Xi Jinping

The Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies of Taiwan’s National Cheng-Chi University held a seminar recently to discuss the upcoming 20th Party Congress and the political, economic and social policies rolled out in the last ten years of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s rule. Zaobao journalist Miao Zong-Han shares the key findings.

While China’s market-based socialism with Chinese characteristics has lifted many out of poverty, creating the Chinese miracle, the ills of abiding by the “laws of the market” should be tackled and reined in. In the ever-evolving model of new socialism, a mechanism needs to be established that can raise and maintain a good standard of living in the absence of economic growth. This is so that people can transcend the pursuit of the material and live their lives with meaning and purpose.

After nearly five years, Chongqing party secretary Chen Min’er has delivered a good report card in terms of helping to put political blights to rest and making tangible strides in poverty alleviation. Looking ahead, Chongqing is expected to focus on high-quality economic development, whether or not Chen is parachuted out before the 20th Party Congress. Zaobao correspondent Edwin Ong examines the issue.

Domestic and external pressures compel China to face the issue of democracy. With growing affluence and diversity in the population, the government needs to find a way to incorporate various views that goes beyond the Mao-era “mass line”. In forging a new path, the Chinese Communist Party is feeling its way around bringing about a socialist neo-democracy, or what has been verbalised as “whole-process people’s democracy”. But what stands in the way of putting thought into action?

Vienna-based academic Li Ling gives a primer on four principles regulating the nominations of membership of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), the highest decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party. Nothing is for certain until the curtain rises on the 20th Party Congress this autumn, but a closer look at these principles could help to narrow the field.

Lance Gore reflects on what Chinese Communist Party cadres today understand by the phrase “Serve the People”, stating that people in positions of power could either serve the people slavishly or ride roughshod over them. The impetus to do right by the populace is simply not ensured. As the authorities seek to get the people more involved in “whole-process democracy”, they will need to consider how the regime’s affinity with the people may be maintained in the absence of electoral democracy.

As the elections for delegates to the five-yearly 20th Party Congress enters its last phase, Zaobao correspondent Yu Zeyuan takes stock of impacts that the grim pandemic situation in Shanghai may bring, as well as the changes to delegate composition and safeguards against identity fraud that the authorities have put in place.

Although the Chinese Communist Party believes in the great future of socialism, the basic contradictions of socialism that caused the demise of the Soviet Union are yet to be fully resolved in China, says Lance Gore. As a matter of fact, President Xi Jinping’s mantra of “returning to the party’s original mission” is inadvertently resurrecting some of the same problems that bedevilled classic communism.

A Chinese idiom says: If you ride a tiger, it’s hard to get off! Since being handed the reins by the Communist Party of China a decade ago, Xi Jinping hasn’t experienced “the year of the tiger” according to the Chinese zodiac. He will be riding into the tiger year this crucial year of 2022. Speculations are running high in China as everyone is asking: does Xi know how to get off a tiger?