One China Many Challenges

Xi Jinping has a penchant for disregarding established norms. This will make an impact not only on party dynamics but will also reflect in China’s foreign policy. He is obsessed with national security and national rejuvenation

- Dnyanashri Kulkarni

Founded in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the world’s biggest political party with more than 96 million members. The CCP Congress takes place every five years and the recently concluded 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was entrusted to decide the composition of the Central Committee and whether to grant Current General Secretary Xi Jinping a third mandate as well as determine the Standing Committee of the Politburo (SCPB). Commonly referred to as Èrshí Dà, the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party commenced on October 16, 2022, and closed on October 22, 2022.

Against this backdrop, we need to ponder over the following questions: What does the upcoming leadership of China look like? What did President Xi envision in his speech? And why is the 20th Congress of CCP important to the rest of the world?

On October 16, 2022, proceedings of the Congress opened with General Secretary Xi’s open address mentioning the party’s achievements over the past 5 years and giving general guidelines for the coming five years. As rightly said by David Bandurski, Xi’s speech can be termed as Zhengzhi Baogao (a political report) instead of guangzhou baogao (a work report). He highlighted China’s political, economic, technological as well as ideological accomplishments. It is clear from his address that his emphasis is on inculcating MarxistLeninist and socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics. He further added that the ideology of a party is the only tool and hopes to break the “cycle of rise and fall.” The said significance of the party’s ideology is further reflected in the selection of leadership that stresses political commitment to be of paramount importance.