Oct 27th 2012
Xi Jinping will soon be named as China’s next president. He must be ready to break with the past
JUST after the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,
which starts in Beijing on November 8th, a short line of dark-suited
men, and perhaps one woman, will step onto a red carpet in a room in the
Great Hall of the People and meet the world’s press. At their head will
be Xi Jinping, the newly anointed party chief, who in March will also
take over as president of China. Behind him will file the new members of
the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s supreme body. The smiles will
be wooden, the backs ramrod straight. Yet the stage-management could
hardly be more different from the tempestuous uncertainties of actually
governing.As ruler of the world’s new economic powerhouse, Mr Xi will follow his recent predecessors in trying to combine economic growth with political stability. Yet this task is proving increasingly difficult. A slowing economy, corruption and myriad social problems are causing growing frustration among China’s people and worry among its officials.
In coping with these tensions, Mr Xi can continue to clamp down on discontent, or he can start to loosen the party’s control. China’s future will be determined by the answer to this question: does Mr Xi have the courage and vision to see that assuring his country’s prosperity and stability in the future requires him to break with the past?
Who’s Xi?
To the rich world, labouring under debt and political dysfunction, Chinese self-doubt might seem incongruous. Deng Xiaoping’s relaunch of economic reforms in 1992 has resulted in two decades of extraordinary growth. In the past ten years under the current leader, Hu Jintao, the economy has quadrupled in size in dollar terms. A new (though rudimentary) social safety net provides 95% of all Chinese with some kind of health coverage, up from just 15% in 2000. Across the world, China is seen as second in status and influence only to America.
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