Chinese Communist Party Meet Next Week To Cement Xi's Power Over Country: Report
It is widely expected that Xi will be handed a third term in office, cementing his position as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
New Delhi: About 400 top members of President Xi Jinping's party Chinese Communist Party will have a closed-door discussion next week from Monday-Thursday in Bejing, reported AFP. The uncontested leader of the world's most populous nation heads a pivotal plenary of the ruling party.
It is widely expected that Xi will be handed a third term in office, cementing his position as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, the report stated.
During the session, top figures will debate a key resolution celebrating the party's main achievements in its 100 years of existence, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Like all of the meetings, Bejing's secretive top leaders are held behind closed doors and, the decisions are made well in advance, also open dissent is very rare. These meetings are highly choreographed.
The first, passed under Mao in 1945, helped him cement his authority over the Communist Party four years before it seized power. The second, adopted under Deng Xiaoping in 1981, saw the regime adopt economic reforms and recognise the "mistakes" of Mao's ways.
Unlike the previous two, Xi's resolution will not mark a break with the past, Harvard University's Anthony Saich told AFP.
Saich, an expert on Chinese politics told AFP, "it is intended to show that Xi is the natural inheritor of a process since the founding of the party that qualifies him to lead in the 'new era".
"The purpose is to consolidate Xi as the natural inheritor of the 'glorious history' of the CCP," he added, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
A dissident political scholar Wu Qiang believes that the resolution would mean "that Xi Jinping's authority is uncontested". Wu had lost his job as a lecturer at Tsinghua University in Beijing over his research. Wu told AFP, also believes the assembly will firm China's path back towards a more "controlled, planned" economy - as seen in Xi's ongoing drive to regulate the country's large enterprises in sectors from tech to real estate.
The other agenda that could be discussed is, Taiwan, which sees itself as democratic but Bejing believes it to be a part of China.
Meanwhile, Carl Minzner, a senior fellow for China studies at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.
"The core issue is: how much higher might he go?" he told AFP.
"The tone and content of the resolution will likely give some suggestion as to how Xi seeks to be portrayed," he said.
"As the equal of Mao and Deng? Or merely Mao alone?"
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