Beijing (AFP) – China’s President Xi Jinping opened a key meeting of Communist Party elites in Beijing on Monday, state media said, which observers will be closely watching for clues as to the country’s direction and future leadership.
Roughly 300 members of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee in attendance at the meeting, called the fifth plenum, will be looking to tighten discipline within their ranks, according to state media.
That includes measures to reduce corruption and make cadres more effective and loyal.
Xi opened the session on Monday, presenting a draft decision by the Central Committee that “sets out strategic plans for strengthening full and rigorous Party self-governance”, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Few details from the closed-door gathering, held under tight security, will be made known until it concludes on Thursday, but the timing of the meeting is crucial.
The fifth plenum comes ahead of a major party congress next year, where 73-year-old Xi is almost certain to secure a historic fourth term and oversee a leadership reshuffle.
Previous plenums have represented key moments for Xi to cement his authority.
The Chinese leader has waged a 14-year campaign against corruption that has purged thousands of officials, including dozens of the Central Committee.
Yet he remains frustrated with cadres he deems are not implementing his orders.
State media published an article ahead of the plenum, based on a speech Xi gave in January in which he railed against “two-faced” officials who appear to comply with central directives but “inwardly resist”, pursue “individualism” and are “politically opportunistic”.
Analysts told AFP that Xi is trying to maximise efficiency and loyalty among cadres by imposing more supervision and rules.
But as a result of his expansive purges, this year’s plenum is expected to have the lowest turnout since former leader Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.
Eight of the Central Committee’s seats lie vacant, with another 15 members under investigation and at risk of being replaced.
Xi’s anti-corruption drive has also targeted the military, toppling five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the party’s top armed forces body.
Of 44 military members appointed to the Central Committee in 2022, only two have not been purged or disappeared, according to the Asia Society Policy Institute.
The plenum could see new members appointed to the CMC; the party could wait until next year’s congress to replenish it; or Xi might even restructure party control over its vast military.
The talks also come at an unsteady time for the world’s second-largest economy, which has struggled to address persistently sluggish domestic spending and a protracted crisis in the crucial property sector.
Turbulent political and economic ties with the United States are also weighing on China’s leaders.
Authorities are expected to release a summary of the outcomes after the meeting concludes on Thursday.
Billionaires and communists cannot coexist
luckily for everyone, there are no communists involved.
It’s very easy if you have no principles and never had any, like these guys.
Why is an arbitrary level of wealth incompatible with working towards a society where production and distribution is so advanced that collectively owning and planning the economy is the most efficient, and bringing about that fully collectivized society? China has a lot of developing industries, and marketization does play a helpful role in stitching these together into something that can be effectively planned, this is a traditional Marxist analysis.
I’m sorry, I cannot hear through the propaganda.
You’re fully capable of comprehending what I said, and responding in an intelligent manner. Do you think what I said goes against Marxism? If so, why?
I think reality is different from theory and I’m only interested in reality. Goodbye 🚫
I’m only interested in reality, theory is just how we understand reality. Where do you think reality and theory diverge, here? You’re fully capable of making a point, I believe in you.
The question is tangential. The issue is more about altruism. Especially of key figures. You can’t have a perfect system without perfect people.
Wealth inequality is virtually always a symptom of greed and an indicator that actors are working for a deliberately lopsided system, not a highly functional communist or even socialist system.
The purges against “corruption” shouldn’t be taken at face value. Authoritarian systems purge rivals and perceived threats in power games and label it as fighting corruption. Without the details of who did what and when, there is no way to know if Xi is pursuing altruism and purging actual corruption, or just playing power games and is the corruption himself.
Authoritarians often mistake dissent for disloyalty and purge even well meaning competent and ultimately correct voices, though it’s never so black and white. Everyone makes mistakes, and no one is always altruistic, and even the corrupt do good on occasion even if by accident.
My question is not tangential, it’s key to the question at hand, and the relevance of it to this conversation makes itself apparent in your later paragraphs. My point is not that China has a “perfect system,” but instead that it has a good system, in that it is regularly improving and puts the people first. No more and no less than this do I claim.
The wealth inequality in China exists because it has private property. As I already stated, China has private property because it marketizes the underdeveloped sectors of the economy, where markets play a remarkable role in centralizing production and distribution. At the point of centralized production, markets have played their role to completion, and planned economy overtakes it. Planning production and distribution at an underdeveloped scale is remarkably difficult. This is the path to development in China based on Marxism.
What is an “authoritarian?” Is that a label we put on someone, or is it an existing category of people based on intrinsic qualities?
I understand your point about property and markets. Saying it is a path based on Marxism is a bit of a stretch. China is more capitalist than communist by any meaningful measure.
