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The Chinese government said it expected the economy to grow “about five percent” this year. An assembly of the highest legislature will take Mr. Xi into power.
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By Chris Buckley, Keith Bradsher, Vivian Wang and Chang Che
Xi Jinping is back on the political march. After a turbulent year that ended with faltering growth, widespread protests and a wave of deaths after China removed covid controls, China’s most sensible leader is set to gain even more strength at the annual rally of the national legislature that opened on Sunday.
At the start of the National People’s Congress, the Chinese government presented a post-COVID timeline focused on reviving the economy with a 5% expansion target, expanding military, education, and social spending, and expanding Mr. S. ‘s already formidable influence. Xi.
The roughly 3,000 conscientiously elected delegates to the legislature, who will meet for nine days in Beijing, are expected to appoint a new cohort of heads of government replete with the unwavering M. Xi until the end of the congress. They are also expected to approve a bureaucratic reshuffle that will further concentrate policymaking under M. Xi and the party.
“Xi is back and has wasted no time in arrogating more strength to himself,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, which studies Chinese politics. Xi and other leaders had calculated that they could simply withdraw covid controls. — and suffer a wave of what could have been a million or more deaths in China — without triggering a long and serious political crisis, Xi. Lam said.
“Leaders have made this big bet on this sea change in pandemic policy,” Lam said, “and the gamble, at least on the surface, has worked politically so far, despite all the deaths in the first month of the pandemic. “overthrow. “
Since the cessation of their strict “zero covid” policy in December, China’s leaders have changed their strategy to restore expansion and task creation, seeking to reassure private companies that they are an important component of the national economy.
The question facing China is whether Mr. Xi can build economic confidence, especially among private investors, while continuing to make the Communist Party bigger in the country, as he has announced he will.
“It has not fundamentally abandoned its original objectives; it’s a temporary tactical retreat,” Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who studies Chinese politics, said in an interview. “But for the economy to get back to normal, you want to convince skeptics that it’s real now. “
Xi also wants to turn China into a technologically complex superpower that can stand up to Washington as a peer, a vision he now calls “China-style modernization. “an investment of those broad objectives.
“We want to keep our eyes fixed on the big problems that weigh on the fall, luck or failure, of the party and the country, and that can shake everything with a single gesture,” he said recently at an assembly of party officials promoted last month. “We want to organically merge the strategic precept with tactical flexibility. “
In a sign of Beijing’s fears about demanding economic revival situations, Premier Li Keqiang said China will seek to increase expansion by “about five percent” this year, a modest goal. Exports have weakened this winter as global demand has stagnated. , while it is unclear whether Chinese consumers can help sustain a recovery, and business confidence is weak.
“Uncertainties in the external environment are increasing,” he told Congress. “At home, the foundations for solid expansion must be consolidated, inadequate solicitation remains a pronounced challenge, and expectations from private investors and corporations are not strong. “
Many economists see 3%, China’s official expansion rate last year, as an overestimation of the true functionality of the economy, which had been stifled through strict “zero covid” measures and pandemic lockdowns.
After a sluggish December, the economy showed signs of recovery. Commercial spaces are once again crowded and factory activity is experiencing its most powerful acceleration in more than a decade.
Li Bin, a 35-year-old technician in Tianjin, said Friday during a lunchtime riverside walk that he had ventured a bit outside his home for the past 3 years unless it was for work. I stored less, I’ve felt free, I’ve eaten more, I’ve gone out to play more and I’ve resumed general activity. “
To spur economic growth, China has eased its pressure to rein in real estate developers, whose high debt levels are seen as a threat to the entire economy. The government has signaled that its regulatory crackdown on Big Tech has achieved its goals.
Seeking to ease tensions with the United States, Xi held talks with President Biden in November in a bid to halt countries’ slide into a new Cold War. But the dating has only deteriorated since then. of flying a spy balloon over the United States. Last month, Washington accused Beijing of contemplating sending lethal aircraft to help Russia’s war in Ukraine, a claim rejected by Chinese officials.
Beijing sees the United States as seeking to involve China’s rise, but it doesn’t need rivalry with Washington to spiral out of control, said Chao Chun-shan, a Taiwanese political science professor who visited China recently and met with senior Chinese officials.
“Almost everyone I’ve met has told me that the U. S. is not going to be a problem. “The U. S. would allow a tough China on its side, especially in the Indo-Pacific region,” Professor Chao said. His strategy, he added, is this: “challenge without leaning toward rupture. “
In a sign of the importance Beijing attaches to announcing its position in the world, the government also plans to increase its military budget by 7. 2%, which would bring its spending to about $225 billion, despite the limitations that may arise. They will weigh on the finances of the State. Foreign Ministry spending and other diplomatic efforts will grow even faster, to 12. 2 percent.
Xi also suggested his party adopt a more practical technique by improving the country’s clinical and technological functions to lessen its reliance on Western expertise. This directive is more pressing as the United States tightens restrictions on exports to China.
Xi also believes that expanding and consolidating his own strength is mandatory to ensure China’s rise in a dangerous world.
The congress will almost give him a third revolutionary term as state president, in addition to his main name as general secretary of the Communist Party. And Xi will also use the congress to reorganize ministries and state agencies, further centralizing policymaking around it and the holiday.
Academics said the plan may come with a new internal security commission that will integrate police and state security agencies, reflecting Mr. Xi’s emphasis on a national security state.
Chinese police and state security forces are already tightly controlled by the Communist Party, and Mr. Xi has also established a National Security Commission to extinguish threats, especially in demanding situations to Communist Party rule. However, the new Homeland Security Committee could, take a look to bring greater team spirit to this set of agencies.
“It would be putting more political force on Xi’s obsession with immunizing the Communist Party from internal and external threats to his regime,” said Neil Thomas, a researcher who will soon begin as a researcher at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Analysis Center.
On Sunday, the capital, Beijing, itself was a spectacle of the government’s dual goal of restoring normalcy and maintaining tight control. to the Great Hall of the People where the legislative assembly was held.
But by Sunday, police had closed many subway exits leading to the square, forcing visitors to stand in long lines for identity checks. Other people found upon arrival at the square that only those who had booked in advance could enter, a policy of maintaining the Covid era. Disappointed, they left.
Amy Chang Chien and Li You contributed reporting and research.
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