There were no term limits on the party secretary position to start with.He changed the Chinese constitution ,now theres no 2 term limits. @beijingwalker chinese members know better
Even in the party's unwritten rules, there is nothing saying that a chairman of the state must be a party head, and such situation is not unprecedented. Wang was instated as a vice chairman without a cabinet or politburo seat. Though the motive was far from altruistic — to deny that seat to anybody with potential claims on power, and Wang was just a convenient man for that.
Do you think anything changed since Hu on that front? I think it did, but not in the direction you imagine. Well performing regions repay their debts with ease, and actually are better off now on debts than in Hu's era despite debt expansion, but poorly ran regions try to copy that blindly, and bury themselves in debt even further. Google GuizhouXi is correct to rein in the debt though, even if that caused a dramatic slowdown in the Chinese economy. China's economic growth under Hu, especially after the Global Financial Crisis, is unsustainable and too reckless.
Xi was never a reformer from the start, he himself said so very early on. Early on, he focused narrowly on just wanting to surpass the Soviet Union's record, and everything else was second. And after some lull after it became clear that the prophesied crisis is not coming, he, I think, caught himself thinking "I really don't know what to do next."My biggest concern is Xi trying to go back to the the state company economy.
He is trying to suppress private companies and support state companies.
That's end of China miracle.
It is very visible after the peak of anti corruption purge passed. His agenda got quite random: ecology, obor, Xiongan and dozen more things far from being essential to the country. I think he just want to keep bureaucracy occupied, while he sorts out what to do next.
I can say that something like been already the case for best performing SOEs long ago. The issue is with a part of them that never did well. They could've been reformed easily... if the political will was there.I remember reading before that Xi is interested in Singapore's state-capitalist model, where SOEs are infused with private capital which operates on market principles and allows it to be transparent and efficient. Part of the profits then goes back to the state for fiscal spending every year, instead into the pockets of many billionaires in many other countries.
China's growth depends strongly on the global growth now. There is not enough consumers for our industry at home, in US, and in the entire world. Only if the developing world economies will step up their consumption, will we see further growth. There is nothing the state can do about that.This list could be further expanded, for example:
- China produces 40% of the civil marine vessels of global total
- China produces >80% of the large naval battleships (10 large destroyers launched by China in 2019)
- China produces 1/4~1/3 of the passenger vehicles globally
- China produces 1/3 of the construction equipment globally
- China produces 1/3 of the trucks and buses globally
But China's GDP is only 15% of global total. Interesting.
I feel that Xi has finally started backing off in recent months. A wave of new appointments from September to December were certainly not Xi's type of people. The anti corruption people have been toned down too. There are no 10 inspections per month nonsense anymore, as I heard from my classmates on government jobs. Xi also got very quiet about the trade "deal," he no longer meets Trump himself, and dispatches Liu, who is about to retire, instead.That's why I keep saying Xi should go this year, China needs a new generation of younger leaders.
Is he losing power? No, not even 1% of it. At this point there is not a single politician on the horizon in the party who can challenge him before 2022. Even if he will sit and do nothing for the next 2 years, his system, and political legacy is secure past 2022.
What is really unpredictable now is what will happen after Xi will be truly gone from the political scene. Just like after Brezhnev kicked the bucket, there is no telling who and how will come with claims to power.
The real challenge to Xi's legacy is the lack of such: Xi didn't come from some political clan. Xi is a solo player with good network among previous generation elites who now came off the scene. He is very cautious in his appointment choices, just like Brezhnev was. A lot of his closest aides are his friends from not even his youth or university years, but childhood.
He don't have a big selection of cadres he can choose from. His first circle is basically Wang Shaojun, Li Zhanshu, Liu He, and Wang Qishan.
But who knows... Even Hu, despite him being rather weak politically, was said to have almost secured the political succession on his terms, but it all went broke literally within month from his last plenum.
Even now, with Xi being the most powerful man in the party, it doesn't mean him being "all powerful." One thing, people greatly overstate the amount of things Xi has his hand in, and Chinese state and the CPC, and the gigantic bureaucracy have their own dynamics, not which is not entirely set in Zhongnanhai.
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