China Briefing | For Xi Jinping, the biggest danger to the Communist Party is itself
- The Communist Party’s most influential members will be meeting this month to discuss how to strengthen and legitimise their power
- Nearly 40 years after Deng Xiaoping embraced reform, it’s time for Beijing to make another monumental shift and embrace the rule of law
The main agenda of the gathering of nearly 300 of the party’s most influential members is to “discuss important issues concerning how to uphold and improve the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and make progress in modernising China’s system and capacity for governance”, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
But one should not be turned off by the mouthful. Translated, the top policy-setting meeting will discuss ways to further strengthen the rule of the party at all levels of the country and legitimise its power in the face of what the official media has often termed “changes in the world unseen in a century”.
This matters because under the official hyperbole that China is fast becoming a world power lies one factor which keeps Chinese leaders awake at night – their capacity to manage the complex challenges at home and abroad in order to stay in power.
If history can be any guide, past plenums have often heralded the country’s most important political or economic changes.