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China Briefing | Analysis: what China’s leadership reshuffle means for Xi Jinping’s New Era
Reorganising the Politburo Standing Committee offers a final test of the Chinese president’s power – and signals his intentions for years to come
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The era of President Xi Jinping has begun. As he strode to the podium of the Great Hall of the People and delivered his extraordinarily long speech at the opening of the Communist Party’s 19th congress on Wednesday, Xi laid out an ambitious vision not only for his upcoming second term of five years, but more importantly for the next 30 years. China would become “a great modern socialist country” by the middle of the 21 century, Xi said to the applause of about 2,300 party delegates for the one-week meeting.
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Xi made no bones about his own leadership role and his own place in the annals of party history as he declared China had entered a new era and the party had embarked on a new journey that would propel it to the centre-stage of the world, thus living up to his call to fulfil the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.
While his marathon speech of three hours and nearly 30 minutes touched on almost everything – from politics to economics to Hong Kong and Taiwan to foreign relations – it boiled down to this fundamental conclusion: as the party tightens its grip on “everything”, it will also do whatever it can to fulfil the Chinese people’s aspirations for a better life in exchange for the legitimacy to maintain authoritarian rule at home.
WATCH: Marathon Xi Jinping speech
Internationally, Xi clearly intends to promote China’s ways of developing its economy with authoritarian rule and without espousing Western values – a model known as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ – as a model for other countries to follow.
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