2017, the year Chairman Xi Jinping will come into his own

Douglas H. Paal says after five years of consolidating power, the Chinese leader will emerge stronger than ever before. For this year at least, Xi Jinping will play the role of global leader, and the world will be better for it

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China is deploying its soft power internationally to maximise Xi Jinping’s hard power at home and abroad. Illustration: Craig Stephens

Published: 5:47pm, 9 Mar 2017Updated: 9:09pm, 9 Mar 2017

A provocateur took over the White House in January amid calls to delegitimise and penalise China. Yet Beijing has maintained a calm, cool demeanour, and is seeking quietly to find a modus vivendi with the Trump administration. China deflected calls to take on global responsibilities for years, but Xi Jinping ( 習近平 ) became the first Chinese top leader to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, and claimed the mantle of leading globalisation as the US slumps away from that role.

How do we explain the twists and turns in behaviour? On the US side, most of what is happening is transparent. Donald Trump ran an outsider’s campaign and now seeks to upend many of the establishment’s sacred cows. Subject to constitutional checks and balances, however, Trump is increasingly likely to be hemmed in and restrained by realities as his term plays out.

In China, by contrast, politics is mostly conducted in a Beijing black box, and I think what we are seeing from outside that box is the empowerment of Xi. To paraphrase Winston Churchill after the battle of El Alamein, we are witnessing not the beginning of the end, as Xi enters his fifth year in power, but the end of the beginning. Beijing is saying goodbye to Xi Jinping Operating System 1.0, and orchestrating the roll-out of Xi Jinping 2.0, to finish his consolidation of power later this year at the 19th party congress. Unlike American presidents who tend to weaken with time, Chinese leaders tend to do the opposite.

Under Trump, Sino-US ties are a work in progress

Delegates clap as President Xi Jinping arrives for the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference last Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. As Xi enters his fifth year in power, Beijing will say goodbye to Xi Jinping Operating System 1.0, and orchestrate the roll-out of Xi Jinping 2.0. Photo: Reuters

Xi Jinping’s ambitious power play

China is deploying its soft power internationally to maximise Xi’s hard power at home and abroad. Xi was hemmed in by compromises struck among his predecessors before he took over the party leadership in 2012. He was saddled with a Politburo Standing Committee largely not of his own choosing. The party bureaucracy was riddled with people who did not support or would not enthusiastically implement his agenda. Promises of reform were blunted by failures to respond. But from the start, Xi could be seen crowding out potential rivals for key roles. He became the Chairman of Everything.

Unlike American presidents who tend to weaken with time, Chinese leaders tend to do the opposite

Clearly, that situation is set to change. Since the middle of last year, close observation showed that new officials are being promoted. Xi is repositioning loyalists and those who will become loyal to him so as to govern with a firmer hand in his second five-year term in office.

For the short term, certainly this calendar year, this is probably good news for the rest of the world as Xi plays the role of a world leader. Thus we saw Xi break with precedent to attend the Davos summit, adopting a striking – and many would say a hypocritical – globalist tone in contrast with Trump’s new economic nationalism.

Then we received the announcement of Xi’s first presidential phone call with Trump, in which Xi persuaded Trump to honour the “one China policy”, after the US leader called this sensitive policy foundation into question in December. This was followed by a successful visit to Washington by State Councillor Yang Jiechi ( 楊潔箎 ). All signs suggest preparations are being made for an early Xi visit to the US.

Such a visit would give Xi the opportunity to show his people that he can manage successfully the most important and sensitive bilateral relationship in the world. It would follow the “two sessions” – the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress – now under way, where Xi is demonstrating his role as “the core” of the Central Committee of the party.