CORONATION PARTY

Xi Jinping’s ideology has emerged as the priority solution to China’s economic and security concerns. Foreign policy and military superiority, however, will remain major challenges for him

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

When Soviet leader Nikita Khrush-chev went to Peking on an official visit in July-August 1958, chairman Mao Zedong chose an unusual venue for one of their meetings—his private swimming pool. “You look after Europe, and leave Asia to us,” Mao told Khrushchev. The Soviet leader, however, was not impressed. “No one has authorised us to look after Europe,” he replied. “Who authorised you to take care of Asia?” The encounter between the two communist leaders, described in A Diplomat’s Diary: The Tantalising Triangle-China, India and USA by T.N. Kaul, turned out to be prophetic as the Soviet empire collapsed three decades later. Khrushchev was a failure in the pool, but Mao was a proficient swimmer—he once swam across the mighty Yangtze. And President Xi Jinping is turning out to be a worthy successor to Mao.

Xi is on the cusp of asserting his ‘core’ lineage—only Mao, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin enjoy the status so far—at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) being held in Beijing from October 16 to 22. The stage is already set with the factional balance in the politburo tilting in Xi’s favour. Members not loyal enough were purged over the last five years, dismantling the ‘one party, two factions’ mechanism introduced to make the system more democratic. With his loyalists dominating the party congress, the composition of the seven-member politburo standing committee will primarily be decided by Xi.