The most powerful Chinese since Mao – but Xi Jinping Ukraine reports progress in defense against Iranian drones – the night update without photos

The all-conquering Chinese Communist Party meets for a week in Beijing every five years. The grand finale of the communism choreography took place on Sunday when the new Central Committee held its first session to elect the new Politburo and its Standing Committee.

“Voice” is of course a euphemism, because the whole thing is purely symbolic. All decisions, whether it be new appointments to leadership positions in the party or programmatic highlights that party leader Xi Jinping will set, have already been made. The Chinese dictatorship is all about loyalty.

Abroad, Xi is mainly seen as the president of the People’s Republic – in order to remain in office for more than two terms, he had the constitution amended. However, the main job is that of the head of the Communist Party, and he intends to keep it that way. Under him, the party is again a tightly run Leninist organization, the ideology is back. Cadres now need regular training in Marxism-Leninism again – the “Thoughts of Chairman Xi” has now been added.

After Congress, Xi will become the most powerful party leader since Mao Zedong. But he is also under great pressure: his expansion of power meets with limits and resistance. These are Xi’s five main construction sites:

US: relations have hardened

The administration of US President Joe Biden recently released a sort of trade policy bomb: Effective immediately, US companies will no longer be allowed to supply advanced semiconductors or chip-making equipment to China. Biden wants to slow down China’s technological and military progress with the export restrictions. In fact, China’s industry is being hit hard, with the new rules going well beyond those of the Trump administration and affecting dozens of Chinese companies. They may be a long way off China’s strategic goal of becoming self-sufficient in microchip manufacturing.

However, Xi Jinping still has escalation potential: China is currently the world’s leading country for processing rare-earth metals, which are particularly needed by high-tech industries. He is likely to threaten the US with corresponding export restrictions after the party conference.

Xi sees the US in decline. The Biden administration, on the other hand, wants to consolidate its global claims to power by forcing the creation of a global network of friendly, often liberal, states that support the free-trade American model of rule. Important of these allies are near China in the western Pacific. The KP leadership assumes that the US wants to keep China geopolitically as small as possible with the help of these allies – which they are certainly right about. But Xi would also firmly believe that the US wants to destroy China, which is certainly more Xi’s personal imagination than part of reality.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea and ignores international rules. Neighboring countries that do not agree are harassed with fighter jets and warships. Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese leadership tightened this policy again. The US Navy therefore regularly crosses the sea – it is one of the most important trade routes in the world.

The region also has potential for escalation in the Taiwan issue: China is claiming the de facto independent island republic for itself and sometimes even threatening to annex it. The US supports Taiwan and supplies modern weapons. In recent decades, US governments have remained strategically ambiguous about whether the US would intervene directly in the event of an attack by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. President Joe Biden has said a few times that the United States would defend Taiwan — but his administration has since returned to the old ambiguity.

The radio silence between the two rivals is particularly dangerous: Xi’s zero-covid strategy has made contacts between government officials difficult, if not impossible. He himself has not left China since the start of the corona pandemic, only traveling to Samarkand for the first time in September for the meeting of the autocrat club SCO. To date, Xi has not met Biden in person.

Russia: remains a partner

China’s foreign policy will probably only change nuanced after the party congress, including towards Russia. Shortly before the start of the war, Xi and Putin had declared their “borderless friendship”. China’s propaganda is still spreading the Russian war story that the US is responsible for the war and that Russia can’t do anything about it. However, it is safe to assume that Xi and his people know exactly what is going on in the war and the crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. China is therefore not a responsible power from a Western perspective.

People are always looking for signs that Xi Jinping could convince Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Xi recently failed to congratulate Putin on his 70th birthday, which was interpreted as a possible distance. In addition, China abstained on Wednesday at the UN General Assembly on the condemnation of Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories, which was accepted by a large majority.

But the hope will not be fulfilled for the time being. In addition to the cheap natural gas that can be expected from Russia in the future, Xi and Putin share the strategic goal of disrupting the US-dominated world order. This also applies to the other liberal democracies. China under Xi is turning away from the West and is now looking to expand its global influence to include emerging countries such as Pakistan or the states of Central Asia. These are usually more or less autocracies, just like Russia.

