Demystifying China’s 20th Party Congress

The world will turn its eyes on China this weekend as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens its 20th National Party Congress, with 2,300 ruling elites gathering in Beijing. China’s propaganda apparatus has been running at full speed to promote this as the most significant event that will determine the success of the CCP’s second centenary goal: achieving the dream of rejuvenating the Chinese nation.

No doubt, this is an epochal political event in China. This is also the biggest public relations show that the CCP is staging for the Chinese people and world’s population. As a herculean PR exercise, each individual’s role, act and script has been set. Only after the performance starts can the public know for sure the CCP players’ entrances and exits. The most interesting scene of the drama, of course, is what will happen to the leading protagonist, Xi Jinping. Will he step down and be replaced as China’s leader, or will he remain in power for an unprecedented third term? 

Also critical is who he has chosen to be his allies in the Standing Committee, the Central Military Committee, and the Politburo. We assume that Xi’s third term is a certainty; otherwise, it is hard to explain why he went to great lengths to amend China’s constitution to abolish the term limit, issuing the third historical resolution to strengthen his position, and even made arrangements to participate in the G20 Bali summit in November.

Other than Xi’s remaining in power, it is difficult to perceive how the CCP’s leadership reshuffle will play out. We know how they will be selected, based on the practice of the last Party Congress. According to a Xinhua News Special Report on the formation of the CCP’s new leadership during the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi devoted the first six months of that year to work on top cadres’ selection. He consulted Party elders and interviewed 57 candidates to ensure they would remain loyal to him. We can safely assume this practice has been repeated and that Xi has handpicked those who are loyal to him, regardless of whether old or new faces are present.

Two other important acts will take place: The CCP will amend its constitution, and Xi will deliver his political report. We think it probable that there will not be any change for the CCP, nor any policy surprises.

The revision of the constitution is nothing more than continuing to institutionalize Xi’s “core leading status,” a euphemism for Xi’s absolute power monopoly within the Party and to enshrine his knockoff Marxism-Leninism — Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era — at the center of the CCP’s ideology. Additionally, it will codify Xi’s image as a great strategist to lead China and the world. All of these measures are to make Xi a Mao Zedong-like deity to consolidate his power. Unfortunately, Xi is not Mao; some people’s mockery of him in China shows that he doesn’t have the respect Mao had and his cult of personality campaign could be doomed.

In his political report, Xi will hype the achievements of his 10 years at the helm. These include that the CCP has achieved its first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society; waged an anti-corruption campaign in government; advanced environment protections; accelerated military modernization; gained a “great victory” over the pandemic through China’s Zero-Covid policy; and built the Belt and Road Initiative.

More importantly, Xi will describe his theoretical and strategic ideas, and stress that his vision and roadmap for China is to achieve the CCP second centenary of his dream of making China great again — his “China Dream.” He will announce initiatives for common prosperity and the improvement of people’s livelihood, and other reforms.

Xi’s “bread and circuses” are intended to fool the people to believe that he cares about them. However, Xi cares only about his power, his naked ambition to be chairman for life, the CCP’s regime security, and its permanent rule over China. His reforms are designed to make the Party-state bureaucracy run more efficiently, achieve total societal control, and prepare for war with the United States.

He will continue to deny the Chinese people political and civil rights, instead creating what the Party terms “whole-process people’s democracy” to trick people into believing in the supremacy of China’s totalitarianism. But no matter how much people’s livelihood improves, if their political and civil rights are denied, they are prisoners of the CCP.

As with the political report Xi delivered in 2017, he will lay out his grand strategy to create a China-centered new world order through campaigns such as the Belt and Road Initiative, shared common destiny for mankind, and international governance reforms to weaken the existing liberal order and U.S. power.

Xi masks his foreign policy as peace-loving, designed to promote stability and the progress of humanity and never intending to advance the expansion of China’s power and hegemonic ambitions. At the same time, he wants to coerce Taiwan to give up its independence with his renewed motherland reunification vow. Xi requires the United States to keep its promise not to aim to change China’s political system, and demands that Washington refuse to support the Taiwanese people’s choice of their own path. This was indicated by Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his speech at Asia Society last month. Wang blamed the United States for its
“erroneous perception” of China as the heart of the problems in the Sino-American relationship. Interestingly, in the official translation, Wang’s word of “erroneous” was deliberately left out.

Xi insists that cooperation between the two countries is the right way to ensure a good relationship for the next 50 years. Of course, for Xi, cooperation means not criticizing China’s human rights atrocities against the Uyghurs, other Muslims and Tibetans, as well as the Han Chinese; let China annex Taiwan and South China Sea; and not seek regime change or conflict with China.

Even if Xi does not describe this in his report, he has been clear that his priority is to form an alliance with totalitarian and authoritarian countries against the attempts by “external forces” to instigate “color revolution” and jointly oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs under any pretext. He advanced this in his recent speech at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan.

Fundamentally, Xi needs time for China to surpass the U.S. To this end, he will use an array of deceptive measures to fool the world into believing that expansion, coercion and hegemony are not in China’s DNA. In fact, they are the CCP’s lifeblood. If the U.S. falls into this trap, Xi will have won a great victory. 

The 20th Party Congress will be held with smoke and mirrors. It will serve to advance Xi’s internal repression and external expansion. Once the world understands this, the congress may be demystified, showing why Xi’s ambitions must be confronted and defeated.

Lianchao Han is vice president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China. After the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, he was one of the founders of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars. He worked in the U.S. Senate for 12 years, as legislative counsel and policy director for three senators. Bradley A. Thayer is director of China policy at the Center for Security Policy. They are co-authors of “Understanding the China Threat.”