Source: NY Times    Published: 2022-10-23

When China’s leader, Xi Jinping, led six dark-suited men onto a bright red stage on Sunday, the scale of his victory became clear as one by one he introduced the country’s new ruling inner circle. Each was an acolyte of Mr. Xi, making his grip over China’s future tighter than ever.

Mr. Xi’s groundbreaking third term as leader, following a weeklong Communist Party congress, was entirely expected. But even seasoned observers who thought that they had taken the full measure of Mr. Xi have been astonished by how thoroughly he shook up the party’s top tiers.

“He was dominant already and is even more dominant now,” said Dali Yang, a professor at the University of Chicago who researches Chinese politics. “He owns it.”

Mr. Xi has stacked the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top body, with his loyalists. He has also appointed to the broader leadership a number of domestic security officials, military commanders, ideologues, engineers and technocrats, underscoring his ambition of accelerating China’s rise as a military and technological superpower — while keeping it under unyielding Communist Party control.

For the world, this may portend a China newly energized to pursue Mr. Xi’s agenda. Beijing is likely to remain defiant in the face of international criticism of its hard-line behavior. It is seeking greater self-sufficiency in strategic technologies. It wants to become the pre-eminent military force in the region and to strongly assert its claim over Taiwan. At the congress, Mr. Xi also said that China would promote its own initiatives to solve global development and security problems.

To the party’s supporters and many people in China, Mr. Xi’s centralized control can be a strength. The party has pushed images showing how the pandemic devastated other countries. Mr. Xi has contrasted the vast mobilizing capacity of the Chinese state with what he calls the “chaos of the West.”

“A third term for Xi Jinping very much represents continuity in all of China’s current policies, unlike the United States’ flip-flopping policies,” Wang Wen, the executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies in Beijing, said in written responses to questions. “If Xi didn’t get a third term, wouldn’t the world be even more worried?”

Mr. Xi made clear that he was deeply involved in choosing the new cohort of officials. A top criterion for selection was loyalty to Mr. Xi, said an official account of the selection process that was published over the weekend. Rising officials, it said, must stay in lock step with him “in thinking, politics and action.”