[Mr. Xi’s 38-minute address was a final flourish in a political spectacle that has emphasized his supremacy and set him on a path to possibly decades of dominance. The congress left little doubt that for years to come, Chinese politics will center on Mr. Xi and how far he can go in strengthening his rule before risking a serious setback or backlash.]
By
Chris Buckley
 |
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President
Xi Jinping’s speech on Tuesday, the last day of the National People’s
Congress in
Beijing, was a final flourish in a spectacle that has emphasized his
supremacy. “Miracles
are constantly emerging across this great land of China,”
he said.Credit
Damir Sagolj/Reuters
|
BEIJING
— He is now officially
China’s “national helmsman,” an accolade echoing one of the honorifics used for
Mao, the “great helmsman.” On Tuesday, China ended a 16-day meeting of its
legislature, the National People’s Congress, that took on the trappings of an
extended coronation of the president, Xi Jinping.
Just days after some lawmakers shed tears of
joy as they unanimously re-elected Mr. Xi, he used the congress’s closing day
to deliver an ardently patriotic speech warning against challenges to Chinese
territorial claims, especially any move to seek independence for Taiwan.
Mr. Xi’s 38-minute address was a final
flourish in a political spectacle that has emphasized his supremacy and set him
on a path to possibly decades of dominance. The congress left little doubt that
for years to come, Chinese politics will center on Mr. Xi and how far he can go
in strengthening his rule before risking a serious setback or backlash.
“Miracles are constantly emerging across this
great land of China,” Mr. Xi told nearly 3,000 lawmakers in the Great Hall of
the People. They applauded most warmly when he warned against challenges to
China over Taiwan, Hong Kong or other regions where Beijing’s claims to
sovereignty are contested.
“All maneuvers and tricks to split the
motherland are sure to fail,” Mr. Xi said. “Not one inch of the territory of
the great motherland can be carved off from China.”
The annual meeting of the Communist Party-run
legislature, held every March, has usually been a stolid ritual giving leaders
a chance to show collective unity, lay out goals for the year and hear mildly
worded suggestions from the lawmakers, who are picked for their loyalty.
Not this time. Mr. Xi transformed this year’s
extended meeting into an adulatory celebration of him and his policies to
permanently install the Communist Party at the heart of China’s resurgence.
Just over a week before the meeting, the party made a bombshell announcement
about ending a constitutional term limit on the presidency, clearing an
obstacle to Mr. Xi’s long-term hold on power.
“I don’t like the word Maoist, but Xi really
is bringing back the party in charge, but also bringing back a personified
power in charge,” Ryan Manuel, an expert on the Chinese Communist Party at the
University of Hong Kong, said by telephone.
“But personifying power has risks,” he said.
“Xi has, better than anyone since Mao, gone around the checks and balances that
were placed on him.”
After the lawmakers assembled on March 5,
they swept away the constitutional term limit on Mr. Xi’s presidency, with only
two no votes out of 2,960 submitted. They approved a new investigation agency
to extend his anticorruption drive. They inserted “Xi Jinping Thought” into the
Constitution, putting Mr. Xi in China’s ideological honor roll even before he
formally started his second term as president. And they elected him for that
second term without a single dissenting vote.
“These are really long-term risks that he’s
leading to with these choices,” Mr. Manuel said. “It’s not going to happen in
the next two years. But if in 10 years’ time, Xi Jinping is still in power, he
may have had 10 years of no one telling him the truth.”
Chinese media coverage of the congress was
saturated by Mr. Xi’s images and words, drowning out other members of the
leadership, including the premier, Li Keqiang. On Sunday, the day after Mr. Xi
was reappointed president, the front page of the People’s Daily, the party’s
main newspaper, and other papers were dominated by large pictures of Mr. Xi,
underscoring his unrivaled status.
“Xi and his supporters within the Chinese
Communist Party have broken the post-Mao-era taboo of promoting one individual
leader above the whole party,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political
science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who studies Chinese
propaganda. “I haven’t seen a People’s Daily cover like that — big red
headlines and only one leader’s face featured in the photos — since circa
1966-1976.”
Mr. Li’s annual news conference on Tuesday,
usually a highlight of the final day of the congress, now seemed an
afterthought. Reporters’ questions are usually vetted beforehand, and Mr. Li
took none that asked about the removal of Mr. Xi’s term limit.
After Mr. Xi gave his speech in the morning,
the newly appointed chairman of the congress, Li Zhanshu, paid extravagant
tribute.
“Supported by the whole party, loved and
esteemed by the people, Comrade Xi Jinping is full deserving to be the core of
the party, commander of the military and leader of the people,” Mr. Li said.
“He is the national helmsman for a new era of socialism with Chinese
characteristics and the guide of the people.”
The term “helmsman of the nation” has been
promoted by the People’s Daily and other party-run media in recent days. It has
clear parallels with the “great helmsman,” a phrase used in the Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s to venerate Mao Zedong, China’s founding revolutionary
leader. The Chinese word used for Mao the “helmsman” (duoshou) was slightly
different from the one used for Mr. Xi (zhangduozhe).
But still, for many Chinese, the term
inevitably evoked Mao and the Cultural Revolution, said Zhang Lifan, a
historian and former businessman in Beijing. “The helmsman is the one who
steers the direction of the craft,” he said. “There was also a song about how a
ship at sea depends on its helmsman.”
While Mr. Xi does not approach Mao in raw,
untethered power, the glorification of Mr. Xi has approached levels not seen in
Chinese politics since that time. During the congress, some delegates swooned
and wept about Mr. Xi.
Party media outlets have suggested that Mr.
Xi will not remain leader for life, despite facing no term limits. But some
lawmakers would hear none of that.
“I felt this wave of heat from people around
me,” one delegate, Du Meishuang from Hunan Province in southern China, told
reporters after Mr. Xi won his second term as president on Saturday. “It should
be lifelong, a whole life. That’s what the hearts of the ordinary people are
saying, really.”
Such fervor in the Great Hall of the People
was unthinkable under Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, a poker-faced
functionary. Even Deng Xiaoping, for all his personal power, discouraged
personal adulation as a dangerous remnant of Mao’s time.
More measured advocates of Mr. Xi have said
his power must be extended and consolidated so that China can push through hard
economic changes essential to ensuring the country’s continued prosperity. They
also point to the rot of corruption that set in during the collective
leadership of Mr. Xi’s predecessors.
“To achieve the things that need to be done —
and the big three right now are controlling financial risk, eliminating extreme
poverty and pollution — he is now more able to affect more changes than ever
before,” said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a biographer of Chinese leaders who appears
on China’s main state television network. “Because any resistance will realize
that it’s futile and they can’t wait him out.”
But the acclaim for Mr. Xi has unnerved
Chinese people and foreign observers who fear hubris by a leader unrestrained
by checks and balances. In private chats over recent weeks, retired officials
and academics in Beijing have also said Mr. Xi’s inflated power may encourage
him to press harder for the return of Taiwan, the democratically governed island
that Beijing views as a breakaway province. Mr. Xi’s latest comments appeared
likely to encourage that view.
“Now you have almost all the power in your
hands, and you have all the trusted people on your team, you need to deliver
miracles,” Ding Xueliang, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology who studies Chinese politics, said before Mr. Xi’s speech. “Xi
Jinping needs to deliver something big, and Taiwan is something very, very
big.”
Adam Wu contributed research.
Follow Chris Buckley on Twitter:
@ChuBailiang.