With a tighter hold on the ruling party and a pledge to solidify China’s status as a superpower both at home and abroad, Xi Jinping will serve as the country’s paramount leader for another five years.
That assertion of strength, however, masks a serious weakness: Xi’s incapacity or unwillingness to revive China’s faltering economy.
In a parade that signalled the power and coherence of the party, Xi entered a Beijing stage on Sunday to formally announce his nomination for a third term. He was followed by a new top leadership team that had been cleaned of rival groups and packed with supporters.
Nevertheless, while being regarded as an economic powerhouse, China is having difficulties. According to the World Bank, China’s economy is growing less quickly because of things like inflation linked to the Ukraine conflict and Xi’s zero-Covid approach. In August, the youth unemployment rate in China was around 19 percent. For a party that touts growing living standards as evidence of wise government, that is alarmingly high.
But despite the sacrifices, Xi is still upholding zero-Covid and has refused to break off his “no limits” alliance with Putin. Additionally, his ideologically motivated economic policy recommendations, which favour a strong-armed interventionist strategy over support for the nation’s expanding private sector, might further slow growth.
Xi’s third term undoubtedly frightened markets in Hong Kong and the US. Concerned that Xi will sustain the measures that have erased billions from the balance sheets of once-booming technology businesses over the past year, investors dumped Chinese tech sector equities on Monday.
The Chinese Communist Party has maintained control in part as a result of years of steady economic growth. If Xi is unable to keep his word, his hold on power may be in jeopardy.
According to Alex Gray, a senior fellow with the American Foreign Policy Council and a former chief of staff at the National Security Council, China is suffering from “Xi Jinping’s disastrous economic policies and a series of dangerous structural imbalances, including a declining birth rate, an inadequate social safety net, and the CCP’s long-ago decision to correlate its political legitimacy with China’s economic growth rate.”
the threat A number of potential course corrections by Xi Jinping could have an impact on China’s relations with the rest of the world. He might focus his strength inward to deal with issues at home. He might, however, also act out abroad.
It is “very plausible,” according to Gray, that Xi will initiate military challenges in the Indo-Pacific region “faster than anticipated and from a position of domestic weakness,” as a result of the economic issues.
As a researcher for the RAND Corporation and the former director of the Navy Asia Pacific Advisory Group at the Pentagon, Kristen Gunness predicted that there would be more militaristic propaganda, more hostile rhetoric toward Taiwan, or an expanded military presence near the island.
By the end of the decade, China will surpass the United States as the greatest economy in the world. China is still an economic giant. Due to its extensive manufacturing sector, it is now the largest exporter in the world, and the United States, the European Union, and the majority of the Indo-Pacific nations view it as their top trading partner. This is due to its insatiable appetite for raw materials to power its economic machine.
