Xi promotes key lieutenants to strengthen his grip on power

“There is a possibility that President Xi will get five members of the Standing Committee. [in the 1980s] It has maintained a rough factional balance between conservatives and liberals.

“Five factions are biased. It’s abnormal and goes against party tradition.”

A “Xi Jinping unfettered scenario” would emerge if four supporters entered Xi Jinping’s cabinet Asian Institute of Social Policy Research said at a briefing before the party convention“Xi’s influence proves unconstrained and he uses it to the fullest to set his own ideals [Politburo Standing Committee]”

Lam said that Li Keqiang’s retirement effectively eliminated the threat of the more liberal Communist Youth League faction, with no replacement of similar stature, and joined former President Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai faction, leaving him nearly barred from high office. said it would.

“It would be a very bad scenario,” Lam said.

President Xi Jinping and Ding, who will head the General Bureau of the Central Committee, could succeed Li Zhanshu, 72-year-old National People’s Congress Standing Committee chairman, or Han Zheng, 68, who is also retired.

Their retirement leaves room for another young Xi supporter to join the Standing Committee, making Chen Min’er and Li Xi the most likely candidates. Chen attended Tsinghua University with President Xi in his 1970s before being parachuted by President Xi in 2017 as party secretary in Chongqing, southwestern China. Li, the party secretary of Guangdong Province, home to the megacities Guangzhou and Shenzhen, was a friend of his family. of Xi since the 1980s

Zhao Yuji, President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption enforcer, is likely to stay in this scenario. So does Wang Wangning, the Chinese ideologist who served former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. The faceless man of Chinese politics, Wang is the architect of “Xi Jinping Thought,” the blueprint for Xi’s ideology now anchored in China’s constitution.

“He’s Xi Jinping’s brain,” Lam said.

However, Sunday’s two appointments may also indicate that Xi’s power is not as strong as expected. is regarded. The 67-year-old has historical ties to Mr. Li’s Communist Youth League faction and has championed market-led reforms.

Loading

“There are essentially two sides to this debate about China’s economic policy. Institute said.

“But the second group, which can be called the ‘reform and open’ faction, believes that Mr. Xi’s economic policies … will ultimately undermine China’s economic prospects, resulting in a sharp slowdown in growth and the demise of China as a superpower. I feel my future is threatened.”

The position of premier will not be formally announced until the National People’s Congress in March, but the order in which Standing Committee members walk the stage behind Xi on Sunday will mark their seniority. Hu Chunhua, a protégé and also aligned with Li’s more economically liberal group, said that if Li was able to maintain faction power, he would move from 25 Politburo members to a seven-member Standing Committee. You may get promoted.

China’s foreign policy establishment is also preparing to reorganize.Yang Jiechi, a veteran diplomat who denounced Secretary of State Antony Brinken in Alaska last March. His deputy Foreign Minister Wang Yi is 69, technically too old to join the 25-member Politburo. Neither Yang nor Wang are members of the Standing Committee, whose foreign policy is largely handled by President Xi and ideological leader Wang Huning.

Lam said she expected Xi to join the Politburo as an exception, even though Wang Yi is past retirement age. As such, Vice Minister Ma Zhaoxu, who served as Beijing’s ambassador to Australia from 2013 to his 2016, can take up the position as foreign minister.

Ma, 59, presided over a relatively harmonious period in Australia-China relations, but was dragged into the former. Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2013 After Beijing declared an air identification zone over the East China Sea islands.