ShareBEIJING: Xi Jinping is expected to be handed a historic third term in control of China on October 23, it emerged on Saturday, after a spokesman confirmed the Communist Party's 20th Congress will end the previous day. About 2,300 party delegates from every province will gather at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing from Sunday for the mostly closed-door conclave, to rubber-stamp the country's next leadership make-up. The five-yearly talking shop will get under way at 10 (0200 GMT) with an opening ceremony, after which Xi is expected to deliver a lengthy speech that will give an assessment of the previous term as well as a roadmap for the next five years.
Should everything go to plan, after the week-long meeting 69-year-old Xi will be reconfirmed as the party's general secretary, cementing his position as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. At the highly choreographed conclave, the 2,296 participants will also pick members of the party's roughly 200-member Central Committee, which in turn selects the 25-person Politburo and its all-powerful Standing Committee-the country's highest leadership body. The day after Congress closes, the new Standing Committee-currently a group of seven men including General Secretary Xi-should be revealed, if this year follows the same convention as previous Congresses.
Congress spokesman Sun Yeli confirmed the closing date of October 22 and told reporters: "The preparations for the Congress have now been fully completed." During the two-hour press conference-in which Chinese state media asked several questions, as well as some international outlets-Sun said the proportion of female delegates had increased to 27 percent, from 24 percent at the last Congress in 2017.
There were no questions asked about Xi. China is holding Sunday's opening ceremony under a strict zero-COVID policy, sealing organizers and journalists in a virus-secure bubble two days in advance. Participants have been ordered to take daily COVID-19 tests to attend events, some of which are being held remotely by video link instead of in person.
At a hotel in western Beijing, organizers have set up a press centre crammed with exhibitions extolling Xi, festooned in the Communist Party's signature red and gold. Scattered around the venue are tables piled with books on Xi's philosophy and China's development, while one display features an AI-driven "digital human" that tells jokes and sings songs upon request.
As China's leaders gather for a crucial party congress, the country is expected on Tuesday to announce some of its weakest quarterly growth figures since 2020, its economy hobbled by COVID restrictions and a real estate crisis. A group of experts interviewed by AFP said they expected an average GDP increase of 2.5 percent on last year's July-September quarter.
In the previous quarter, growth in the world's second largest economy collapsed to only 0.4 percent compared to the previous year, the worst performance since 2020. The country posted 4.8 percent growth in the first quarter of 2022. Many economists think China will struggle to attain its growth target this year of around 5.5 percent, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its GDP growth forecast to 3.2 percent for 2022 and 4.4 percent for 2023.
AFP's panel of experts predicted average growth of three percent in 2022, a long way off the 8.1 percent seen in 2021. That would be China's weakest growth rate in four decades, excluding 2020 when the global economy was hammered by the emergence of the coronavirus. "The big policy challenge is accepting that the economy has reached a state of maturity that means growth numbers are likely permanently reset to the zero to 4.5 percent range for the coming decade," Clifford Bennett, chief economist at ACY Securities, told AFP.
Zero-COVID
Another factor that has had an enormous impact is Beijing's zero-COVID policy. China is the last of the world's major economies to continue to follow the strategy, which imposes tight travel restrictions, mass PCR testing and obligatory quarantines. It also involves sudden and strict lockdowns-including of businesses and factories-which has disrupted production and weighed heavily on household consumption. But despite the impact on the economy, "there is no clear sign of a significant easing of the zero-COVID strategy", Nomura's Ting Lu said, noting that so far the opposite had happened.
In the week leading up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress, state media have published multiple editorials warning the policy should not be relaxed, and officials have pounced on outbreaks across the country over the last week with increased curbs. Some lockdown restrictions have returned to major financial hub Shanghai, prompting some to fear a repeat of earlier this year when the city was shut down for two months. - AFP
