BEIJING — China’s president, Xi Jinping, has already grasped more power more quickly than his two recent predecessors, and he has shown a taste for audacious decisions and a loathing for dissent. But a new push to praise him as China’s “core” leader, a term resonant with the formidable stature once held by Deng Xiaoping, suggests that his steely quest for dominance is not over.
As Mr. Xi confronts economic challenges and prepares to pick a fresh cohort of subordinates, he has demanded that Communist Party officials close ranks around him more tightly than ever, and references to Mr. Xi as the “core” leader have become a daily occurrence in China’s state-run news media.
“Such sudden, unabashed references to Xi’s dominance in the leadership suggest he finally has turned the page on crushing the cabal of senior officials who opposed his ascension and remains a man in a hurry when it comes to fully consolidating his political power,” said Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on Chinese politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
In the stagecraft of Chinese politics, formulaic expressions like “core” are tokens of power. Officials have suggested that hailing Mr. Xi as a leader of such stature — one in the footsteps of Deng, who ruled China through its transformation after Mao’s death — carries a warning not to question, let alone challenge, his authority as the government navigates turbulent changes.
“The world order that we’re in is undergoing a profound adjustment, and domestically, this is an important period of profound changes,” Guo Jinlong, the party chief of Beijing, said at a meeting in mid-January, according to the Beijing Daily newspaper. “We need a staunch leadership core more than ever.”
Mr. Xi, whose formal titles include general secretary of the Communist Party, has signaled his demands for greater loyalty through recent central leadership meetings, with the message filtering downward. “Party and government, military, civilian and learning — east, west, south, north and center — the party is leader of all,” Mr. Xi said at a meeting last month,according to a widely circulated report by a propaganda team devoted to promoting him.
In a burst of statements since that meeting, dozens of provincial-level leaders and other senior cadres have vowed — and demanded from their subordinates — unflinching allegiance to “General Secretary Xi Jinping, the core.” Each day this week has brought new such declarations of allegiance to Mr. Xi in the state-run news media.
“Resolutely safeguard the core, General Secretary Xi Jinping, and implement to the letter all the decisions of the center,” Xu Shousheng, the party secretary of Hunan Province in southern China, said on Monday, according to the province’s main news website.
At least 14 party leaders of provinces, regions and provincial-level cities have used that phrase, or something nearly identical, since mid-January, according to a count from newspaper reports. “Resolutely safeguard the absolute authority of the party center under Comrade Xi Jinping as general secretary,” Chen Quanguo, the party secretary of Tibet, said on Wednesday. “Staunchly safeguard, support and be faithful to General Secretary Xi Jinping, the core.”
Officials have not publicly explained what prompted the loyalty demands that Mr. Xi has authorized. But he faces a year of potentially contentious issues: subduing economic uncertainties that have eroded investors’ confidence in his acumen and continuing an anticorruption drive that has sapped officials’ incomes and morale.
Mr. Xi has appeared frustrated by what he saw as foot-dragging and insubordination from local officials, said Mr. Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But he said that no evidence supported speculation that Mr. Xi faced concerted opposition from senior officials.
On the contrary, Mr. Xi’s far-reaching reorganization of the Chinese military in recent months showed that he remained dominant, despite worries over the slowing economy, Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Xi also appears to be laying the groundwork for promoting loyalists, which will culminate in the party’s next congress in 2017, said Joseph Fewsmith, a professor at Boston University who specializes in elite Chinese politics. Mr. Xi was installed as top leader at the last congress in 2012 and is likely to remain party leader until 2022.
Despite Mr. Xi’s daunting power, he presides over a political elite that includes many appointees promoted by his predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. The congress will give Mr. Xi a chance to install his own people, and he wanted to stress the importance he places on submitting to his goals, Professor Fewsmith said.
“I have always thought the game was about the 19th Party Congress, and I would say that this is the opening shot in the lead-up to that meeting,” he said. It “seems like a way to announce a campaign for personnel arrangements.”
Mr. Xi has not publicly said that he should receive the title of core leader, a designation that Deng bestowed on Mr. Jiang in the upheavals of 1989, after Mr. Jiang was abruptly installed as general secretary and struggled to establish his authority. Later, Deng himself and Mao also came to be praised as the “core” leaders of their generations.
The term re-emerged after recent meetings presided over by Mr. Xi.
On Jan. 7, the Politburo Standing Committee, the seven-member inner circle of party power run by Mr. Xi, demanded unwavering loyalty to the central leadership and to him, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
“The key to strengthening party leadership is maintaining the centralized and unified leadership of the party center,” said the official summary in the state news media of a meeting in late January of the Politburo, a council of the party’s 25 most senior cadres. It urged officials to support a “staunch leadership core.”
“Line up with the party center, line up with General Secretary Xi Jinping,” multiple official accounts of the leaders’ demands have said, using a Chinese parade-ground term for troops arrayed in rigid uniformity.
By contrast, Mr. Xi’s immediate predecessor as president and party chief, Mr. Hu, conspicuously never gained the title of core leader in party pronouncements. That was widely seen as reflecting Mr. Hu’s position as a relatively weak leader, long overshadowed by Mr. Jiang, who governed through consensus that critics said bred deadlock and corruption.
Since coming to power in November 2012, Mr. Xi and his allies have implicitly presented their task as cleaning up the mess left by Mr. Hu: corruption, excessive industrial investment, pollution, social rancor and inequality, and incipient opposition to one-party rule.
“We must as soon as possible establish General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core ability to govern this country as a benchmark, a model that leading officials of all ranks in the party can aspire to,” said an adulatory party commentaryabout Mr. Xi that has been widely circulated by the Chinese news media. It made no mention of Deng, Mao or any other predecessors.
Jin Zhong, the chief editor of a website in Hong Kong that focuses on Chinese politics, said by telephone that Mr. Xi appeared unchallengeable but remained wary of any potential rivals or cracks in his authority. The “core” title is a way to advertise his dominance, although it was too early to say whether the term would be included in official documents at the next party congress, Mr. Jin said.
“He’s been reconfiguring the patterns of Chinese politics to strengthen his position step by step,” Mr. Jin said. “The anticorruption campaign, taking control of law and order, reforming of the military, all have concentrated power,” he said. “This ‘core’ expression is another step.” www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/world/asia/china-president-xi-jinping-core.html?ref=asia&_r=0
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