October 26, 2017
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China’s new Politburo Standing Committee was introduced at the Great Hall of the People. The members are, from left, Han Zheng, Wang Huning, Li Zhanshu, President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, Wang Yang and Zhao Leji.
Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
BEIJING — The ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Wednesday was meant to introduce the world to China’s new leaders, members of an elite committee that for decades has tried to govern by consensus and sometimes has been compared to a corporate board of directors.
Instead, the nationally televised event was more a display of the political power that Xi Jinping has amassed in just five years as president. None of the other members of the new Politburo Standing Committee could be considered equals or potential rivals. The six men stood stiffly in dark suits on the stage, each bowing as Mr. Xi introduced them.
After reciting their names, Mr. Xi added almost offhandedly: “More information about them can be found through media outlets.”
The debut of the new Standing Committee, the pinnacle of power in China, capped a weeklong Communist Party congress that became a celebration of Mr. Xi’s one-man style of rule and his promise to lead a resurgent China to a place at the center of the world stage.
“Over the past five years, we’ve done a lot. Some work has been finished, some we must continue with,” Mr. Xi said as his new colleagues, all men in their 60s, lined up before cameras. “A new era needs a new look, and even more needs new accomplishments.”
For the first time in a generation, the new Standing Committee did not include a younger leader who would be groomed as heir apparent. The decision to delay anointing a successor broke with the unwritten conventions that have ensured relatively stable leadership changes since the era of Deng Xiaoping, which was troubled by schisms and purges.
By setting himself up as the strongest ruler since Deng, Mr. Xi has pushed the world’s newest superpower into new and potentially dangerous political territory. On Tuesday, its final day, the congress elevated Mr. Xi, 64, to the same exalted status as the nation’s founder, Mao Zedong, by enshrining “Xi Jinping Thought” into the party’s constitution.
“If Xi goes for broke and breaks precedent by not preparing for an orderly and peaceful succession, he is putting a target on his back and risking a backlash from other ambitious politicians,” said Susan L. Shirk, the chairwoman of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.
“By taking such a risk, he shows himself to be more like Mao than we originally thought — he demonstrates his power by overturning institutions,” she added.
Mr. Xi’s authoritarian approach was meant to bring faster policymaking after years of stagnation under his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Instead, critics say, the concentration of power in one man’s hands has created its own bottlenecks, with officials unsure how to execute policies or afraid to deviate from top-down demands.
The lack of a potential successor could be seen as a sign that Mr. Xi intends to dominate beyond this next five-year term, which ends in 2023, either by staying in office or behind the scenes. Mr. Xi may also want more time to test possible successors, while avoiding lame duck status with an heir waiting in the wings.
In a possible nod to concerns about Mr. Xi amassing too much power, most of the five new Standing Committee members were not longtime associates of his, though all have worked with him in some capacity. Premier Li Keqiang, the only holdover from the outgoing committee besides Mr. Xi, was once seen as a possible rival to lead the country.
Among the new members were Wang Yang, a vice premier who promoted himself as a can-do reformer while party chief of Guangdong Province in southern China, and Han Zheng, a former mayor of Shanghai who is credited with guiding that city’s emergence as China’s glittering financial and business capital. Neither had a long history of working closely with Mr. Xi before he became president in 2012.
Other new members have worked alongside Mr. Xi for years. They included Li Zhanshu, his longtime friend and aide, and Wang Huning, a former professor turned party ideologist who has helped craft Mr. Xi’s speeches and reports. A scholar of international politics, Mr. Wang also advised Mr. Xi’s predecessors, and he once wrote a book, “America Opposes America,” based on a six-month visit to the United States.
The seventh member, Zhao Leji, managed party personnel and will assume leadership of its anticorruption agency, succeeding Wang Qishan, perhaps Mr. Xi’s most powerful lieutenant. Mr. Wang retired as scheduled, despite speculation that Mr. Xi might try to keep him on the Standing Committee.
“Xi has seemingly chosen magnanimity with the list,” said Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Of course, that’s easy to do when you’ve achieved your two core objectives — making yourself the party’s untenured ideological arbiter and refraining from signaling the succession.”
Mr. Xi’s victory at the congress means he will welcome President Trump to China next month more confident than ever in his hold on power and the party’s support for his more assertive foreign policy.
Some China watchers have said they also expect Mr. Xi to place more emphasis on overhauling the economy and cleaning up finances, after spending the past five years stamping out dissent and tightening his control over the party and the military, China’s other political power center.
One sign was the promotion of Liu He, his closest economic adviser and a longtime advocate of curbing debt and financial hazards. As a new member of the Politburo, a broader 25-member council that is less powerful than its Standing Committee, Mr. Liu appears likely to wield greater influence on policy.
In his remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Xi noted that next year would mark 40 years since Deng opened up China to market forces and vowed to “firmly and unwaveringly deepen reform in every aspect.”
“He wants a team around him that will implement his vision,” said Evan S. Medeiros, the senior director for Asian affairs in the National Security Council in the Obama administration. “On economic issues, one could tentatively say that this Politburo Standing Committee is more reform-minded than the current lineup.”
Under Mao and then Deng, the party struggled with succession arrangements that ended in purges and division. Then, in steps from the 1990s onward, the party established a pattern of installing likely successors on the Standing Committee well in advance, with party leaders serving no more than two terms.
Mr. Xi himself joined the committee in 2007, before taking power in 2012. Before him, Mr. Hu served on the committee for a decade before succeeding Jiang Zemin.
China’s national Constitution says that he cannot serve more than two terms as president, but Mr. Xi could stay on in other posts, as the party leader or chairman of the armed forces, for example, or create a new role to preserve his power. Other experts believe Mr. Xi will formally retire in five years, after selecting successors he is confident will uphold his policies.
The party has promoted a phalanx of officials loyal to Mr. Xi into the broader Politburo. About two-thirds of the 15 new members joining the body once worked under Mr. Xi or have other longstanding ties to him, including some younger leaders seen as potential successors.
They included Chen Min’er, 57, who worked as a propaganda functionary with Mr. Xi when they were both officials in the eastern province of Zhejiang in the early 2000s. Some experts had speculated that Mr. Xi might attempt to catapult Mr. Chen into the current Standing Committee.
Instead, Mr. Chen is one of four Politburo members under the age of 60 who could be considered a candidate to lead the country in five years — but only if Mr. Xi relinquishes control.
