Ahead of a key political meeting starting October 16, China’s Communist Party said Sunday that it had elected all the delegates. China’s Communist Party’s 20th five-yearly party congress will be a landmark meeting at which President Xi Jinping is expected to be anointed as the country’s most powerful leader in decades.
While President Xi Jinping is expected to secure an unprecedented third term in the meeting, the 25-member Politburo can see a shuffle of personnel.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that the elected 2,296 delegates must adhere to Xi’s political ideology in addition to the party constitution.
Amid a strict zero-Covid policy that has accelerated China’s inward turn from the world and deteriorating relations with the United States, Xi is facing significant political headwinds.
Offering signposts on the direction of the world’s second-largest economy, the congress is the most important date on China’s political calendar.
Following a highly choreographed exercise to pick members of the party’s Central Committee of around 200 members, the Central Committee will then vote for the 25-person Politburo and its all-powerful Standing Committee.
Crushing a democracy movement in Hong Kong and strict lockdowns on cities in the name of curbing the coronavirus, analysts believe that Xi’s decade-long tenure has served to take down his political rivals.
Xi has faced harsh human rights criticism from the international community over the repressive policies in the northwestern Xinjiang region and the “Wolf Warrior” foreign strategy.
Leaving open the possibility of him becoming the leader for life, Xi abolished the presidential two-term limit in 2018 claiming that he wanted to prevent another Mao-like dictatorship.
(With inputs from agencies)
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