What to Expect at China’s National People’s Congress as Xi Tightens Grip

Analysts are also looking out for other appointments to the leadership of China’s economy and financial sectors. They include Ding Xuexiang, who is expected to be executive vice premier. He Lifeng, another close ally to Mr. Xi and head of China’s powerful economic policy planning body, is expected to become vice premier; and Zhu Hexin, a veteran banker, might be tapped to run China’s central bank.

“They are all people who really are party people, first and foremost, and, of course, close associates of Xi Jinping,” said Tony Saich, a China specialist at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. “It’s really a departure of the whole Western-educated, globally integrated officials, who basically are all timed out and retired.”

Female leaders have become more scarce under Mr. Xi’s tenure. For the first time in decades, the top 24 members of the party are all men. Shen Yiqin, a former party chief of the southwestern province of Guizhou, may be named a state councilor.

The party has also signaled a major institutional shake-up that will help carry out Mr. Xi’s agenda by entrenching the party deeper into state ministries and Chinese society by extension.

Few details have been released so far, but at a meeting of national leaders on Tuesday, Mr. Xi called for “deepening reform of the party and state institutions.” China watchers are discussing changes that could see China’s sprawling security apparatus and financial watchdogs fall under closer supervision by Mr. Xi and the party.

“Xi Jinping has a pretty sizable set of goals he wants the party-state to achieve between now and 2035,” said Jude Blanchette, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. Frustrations with a sprawling Chinese bureaucracy are “driving these heavy-handed interventions,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/world/asia/china-congress-xi-jinping.html