Wolves and word choice: outsiders try to decode China’s 20th party congress
- Efforts to interpret Xi Jinping’s priorities focus on three main areas: foreign and military policy, party politics and economics
- Despite attempts to read the tea leaves, US analysts realise there won’t be ‘any simple or clear answers’
Will Beijing’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomats drop their aggressive stance, how much fiscal pressure are local Chinese governments under and will Xi Jinping turn his gaze abroad after securing an unprecedented third term? These are among the questions American analysts and former US officials are asking as they watch this week’s 20th party congress unfold.
Their quest for insights comes as US-China relations hit new lows, tensions mount over Taiwan and a bilateral tech war heats up. Even as coffee-drinking Washington tries to read Beijing’s political tea leaves, however, some question how much can be learned watching an opaque system from the outside.
“I’m very interested,” said Zack Cooper, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and former National Security Council official. “But I’m not sure that there are going to be any simple or clear answers.”
Most are focused on three main areas – foreign and military policy, party politics and economics – as is the rest of the world. The implications are huge as rhetoric intensifies between the two giants. In the latest salvo earlier this month, Washington strengthened restrictions on US and other Western technologies, wary that these will bolster Chinese military and economic might.
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Xi Jinping charts China’s future course at 20th party congress
“We’ve got to be very sober about the fact we’re entering an engagement with a very different China,” said Ronald Kirk, who served as the US trade representative from 2009 to 2013.
In the foreign policy arena, analysts are focused on how committed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is to its military build-up and ideological divide with the West. They are also watching for any tactical easing of tensions with Washington; the first sign would likely be a November meeting between Xi and President Joe Biden at the Group of 20 meetings in Indonesia.
Xi has spent the past months consolidating power, defending his zero-Covid policy and silencing critics. Moving forward, one tendril to watch will be whether he throws a “going out party” – a push for greater Chinese power and stature overseas – after his highly scripted victory lap in the Great Hall of the People.
“I think Xi and his new team are going to aggressively reassert themselves on the world stage from the G20 onward,” said Cooper. “I will want to see signs of what they are prioritising as they re-engage globally.”
Biden security strategy puts China under ‘unprecedented pressure’: analysts
Another key indicator will be Taiwan policy, which is never far from centre stage in Sino-US relations but has been heightened since the August visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the unprecedented Chinese military intimidation exercise that followed and a Taiwan policy bill working its way through the US Congress.
Shirley Martey Hargis, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said that beyond military aggression, she would be looking at what psychological, legal and public-opinion warfare Beijing directs at Taiwan.
Chinese leaders have watched with concern the global acclaim Taipei has garnered for its handling of Covid-19 and for its world-leading semiconductor factories and will likely want to blunt this. “It is wise to keep a close eye on more than just military movements,” she said.
Also being watched are minute changes in wording. In prior work reports, Xi and the party propaganda arm cited an “important period of strategic opportunity” – politically, militarily and economically – but on Monday that morphed into “strategic opportunities, risks and challenges are concurrent”, giving analysts something to chew on.
“Belt-tightening measures will likely be necessary,” said Brock Erdahl, director of analysis at the Centre for Advanced China Research. “The report’s first-ever call for a ‘spirit of frugality’ suggests that Beijing believes that China is facing strong economic headwinds.”
In a system where major decisions are made behind the carefully guarded gates of Beijing’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound, outsiders – and many inside China – resort to careful parsing of state media scene-setting and phraseology – why Xi spoke for only 105 minutes not the 205 minutes seen at the last party congress in 2017, and why the work report mentioned “security” 91 times, compared with 54 five years ago.
Paulson Institute’s MacroPolo think tank has taken up the challenge of piercing the veil. Its “Special Feature: Selection 2022” site includes a quiz, a bar chart showing how often top officials are mentioned in state media – a key indicator of who is rising and falling – and the perceived odds on the meeting’s results.
Its current take: a 70 per cent chance of a “strong and balanced, no heir apparent” scenario, with no hint who might succeed Xi, age 69. And a 30 per cent “musical chairs” scenario in which a “rearrangement of the pecking order” provides clues on potential new leaders after 2027.
“Peek inside the Chinese Politics Black Box,” says MacroPolo. “Click on any coloured circle to see that day’s personnel changes and their importance.”
Also on the radar is the rising age of ministers, vice-ministers and party cadres, said Wu, a reflection of China’s ageing society and a more conservative organisation. “It’s a new era of Xi Jinping, so the logic could be fundamentally different,” Wu said.
Wolf Warrior diplomacy’s future amid China’s foreign image problems
Beyond zero-Covid, foreign analysts say they are watching Beijing’s Wolf Warrior stance – an aggressive diplomatic approach named after a nationalistic 2015 Chinese action film – for signs it is winding down.
“These have been manifestation of his leadership,” Chris Johnson, politics fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, said of Xi. “Does he have ideological flexibility?”
On Sunday, analysts will also look at who comes out on the stage in what order with what title, their age and the ratio of economists to propagandists on the new Standing Committee of the Politburo, the apex of Chinese state power.
“Pretty vague but useful optics to watch the festivities,” said Richard Boucher, a Brown University fellow and former US consul general in Hong Kong. “Is economic reform out the window?”
Another tactic involves watching Xi’s announced travel plans. “Xi’s schedules in the coming weeks are also worth observing,” said Zhiqun Zhu, a professor at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. “Where he will go for the ‘inspection’ trips, which local officials he will interact with or praise during those trips?”
In the crucial economics realm, meanwhile, as China battles a property crisis, rising unemployment, Covid-lockdown fallout and a global slowdown, a key gauge for many will be the flexibility of Xi’s highly centralised, personality-based governing style.
In particular, analysts said they would see if Beijing can switch gears and move from programmes built around political objectives to more pragmatic economic policies as conditions deteriorate.
“I am pretty focused on the tea leaf reading right now,” said Victor Shih, a Chinese politics expert with the University of California, San Diego.
In addition to watching to see who has been named to the Standing Committee, which currently has seven members, Shih is monitoring China’s beleaguered property sector.
This industry is hugely consequential at home and abroad given that it accounts for up to a third of the massive Chinese economy. “Acceleration in housing sales is key to growth going forward,” Shih said.
Another data point is tied to the vibrancy of China’s local economies. Ma Guonan, an economic expert at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis, said he was looking at the amount of goods and services local governments are buying. “It’s a sign of fiscal stress at all levels,” he said.
Xi says China must brace for ‘dangerous storms’, as party congress kicks off
“China’s GDP data has been interpreted with some caution for some time now, but not releasing it at all is concerning,” said Christine McDaniel, a Mercatus Centre research fellow at George Mason University in Virginia. “That’s a big difference between democracy and an authoritarian regime – the latter lacks transparency.”
As China grows increasingly influential on the global stage, some say its political architecture could do with less scripting and more translucence, however unlikely that may be.
“The truth is there’s nothing to see here,” said Weifeng Zhong, a fellow at George Mason University. “China’s party congress is the country’s most important political event because of its symbolic value, not any practical functions.”
