When the seven men who will rule China for the next five years stepped onto a stage in Beijing Wednesday, their ages were the focus of attention. Most important, none of the new Politburo Standing Committee members is young enough to take over from General Secretary Xi Jinping when his 10-year term in office is scheduled to end in 2022. The widespread conclusion inside China and beyond: The 64-year-old Mr. Xi intends to stay—and stay—as supreme leader.
A day earlier, delegates to the Communist Party’s 19th Congress voted unanimously to insert a new guiding principle into its charter: Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. That mouthful puts Mr. Xi on the same august level as Mao Zedong and above Deng Xiaoping in the Party’s Pantheon. Appending “for a new era” to Deng’s most famous slogan gives Mr. Xi license to abandon the norms of consensus rule that Deng created in the 1980s to prevent the rise of another dictator like Mao. Those include the rules for succession.
Not that Mr. Xi waited for permission. He started in 2012 by imprisoning the head of the country’s security apparatus, Zhou Yongkang, on corruption charges. Members of the Politburo Standing Committee had been immune from such severe discipline.
The purge of rivals and potential rivals continues. One recent victim was Sun Zhengcai, the Party boss of Chongqing, who had been groomed as Mr. Xi’s successor. In the last year, 23 of the 31 provincial leaders were reassigned. The military’s top generals were reshuffled.
The state propaganda organs are building a cult of personality around Mr. Xi, and old slogans are resurfacing. The cultivation of mass movements and suppression of dissent hasn’t been seen in China since the Mao era.
The question—the world’s most important—is what Mr. Xi intends to do with this new power, and the signs are worrisome. At home he says the Communist Party must reassert control over most aspects of life. He pledged to pursue market-based reforms but so far has concentrated on top-down measures. State-owned companies are growing in influence, while the Party wants more say in managing private companies. Abroad, Mr. Xi seems poised to extend the reach of China’s military and soft power begun in his first five years.
Mr. Xi promises that all of this is necessary for a brighter Chinese future. But concentrating power in one man’s hands is dangerous, as history has shown. That is the reason Deng resisted such power for himself. The Xi Jinping era may be the biggest challenge to the world’s postwar democratic order in decades. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-xi-jinping-era-1508971702
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