How China’s leader Xi Jinping is resetting his agenda with a greater focus on ‘bread and butter’ policies
- Away from his core initiatives, Xi has been turning attention to pet projects such as a plan to move major institutions from Beijing to a purpose-built site 100km away
- With post-Covid recovery a major priority, some policies that may have a negative economic impact appear to have been placed on the back-burner
Since Xi started an unprecedented third term as state president in March – completing a leadership shake-up that put key supporters in leading positions – analysts say that some of the policies he has focused on suggest that social development will take greater prominence.
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This does not mean his core concerns, such as technology, self sufficiency and national security, have been downgraded, but other long-term goals – such as a drive for greater economic equality, anti-monopoly policies and reducing carbon emissions – appear to have been put on the back-burner as the post-Covid economic recovery takes centre stage.
Nis Grünberg, a China analyst with the Berlin-based think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies, said these projects were intended to be pilots for social development, which he called the “bread and butter of the Communist Party”.
“Now that the 20th party congress is over, the National People’s Congress is over, the new positions and leaders are settled. So it’s time to push the backbone policies a little bit further,” Grünberg said.
In recent weeks Xi has been especially active with regards to the Xiongan project, which he has described as a “plan for a thousand years”.
Grünberg said although Xiongan might not be at the very top of Xi’s priorities, it was “a prestige project” for him.
He argued “Xi wants to succeed to showcase China in the new era” by showing how “urbanisation, urban governance, social control, transport and all these developmental leapfrog issues can be showcased in one city”.
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China’s new megacity Xiongan takes shape near Beijing with residential area ready by summer 2023
With no concerns about facing political challenges, Xi is eager to show that his orders can be carried out successfully, according to a mainland-based political scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“He has a lot of plans and aims to be in charge of all kinds of work. He issues all kinds of instructions, and believes that he can accomplish everything,” he said.
Some observers have expressed scepticism over the Xiongan scheme because the site is not close to any regional commercial hubs and people benefiting from Beijing’s services such as education and healthcare are reluctant to move to Hebei.
Chen Gang, assistant director and senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute, said: “Xiongan is of strategic importance to him, so construction will continue despite the controversies. Work on the project will be in full swing in his third term.”
The scheme is among a number of Xi’s initiatives to drive economic growth in the coming decade. It is intended to be a new “role model” for the country and Xi’s own version of Shenzhen, the southern tech hub that developed rapidly over the past four decades, according to the political scientist.
“He probably still feels that Xiongan is a very important part of his economic development plan, so [he needs] to put pressure on it,” he said.
Xiongan has been elevated to the status of a “key national development strategy” and has been given a mega plan that will run until 2035, with some 800 billion yuan (US$112 billion) committed to key projects relating to the plan as of November, according to official figures.
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Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said that the project was also partly related to national security, “an overarching idea” that “percolates into multiple dimensions of governance under Xi in many ways”.
“I think the underlying rationale behind this is essentially the fear that Beijing may be of such a humongous size that it may be difficult to manage in certain circumstances and as a result, it could pose a national security threat sensitive to the security of the regime.”
Xiongan, which is essentially a political project, would need a long-term political commitment as “without continuing siphoning of resources into Xiongan from elsewhere, especially from Beijing, the growth of the area would essentially stop”, he said.
Xi was “very determined” and he knew well how “resources can be leveraged using the party and the state system”, Yang added.
Last month state media also focused on calls to get two policies Xi promoted before the pandemic back on track: a waste disposal scheme and the drive to improve rural sanitation.
The Covid-19 pandemic hindered the progress of the waste sorting campaign, where the original plan was to introduce it in 46 major cities by 2020 and in all prefecture-level cities by the end of 2025.
The campaign stalled soon after Covid-19 hit China in 2020, and was halted last year amid the city’s prolonged lockdown.
But Xi has signalled that the project should get back on track, writing to volunteers in Shanghai that “waste sorting and recycling is a systemic project that requires concerted and long-term efforts from all parties”, according to state news agency Xinhua.
A meeting chaired by Shanghai party chief Chen Jining a few days later repeated Xi’s order, and said an “upgraded version” of the project would be implemented.
Meanwhile, an order to restart the toilet revolution was issued last month at a joint meeting of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the National Rural Revitalisation Administration in Hebei province, the first of its kind for two years.
The campaign to improve public lavatories in rural areas was launched in 2015 with the goal of improving sanitation and the rural living environment, and fulfil the country’s commitment to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. It is also included in the country’s latest five-year plan as a key area for rural revitalisation.
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said these projects were not trivial.
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“[Xi] has the motivation of doing something good [on public policy],” Wu said. “For projects such as clean toilets and sanitation, some might take it lightly but he takes it seriously. He was known for dealing with pollution during his stint in Fujian province, and people thought then that he might take this as a priority.”
Xi has committed the country to reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving net zero by 2060.
“It’s like in other countries, it’s always a negotiation between different priorities,” Grünberg said. “And when you have a situation where you have a national security issue, such as energy security and supply, of course that gets ahead of decarbonisation.”
More broadly, Grünberg said that decarbonisation was not off the table but the policy was still being developed.
“But of course security and energy availability are more important or are valued more than getting away from coal as fast as possible. So that’s what we see now. It’s a delay, but it’s not really dropping the ball on decarbonisation,” he said.
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Construction in full swing to build China’s ‘city of the future’, Xiongan
Given the importance of economic policy, other major policy goals also appeared to be on the back-burner for now as the government tried to ease business concerns, Yang said.
The country is facing a very challenging balancing act in terms of returning to more sustainable robust growth, but “at this point, it’s really struggling to do that”, he said, which “makes it harder for the leadership to achieve various goals”.
“People are very uncertain about the prospects for the Chinese economy. To the extent that is the case, it also affects a variety of other goals from poverty to food security, to environmental protection and so on,” he said.
Yang cited an antitrust campaign and the drive for common prosperity – a push for greater equality – as other campaigns which may have “taken a lower profile” because of their impact on the economy.
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“The emphasis on common prosperity … when they were attacking and were very critical of capital, when sector after sector was taken down, of course it turned out it hurt investments, employment and so on. And now clearly, there is the recognition that China needs to create jobs and to encourage investment. As a result, there are some trade-offs.”
However, Amit Batabyal, an economics professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said: “Even if this is not overtly advertised, Xi will continue to demand fealty to the Chinese Communist Party from all businesses.”