Like the famous critique of American socio-economic organization in that the rich get democracy and socialism, while the poor get authoritarinism and cold hard markets. China’s economic modality can be seen as marxist only for the state, while the people get market based economics.
I fail to see your point. The commanding heights of China’s economy are socially owned, and the state is under the control of the working class, primarily by the CPC, itself a proletarian party. This basis makes them socialist. As they develop, markets will continue to do what markets do and centralize, and this means a higher proportion of China’s economy will he folded into the public sector. The state is not independent of class struggle, nor is it its own class, it’s under the domination of one of the two classes that dominate any given society, and in China this is the working class.
Here’s Cheng Enfu’s diagram on the stages in socialist construction:
And thanks to the proletarian state, the working class is the primary beneficiary of advancement:
What, in your opinion, would China be doing differently if they wanted to be “more Marxist?”
8>the state is under the control of the working class, primarily by the CPC, itself a proletarian party.
Yeah, we’re not going to agree here. That’s the party’s marketing speak. While Xi did purge his fellow Princelings fifedoms, its wasn’t to or for the proletariat, it was for loyalty to him. Marxist language is the legitimizing framework for public to justify why the party does what it does, but its just propaganda.
China’s actual economy depends on capital, foreign, domestic and state. Has market functions and billionaires, at least in as much that they don’t build independant power bases or pose risks to Xi. If anyone ever does, the state restructures the corporation or installs comittees within the corps to exert control and purges the rival powers. Remember Alibaba’s Jack Ma? His criticisms of China’s state owned banks and financial regulation positioned him as too uppity for the authoritarian Xi.
If the Marxist language were real, China wouldn’t have minted so many billionaires while the purported proletariat toils in poverty. They wouldn’t have a grueling 996 corporate culture whose very definition is exploitation of labour. We would see powerful independang labour unions giving the working peoples a voice in government and make dissent heard and action taken. Instead unions are illegal except for the All-China Federation of Traxe Unions which supresses dissent and ensures China’s economy relies almost entirely on capitalism.
Mao’s Iron Rice Bowl principles of state guarentees of employment, pensions amd welfare died with market reforms sfarting in the 80’s to today. It’s now a capitalist hire and fire, wage labour economy.
While China has state pensions and healthcare, it’s not a colle tive or egalitarian Marxist system at all. Its really a tiered class based system of state run marlet based insurance schemes; one for civil servants, one for urban enterprise workers and one for rural workers. Even with these, there are still major out of pocket expenses for most major illness, and only a fraction is covered by insurance. These costs are only exacerbating the existing wealth disparities of a deeply unequal society. The mandatory employee employer contributions mirror western systems almost exactly and bare no resemblance to marxism.
There are no guarenteed jobs or living standards. Just a capitalist’s hiring and firing with a minimal safety net of welfare (Dibao), just like the UK, Canada or even like the US’s SNAP program of the past.
Funny how China’s ‘Marxist’ end state, looks a lot like late stage capitalism, aka fascism. China is communist like the US is a Democratic Free market economy - only in rhetoric.
The CPC being proletarian isn’t “marketing,” it’s a fact. The overwhelming majority of the CPC consists of workers, peasants, and professional workers. It isn’t merely “Marxist language,” but a fact of their actual composition.
You are absolutely correct that capitalists are not allowed to resist the government, and the CPC uses committees to exert control even over the nominally independent private sector. This is a good thing for a socialist state. The actual mover of China’s economy isn’t capital, but the state sector of the economy. Social ownership governs the commanding heights of the economy, while developing industries are largely marketized for the exact reasons I explained previously.
The examples you give explain your lack of understanding of China, and your lack of understanding of socialist construction. 996 has been illegal for years. Absolute poverty has been eradicated. Real wages for workers climbs massive amounts year over year. Independent trade unions are not allowed, because they do not belong in a socialist system, which is based on unity and collectivism, rather than independence and individualism.
The very basic fact of China is that the economy is predominantly socially owned, and the working class controls the state. In trying to oppose it from a Marxist perspective, you place Xi Jinping outside of class struggle, and take a moralist stance against private property instead of a materialist stance on socialist construction. You have not presented a Marxist argument in the slightest, and in so doing confused socialism for fascism, which has private ownership of the commanding heights and bourgeois control of the state.
They are sometimes the same sort of people
Party elites? Whatever happened to classless society? 🤔
“Party elite” isn’t a class in Marxist terms, classes are relationships to ownership of the means of production and therefore party members are members of a broader class. The CPC is overwhelmingly proletarian, and does have single digit percentages of capitalists but said capitalists are barred from the highest levels of party membership. Classless society is a descriptor of a society where production and distribution is so advanced that planning the economy scientifically is the most efficient, and thus everything is collectively owned and planned. China isn’t there yet, so it still has classes.
Xi is a dictator who fighting hard to eliminate anyone who may oppose him.
