The report shed light on some emerging trends on the world stage, said Chen Dongxiao, Vice President of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
For instance, it underlined the importance of cultural diversity in response to the misconception that the U.S. model would dominate the world, a view expounded by many Western scholars since the end of the Cold War. It recognized the emergence of an information society given the impact of new media on information dissemination and international relations.
Against this backdrop, China will continue to cement bonds with other major powers, neighbors and fellow developing countries, the report said. In particular, it will support ef- forts to increase the representation and voice of developing countries in international affairs, while taking an active and responsible role in global issues.
“We will decide our position and policy on an issue on its own merits and work to uphold fairness and justice,” the report said. In keeping with this principle, China contributes to the resolution of international hotspot issues such as the ongoing Syrian crisis with an impartial stance, Chen said.
Shi of the China Institute of International Studies shared Chen’s opinion. He said parties concerned are prone to taking biased views and radical actions when dealing with hotly contested international issues, such as the Syrian crisis and the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. China therefore plays an indispensable role in ensuring fairness, preventing the escalation of conflicts and maintaining peace.
China will not abandon the principle of non-interference in other countries’ domestic affairs, Shi said. However, it will share its views and experience with other countries during bilateral exchanges.
“Peaceful development” has been a buzzword in China’s diplomacy in the past decade. Proposed at the beginning of Hu’s first tenure as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, the notion aims to address fears about the “China threat,” said Xie.
These fears are unjustified primarily because China has achieved an economic takeoff by participating in global competition in accordance with the rules of the World Trade Organization, he said. In light of its per-capita GDP, China needs to focus on its own development and is therefore unable to threaten other countries. Moreover, traditional Chinese culture highly prizes harmony and peace.
China’s peaceful development, however, hinges on the external environment. Peaceful development is possible on condition that China’s core interests are protected, Chen said.
“We are firm in our resolve to uphold China’s sovereignty, security and development interests and will never yield to any outside pressure,” Hu said in his report.
In this sense, China’s military buildup and strong measures to protect territorial integrity are not contradictory to its goal of peaceful development, Chen said.
Nevertheless, long-held tenets such as“peaceful development,” “an independent foreign policy of peace” and “a win-win strategy of opening up” will remain guidelines for China’s diplomacy, Chen said.
At the press conference following his election, Xi also took an open, inclusive stance. “Just as China needs to learn more about the world, so does the world need to learn more about China,” he said.
Appearing before a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing together with six other newly elected leading members of the Party, the 59-year-old CPC General Secretary told reporters with great confidence, “We are greatly encouraged by both the trust all the comrades of the Party have placed in us and the great expectations the people of all ethnic groups in China have of us, and we are keenly aware that this is also an important responsibility for us.”
“Our people have an ardent love for life. They wish to have better education, more stable jobs, more income, greater social security, better medical services and healthcare, improved housing conditions, and a better environment. They want their children to have sound growth, have good jobs and lead a more enjoyable life,” he added.
“To meet their desire for a happy life is our mission,” Xi stressed.
The seven officials, all members of the Standing Committee of the CPC’s Political Bureau, compose the top leadership of China’s ruling party. Xi was also named chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission.
At the National People’s Congress to be held next spring, some of them will be elected or appointed to high-ranking government posts with five-year terms, formally taking the reins of the world’s second largest economy.
While Xi is expected to assume the presidency to succeed Hu Jintao, 57-year-old Vice Premier Li Keqiang, who is second in rank among the top seven, is widely assumed to replace Wen Jiabao as premier.
With extensive experience at the grassroots level, Xi “understands the feelings of ordinary people and is closely in touch with them,”said Shi Yongming, an associate research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies. Also, he is good at handling international relations and capable of coping with complicated situations, Shi added.
Xi started his career as Party secretary of a village before rising steadily through the ranks. As China’s vice president since 2008, he has assisted President Hu Jintao in state affairs including foreign relations. His widely watched trip to the United States in February helped bolster mutual understanding between China and the United States. He also showed a people-friendly image as he returned to an Iowa town that he visited 27 years ago as a local official from north China’s Hebei Province. Of the seven new senior officials, only Yu Zhengsheng, former Party Secretary of Shanghai, majored in technology at college. The other six majored in social sciences such as economics, political science and history. In the previous Political Bureau Standing Committee, only Xi and Li were students of liberal arts. The other seven held degrees in areas such as hydraulic engineering, geology and geophysics.
