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Producing 15th five-year plan

How Xi Jinping and China’s Communist Party’s inner circles are all connected - 2023 update

Xi Jinping highlights importance of innovation on path to ‘Chinese-style modernisation’

China’s 20th Party Congress

Communist Party leadership changes that could impact Beijing’s Taiwan policy

News

China

Beijing set to begin search for new point man on cross-strait affairs

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

Taiwan Affairs Office director Liu Jieyi. Photo: Weibo

The PLA Air Force and the PLA Navy’s aviation corps conduct aerial refuelling during exercises on August 4. Photo: Xinhua

Few potential candidates to head State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office tick all the right boxes, with analysts pointing to a shortage of younger cadres able to take up senior roles.


Changing of the guard? China’s military may get a new leadership line-up

Illustration: Brian Wang

CMC vice-chairman General Xu Qiliang will be 72 when the congress is held – well past the official retirement age. Photo: Handout

Xi Jinping is the chairman of the Central Military Commission. Photo: Xinhua

Four of seven members on the powerful Central Military Commission are at or have passed the retirement age and could step down at the upcoming party congress.


Changing of China’s diplomatic guard on agenda for this year’s party congress

Yang Jiechi (right), director of the general office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrive for a meeting with their US counterparts in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 18, 2021. Photo: Reuters

President Xi Jinping delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of the 19th party congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 18, 2017. Photo: AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (left) talks with Song Tao, the head of the Communist Party of China’s international liaison department, in North Korea in April 2018. Photo: KCNA

Liu Jieyi at a UN Security Council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on September 11, 2017, when he was China’s ambassador to the UN. Photo: AFP

Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu attends a State Council Information Office briefing on China’s fight against Covid-19 in Beijing on June 7, 2020. Photo: Reuters

Xie Feng, now a vice-minister of foreign affairs, gives a speech in Hong Kong on February 7, 2020, when he was head of the ministry’s office in Hong Kong. Photo: AFP

China’s two most influential diplomats, both above retirement age, are set to leave important vacancies to fill.


Ahead of this year’s Communist Party congress, we explore the possible personnel changes and power structure of the Taiwan affairs system, military leadership and the top brass of the country’s diplomatic corps.


China’s 20th Party Congress: Analysis

China’s 20th Party Congress: All Articles

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