Rising Powers Anticipate and Respond to China’s Party Congress

Policy Alert #153 | October 25, 2017

The 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China convened on October 18th. The Congress meets only once in five years to set the guiding policies for China. While there was a good deal of anticipation by the Rising Powers, President Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power was a forgone conclusion. Meanwhile, the controversial snap elections during this time called by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ensured that commentators in Japanese and even South Korea trained their attention on Abe’s motivations.

 

CHINA
President Xi Jinping opened the Congress with a marathon three and a half hour speech. His “Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” was added as an amendment to the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, incorporating the Belt and Road Initiative, the fight against corruption, and other high priority items from the Xi administration into the party’s guiding document. In addition to electing new members of the party’s Central Committee, a new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was established as part of the crackdown on corruption within the government. Response from fellow political leaders in China was overwhelmingly positive, although some members were reserved in their comments.

• In coverage of international media’s interest in the Congress, Xinhua editor Hou Qiang highlighted the effort to increase transparency of the Congress, quoting visiting American journalist Sara Wendt’s comparison of the openness of the Congress to the “media-averse” atmosphere in the Trump administration in the United States.
• The nationalist Global Times advocated for the West to adopt a “correct understanding” of the Communist Party of China as a legitimate, disciplined, and rational political party. In another editorial, the Global Times asserted that although “[p]eople in the West may not be able to understand a concept of a community with a shared future for mankind,” China will strive to replace the West’s “zero-sum game” of security and development into one of cooperation.
• In response to President Xi’s emphasis on the “one country, two systems” policy in his comments at the Congress, the South China Morning Post asserted that “the reunification and well-being being of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan form part of the China dream and rejuvenation championed by Xi,” and urged the people of Hong Kong and Macau to “chart the course accurately” as they prepare for stronger assertions of authority by Beijing.
• Commentator Cary Huang took a more critical stance against the Congress in his op-ed in the independent Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, criticizing its “resurrection of strong-man politics” in which President Xi has become a “chairman of everything.”
• Wu Guobao, Director of the Center of Policy Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, responded to President Xi’s emphasis on poverty eradication with a glowing overview of the progress in China on this issue, noting that China’s “comprehensive organization and institutional system of precision poverty alleviation” have “yielded remarkable results.”
• Commentator Chen Yang was optimistic that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who emerged victorious in Japan’s snap election on October 22nd, may seek to improve Sino-Japanese relations. “Given the special atmosphere of the normalization anniversary and the fortieth anniversary of the China-Japan Peace and Friendship Treaty next year, it is highly possible Abe will push for improved relations with China,” he said, noting that Prime Minister Abe spent the evening before the election at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo to participate in commemorative activities celebrating the anniversary and China’s National Day.

JAPAN
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe solidified his support with the Liberal Democratic Party’s overwhelming victory in the snap elections for the Diet’s lower house on October 22.

• The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun lambasted the 19th Congress in China, taking issue with the Congress’s hypocrisy between its rhetoric and actions in maritime territorial disputes, “It [is] nothing but hegemonism to assert that the country will make light of such universal values as the rule of law and instead rely more on strength.” The Yomiuri warned that by the Communist Party of China abandoning its rule of collective leadership in consolidating power of President Xi, “autocracy and social repression may advance under the Xi administration.”
• The Japan Times raised a similar critique of its own government, calling for limits on the prime minister’s ability to call for snap elections at will. It noted the backlash against the timing of this particular snap election characterizing Abe as “abusing his power to his and his Liberal Democratic Party’s advantage–to call a snap election while his opponents were still unprepared and to forestall further Diet grilling of his administrations over scandals that had damaged its popular support.” The Times advocated for the consideration of limiting the prime minister’s ability to call for elections to times when he or she is faced with a no-confidence vote in the Diet, similar to the rules in the United Kingdom’s Parliament.
• In the lead up to the election, the liberal Asahi Shimbun criticized Abe for “seeking to use the threat posed by North Korea to boost public support for his leadership so that he can bolster both the SDF and Japan’s security alliance with the United States,” and called for voters to restore “politics of reason, which requires respect for the Constitution and the democratic process as well as serious efforts to build a broad consensus through debate involving a wide range of people including those with dissenting voices.”