“The new leaders are full of vigor,”said Shen Beili, a delegate to the 18th CPC National Congress from the International Department of the CPC Central Committee.“They will build on the achievements of their predecessors to scale new heights.”
Shen said she pins great hopes on these leaders. “Under complicated and changing international and domestic circumstances, they will undertake arduous tasks as they lead Chinese people in building a moderately prosperous society. But I’m confident they will accomplish a lot,” she added.
The leaders were elected by members of the 18th CPC Central Committee at its first plenary session, held the day after the conclusion of the 18th CPC National Congress on November 14. At the congress, more than 2,300 delegates approved a report by Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the 17th CPC Central Committee, charting the course for China’s development in the years ahead. They also cast votes to elect the 205-member 18th CPC Central Committee.
Convened at a time when the world’s economic future is tied to China’s growth, the 18th CPC National Congress was not only a landmark event for China but also had global implications. Most importantly, the congress showed the CPC’s commitment to delivering prosperity and equity to all Chinese people. As it pushes for more balanced development with new leaders in place, China will continue to serve as a global economic powerhouse as well as a staunch guardian for international justice.
Mindful of the opportunities and challenges lying ahead, the new leaders will put the policies agreed upon at the 18th CPC National Congress into practice, observers said.
“The congress is significant,”said Philip Ogunmade, a journalist with THISDAY, the largest newspaper in Nigeria. “China is growing so much. Its development is a miracle. And it took up the opening-up [policy]. Like before, the opening up will continue under the new leadership.”
Better lives
Wan Yu, a delegate from northeast China’s Jilin Province, said she was excited and heartened after hearing the report delivered by Hu Jintao. Wan, principal of a school for orphans in the provincial capital Changchun, told Beijing Review she was glad that the report gave priority to improving people’s livelihoods and enabling them to benefit substantially from China’s development. In her view, these messages are a blessing to orphans, a vulnerable and often marginalized group. “Grand goals such as a moderately prosperous society and social harmony come down to raising people’s living standards,”said Xie Chuntao, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. Hu Jintao’s report to the 18th CPC National Congress called for further improvements in crucial social services such as education, social security and healthcare.
With the bar having been raised, pressures on the new leadership are daunting, said Kerry Brown, Executive Director of the China Studies Center of the University of Sydney. “There are great challenges of social cohesion, inequality and balance in the hardware and software of society,” Brown said.“For the new leadership, these challenges will only grow in complexity as China becomes a middle-income country.”
The report also set the goal of doubling China’s 2010 GDP and the per-capita income of urban and rural residents by 2020. It was the first time for the CPC to include per-capita income in China’s 2020 blueprint for a moderately prosperous society. Previous targets merely called for GDP growth.
The per-capita disposable income of urban residents in China rose 8.4 percent to 21,810 yuan ($3,498) in 2011 from a year earlier after deducting inflation, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Meanwhile, the per-capita net income of rural residents grew 11.4 percent year on year to 6,977 yuan($1,119).
Despite the global economic slowdown, the CPC has promised to make this goal a reality—a pledge that highlights its devotion to the well-being of Chinese people, Xie said.
Fewer than 2 billion people worldwide currently enjoy the standard of living as envisioned in a moderately prosperous society, said Hu Angang, a renowned economist with Tsinghua University and a delegate to the 18th CPC National Congress. When the goal is realized, 1.3 billion Chinese will join this group of affluent people, marking an unprecedented improvement in the well-being of mankind, he said.
“My core argument is that China’s success is a success for the world and China’s failure is a failure for the world,” he said, adding that China will not fail.
In a report published in early November, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said China will overtake the United States by 2016 to become the world’s largest economy.
The International Monetary Fund also predicted in April that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States by 2016 in terms of purchasing power parity. Paradigm shift
While placing emphasis on economic growth, the CPC will spearhead a change in China’s development model. The outdated model under which China pursued GDP growth at the cost of resource depletion, environmental degradation and a widening income gap will give way to a new model defined by the Scientific Outlook on Development. The political theory, which was written into the CPC Constitution as one of the Party’s guiding principles during the 18th CPC National Congress, advocates comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development and a peoplefirst approach.
