Xi Jinping’s big test at 19th congress of Communist Party

NEW DELHI: The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has a special significance for President Xi Jinping’s future, coming as it does in the backdrop of Doklam and North Korean crises. Xi may try to push through constitutional amendments and alterations in norms for leadership change at the five-yearly event, which is to be held this year for a week from October 18. A further empowered Xi may ensure continuation of aggressive foreign policy in Asia, particularly with neighbours including India.

With a growing list of his opponents and politburo standing committee members no longer considered above the law and therefore open to investigation, it is unlikely that Xi will take the risk to hang up his boots in 2022. This party congress is therefore crucial. Xi is caught in a power struggle with Jiang Zemin faction in the party’s politburo and he is trying to make moves to win that battle. Xi’s external challenges are no less daunting, ranging from lukewarm ties with India to crisis in North Korean Peninsula to volatile ties with Japan to acrimony with the USA over trade and aggressive foreign policy in Indo-Pacific region.

President Xi is also the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission. Besides, he has had himself declared as the “core” of the leadership, a title given to Mao Zedong posthumously. Deng Xiaoping, father of China’s modernisation had it thrust upon himself because of the power struggle between the left conservatives and the more economic liberals led by Deng. Zemin, Deng’s hand-picked top leader, also had this title, but he wore it lightly, according to Bhaskar Roy, a former Indian diplomat who served in China.

Xi is surrounded with Jiang loyalists. Of the seven politburo standing committee (PBSC) members, Zhang Dejiang, Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli are considered Jiang’s men. But Xi has the chief of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Wang Qishang (also a PBSC member), firmly on his side. Wang has sidelined more than 300 high to middle-level supporters of Jiang. Xi reorganised the country’s army to scatter Jiang supporters and brought down at least two of Jiang’s hand-picked top-level officers, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxing.

Simultaneously, on the external front, North Korea continues to be politically and geopolitically important to China, especially against the USJapan alliance. “The North Korean nuclear issue is threatening to boil over. North Korean leader Kim Jongun conducted the country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test yet, recently.

North Korea claimed it was a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb. Its intermediate range and long-range missiles are being test-launched regularly. With US President Donald Trump threatening to destroy the Kim regime, and Kim responding in equal measure, China is almost at a tipping point. “If there is a nuclear fallout, China will not remain unaffected… Japan may go nuclear and may be followed by South Korea, in some way or the other. Beijing stands to be the biggest loser,” said Roy.