Corona pandemic: China remains closed

China’s borders have been virtually tight for the past two and a half years. And it will remain so after Xi’s extension. The reason for this is simple: Xi chose the wrong strategy in the fight against corona. At the party congress, Xi also reaffirmed the zero-covid strategy, which shattered people’s already dim hopes for an easing.

The initial successes with strict lockdowns for the country’s citizens have now turned out to be a pitfall. The zero-Covid strategy has been and is hailed by the propaganda as Xi’s great achievement, which is why there can be no turning back. Opening up China makes it hopeless for the time being: the highly contagious ommicron variants have also arrived in China, while at the same time the vaccination coverage among the elderly is too low and the health system is not prepared for major outbreaks.

In addition, China’s proprietary vaccines are not effective enough, which is a shame because China also doesn’t want Moderna and BioNTech’s mRNA vaccines, probably out of propaganda concern, to be self-sufficient and world leader in the fight against Covid. After all, their own mRNA substance is now being tested in Indonesia.

The government now calls its zero-Covid strategy “dynamic”. However, China’s biggest epidemic fighter only made it clear on Thursday that there was no timetable for the end of zero Covid and that the risks of a massive outbreak were too great. To effectively implement zero-Covid, the control systems were refined and expanded via smartphone apps – and with it the monitoring status.

Xi Jinping, who is considered a control freak, has to take that into account. He will also have nothing against the fact that Chinese citizens can no longer travel to democratic countries. But the lockdowns are weighing heavily on the affected citizens and fueling discontent. And mobility restrictions also affect China’s dynamic businesses. This is another reason why economic growth collapsed in 2022.

Economy: stagnation threatens

China is currently ravaged by an economic polycrisis: businesses and citizens have invested a lot of money in the real estate sector, which is now in danger of collapsing. For the Chinese, real estate is the most important investment option. In addition, the Chinese municipalities and local banks are very heavily indebted. Disagreements also threaten because youth unemployment is high. Officially it is already 20 percent, estimates say it could be twice as high. The US export ban on semiconductors is aggravating this polycrisis.

And Xi Jinping himself is contributing to the downturn. A convinced communist, he has tightened state control over large private companies, especially in the digital sector. State-owned enterprises under Xi’s auspices have it even easier than before, and Chinese state-owned banks are happy to give them preferential treatment. That has consequences, the Chinese private sector is no longer dynamic, says China expert Sebastian Heilmann of the University of Trier.

The two economic goals set by the party leader are likely to be difficult to achieve for the time being, namely, first, “general wealth creation,” which amounts to a redistribution program to offset China’s vast income disparities. And secondly, the desired self-sufficiency of international supply chains. If there is too little economic growth, too few jobs will be created for the many young unemployed. And: Chinese society is aging rapidly – this will also make growth increasingly difficult.

Europe: being led away from the US

Xi Jinping’s turn to Vladimir Putin takes China further politically from the EU. Last year, Beijing’s punitive measures against EU parliamentarians, European scientists and four EU organizations hit rock bottom. The reason for the escalation was sanctions by the EU and other states against regional Communist Party officials for serious human rights violations against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. In 2019, an EU paper identified China as a systemic rival, something the Chinese government hadn’t counted on.

Now on

Despite the bad mood, Xi Jinping could try to attract individual EU states after the party congress. China and Europe are still intertwined markets with a lot of money to be made on both sides. And economic growth also needs Xi. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be the first head of government to be received by Xi Jinping after the party congress in early November.

But the visit also shows that Europe does not yet have a unified China strategy. There is already criticism that Scholz does not ride together with Emmanuel Macron and thus appears in Beijing as a strong, unified EU duo. Immediately after the party conference, Scholz’s visit seemed to be courting Xi Jinping, says China expert Alicia García-Herrero in the Berlin specialist newsletter China.Table.

It is possible that Beijing’s European commissioners are now increasingly campaigning for the EU. At best, one would want to free Europeans from the geopolitical orbit of the US. The German China think tank Merics explicitly warns against this: “The EU must ensure that the transatlantic alliance is neglected only because of changed rhetoric or vague promises from China.”

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed headlines and subtitles. Here’s the original.