The Communist Party of China looks set to slow, or perhaps even reverse, the country’s pace of change, as the conservative faction headed by former president Jiang Zemin appears to have won a struggle for power within the party over a clutch of reformers allied with outgoing leader Hu Jintao.
Thursday morning, Xi Jinping walked onto the red carpet in the ornate East Hall of the Great Hall of the People, signalling he had succeeded Mr. Hu as general secretary of the Communist Party of China, becoming the party’s seventh leader since Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic in 1949.
The new Standing Committee, which has been cut from nine to seven for efficiency of decision making, filed in and took places on the red-carpeted stage that were marked with black numbers referring to their new place in the hierarchy of power.
The new Standing Committee, the apex of power in China’s one-party political system, is stacked with those seen as owing their careers to Mr. Jiang, the man who rose to power after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and whose legacy is a mixture of economic reforms and political repression.
A Standing Committee heavy with hardliners could mean a China that’s less receptive to foreign investment, and more assertive in its dealings – including flammable territorial disputes – with its Asian neighbours. Calls at home and abroad for Beijing to allow more freedom of speech and political dissent seem likely to go unheeded.
Read more: China congress ends with new leader, and fractured leadership - The Globe and Mail
No comments:
Post a Comment