The 20th Communist Party of China (CPC) Congress ended in China in a truly epochal way. It is epochal at least because for the first time in the history of socialist China, the chairman of the PRC was re-elected for a third term.
Although the Chinese constitution was amended on this issue back in 2018, this did not automatically mean that Xi Jinping would be elected for a third term – too much in China depends on the system of checks and balances between different factions of political elites.
However, the reality turned out to be even more impressive than one could have imagined. And the main event here was the demonstrative de facto expulsion of former PRC chairman Hu Jintao, who led the country from 2003 to 2013, from the presidium of the 20th CPC Congress.
Against the background of the fact that Hu’s close prime minister Li Keqiang and former leader of the CPC of the richest southern province of Guangdong Wang Yang have no place in the new CPC Central Committee, this looks like a mild political reprisal by Xi against his political opponents.
The main point of this whole story is that Hu Jintao is one of the leaders of the “Komsomol,” a political grouping made up of people from the Chinese Komsomol. Li Keqiang and Wang Yang belong to this same elite grouping.
It was the Komsomol members who in recent decades actively promoted the Chimerica (Chimerica = China + America) project, designed to deeply integrate the US and Chinese economies.
Komsomol partners in this project on the other side of the ocean were the US Democratic Party.
It is not yet known who exactly will be brought into the CPC Central Committee in the empty seats, but it is obvious that it will be staff personally loyal to Xi Jinping and they will not be supporters of “reconciliation at all costs” with the United States.
And here we should pay attention to another general feature of the 20th CPC Congress – a sharp tightening of rhetoric, including anti-Western rhetoric.
Perhaps for the first time ever at the highest level in China, that is, at the level of the PRC Chairman, it was stated that China’s “reunification” with Taiwan was inevitable and that Beijing would not exclude the option of integrating the island by force, should anything happen.
Xi also discussed the modernization of China’s Armed Forces and the need to enhance China’s soft power in the world.
In other words, the 20th Congress demonstrated that Beijing is ready to withstand a strike from the United States and in order to do so it is breaking the traditional power transfer scheme, beginning the consolidation of political elites and preparing for a tougher response to provocations from the West than before (remember the famous “101st Chinese warning“).
Translated from https://t.me/shotday/373