Hu Jintao gave greater prominence to environmental protection by incorporating ecological progress into the country’s overall development plan together with economic, political, cultural and social progress. He coined the catchphrase, “Beautiful China,” in his report to the 18th CPC National Congress.
Bridging the wealth divide will surely top the Chinese Government’s agenda. Ogunmade, the Nigerian journalist who was in China to cover the CPC congress, said he was amazed by the transformation of Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province from a fishing village to a modern metropolis in less than three decades after a visit there. But he expected China to grow more evenly.
“It should not be only in Guangdong or Beijing; I think all provinces should be developed as well. We believe that the new leadership will take this move further, so that when we come here five years from now, other provinces [will] have grown like Guangdong,” Ogunmade said.
As it rebalances its economy, China will deepen reforms politically to promote social harmony. Hu Jintao vowed in his report to support the exercise of state power by the people through people’s congresses, improve the system of consultative democracy, expand community-level democracy and deepen the reform of the administrative system.
Under the leadership of the CPC, China has advanced political reforms in an incremental way over the past years, Xie said. For instance, the National People’s Congress adopted an amendment to the Electoral Law in March 2010 granting equal representation in legislative bodies to rural and urban residents.
Apart from elections, China emphasizes democratic consultation: The ruling CPC regularly consults other political parties, and villagers now also have opportunities to freely air opinions on village affairs to forge consensus, Xie said.
Administrative reforms, designed to get rid of approval procedures that have become obsolete in the market economy, will help prevent abuse of power and corruption, Xie added. Global vision
While vowing to pursue sustainable development and strengthen CPC self-discipline, Hu Jintao set China’s diplomatic priorities in his report to the 18th CPC National Congress.
The report shed light on some emerging trends on the world stage, said Chen Dongxiao, Vice President of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
For instance, it underlined the importance of cultural diversity in response to the misconception that the U.S. model would dominate the world, a view expounded by many Western scholars since the end of the Cold War. It recognized the emergence of an information society given the impact of new media on information dissemination and international relations.
Against this backdrop, China will continue to cement bonds with other major powers, neighbors and fellow developing countries, the report said. In particular, it will support ef- forts to increase the representation and voice of developing countries in international affairs, while taking an active and responsible role in global issues.
“We will decide our position and policy on an issue on its own merits and work to uphold fairness and justice,” the report said. In keeping with this principle, China contributes to the resolution of international hotspot issues such as the ongoing Syrian crisis with an impartial stance, Chen said.
Shi of the China Institute of International Studies shared Chen’s opinion. He said parties concerned are prone to taking biased views and radical actions when dealing with hotly contested international issues, such as the Syrian crisis and the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. China therefore plays an indispensable role in ensuring fairness, preventing the escalation of conflicts and maintaining peace.
China will not abandon the principle of non-interference in other countries’ domestic affairs, Shi said. However, it will share its views and experience with other countries during bilateral exchanges.
“Peaceful development” has been a buzzword in China’s diplomacy in the past decade. Proposed at the beginning of Hu’s first tenure as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, the notion aims to address fears about the “China threat,” said Xie.
These fears are unjustified primarily because China has achieved an economic takeoff by participating in global competition in accordance with the rules of the World Trade Organization, he said. In light of its per-capita GDP, China needs to focus on its own development and is therefore unable to threaten other countries. Moreover, traditional Chinese culture highly prizes harmony and peace.
China’s peaceful development, however, hinges on the external environment. Peaceful development is possible on condition that China’s core interests are protected, Chen said.
“We are firm in our resolve to uphold China’s sovereignty, security and development interests and will never yield to any outside pressure,” Hu said in his report.
In this sense, China’s military buildup and strong measures to protect territorial integrity are not contradictory to its goal of peaceful development, Chen said.
Nevertheless, long-held tenets such as“peaceful development,” “an independent foreign policy of peace” and “a win-win strategy of opening up” will remain guidelines for China’s diplomacy, Chen said.
At the press conference following his election, Xi also took an open, inclusive stance. “Just as China needs to learn more about the world, so does the world need to learn more about China,” he said.