SOUTH KOREA

• The conservative Joongang Daily characterized the Liberal Democratic Party’s win in the Japanese election as “a de facto confidence referendum on Abe and his rightist agenda proposing to rewrite Japan’s postwar pacifist constitution and reinforce the country’s military beyond a self-defense role.” The paper noted that the primary reason for the win was the Japanese people’s concern for their safety under the threat of North Korea. “In the long run, China and Japan could wage an arms race and heighten tensions in the region,” the Joongang Daily warned. “North Korea and China may have to answer one of these days for turning the region into a danger zone.”
• The liberal Hankyoreh, meanwhile, was not optimistic about relations with China improving after the conclusion of the Congress. It was especially critical of the contradiction between the emphasis on China’s “great power diplomacy and its current efforts to deescalate tension with North Korea: “As far as the North Korean nuclear issue goes, the ‘great power diplomacy’ thing to do would be to stop saying ‘Why are you asking us to solve the problem?’ and take a more active approach to contributing to peace and stability in Northeast Asia.”

INDIA

• Gaurav Misra, a Research Fellow at the government affiliated Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, foresaw President Xi’s hardening of control stating that, “President Xi has amassed much control and his predominance is clearly established in the Chinese political spectrum. He is now regarded as the most powerful leader in decades after Mao. He has taken charge of most of the portfolios and ruling through the leading small groups and has placed his key aides at various nerve centres,” Misra points out this is happening despite the fact that, “the communique of the sixth plenum of the 8th Congress clearly insists that the principles of collective leadership must always be followed and should not be violated by any organisation or individual under any circumstances or any reasons.”
• Jagannath Panda, also a  Research Fellow and Centre Coordinator for East Asia at the Institute for Defence studies and Analyses, characterized the CPC’s foreign outlook as self-serving. “Beijing, under Xi’s stewardship, is trying to make it clear that no other country, other than China, is the leader of the developing world,” Panda argues. “Xi’s emphasis that China would like to continue to emerge as a leader of the developing world comes as a conflicting subject matter since the intent is to deny India the requisite space to lead the developing world groupings.”
• Ahead of the Congress, Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, warned that even the anticipated “pithy statements [made by the party secretary] provide guidance to the foreign policy establishment of China for the next five years and beyond,” as India has learned through the years. He highlights the fact that although President Xi’s comments to not sacrifice China’s “core interests” in the international arena in the 18th Party Congress were largely dismissed as “assuaging nationalist domestic constituents” at the time, “India has gradually noticed that China’s armed forces and border guards have been ramping up their nibbling activities on the undefined border, in addition to claiming vast swathes of territory in the South China Sea and Japanese-claimed Senkaku islands.”
• The Economic Times cautioned that although the Party Congress attempted to “eschew any expansionism,” “New Delhi should praise Xi and keep the powder dry, lots of it and very, very dry.”
• The liberal Hindustan Times likewise called for more vigilance on India’s part, saying that “if Xi continues to believe an assertive, unilateralist foreign policy must remain inherent to a new China, then countries like India will have no choice but to keep a wary eye that the Chinese dream does not mean sleepless nights for the rest of the world.”

RUSSIA

• The Russian press emphasized President Xi’s commitments to modernize and strengthen the Chinese military. State-owned TASS’s coverage of the Congress was limited to a piece highlighting President Xi’s “vow to modernize and expand [China’s] military might.”
• The nationalist Sputnik News contextualized President Xi’s comments against the “one China, two systems” principle and its need to counter separatism and extremism in Xinjiang Province. It added that the Chinese government links the separatist groups in the province to international terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda, that are also banned in Russia. Sputnik also made sure to prominently feature President Xi’s policy of non-expansion, saying that “Beijing will never engage in expansion and will not pursue its development at the expense of other state’s interests.”

RPI acknowledges support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its activities.