Xi Jinping’s Real Coup in China Will Take Place on October 16, 2022.
This may well prove to be a disaster for China's future.
On October 16, 2022, Xi Jinping will accept an unprecedented third term as China's president. What does this mean for the country's future? China's march to global dominance is threatened by signs of the beginning of a slow decline.
We are less than a month away from what many China watchers consider the biggest political event of the year, especially in Asia. It is the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which takes place on October 16. This is the CCP's main congress, held every five years and attended by more than 2,000 delegates representing about 90 million party members.
At this prestigious event, CCP delegates will primarily vote on the composition of the new Central Committee. President Xi Jinping is expected to accept a third term as president of the People's Republic of China, despite being a year older than the unofficial retirement age of 68. A third term for one man would be unprecedented in China. Hu Chunhua or Wang Yang are likely to replace Li Keqiang as Premier.
To make matters even more interesting, rumors have begun to circulate in recent days about a possible coup underway in China during Xi's trip to Kazakhstan where he met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Today, most experts agree that much of it is fake news spread by unreliable Indian media and Chinese foreign news sites that are taking their wishes for granted.
Georg Fahrion, Der Spiegel's correspondent in China, even took to the streets of Beijing on Sunday to mock the rumors by showing people in the metropolis going about their business. Never say never, but there is probably no crazy power struggle going on in Zhongnanhai.
No resistance at all. Xi's power in China will be unmatched
However, the absence of a power struggle in Beijing means that there is unlikely to be any resistance to Xi Jinping. He will have a free hand in mid-October 2022 to deliver the coup de grace to any Chinese party politics that may still be underway internally.
Xi Jinping will be given the title of “People's Leader” at the congress, an honor previously bestowed only on Mao Zedong and his successor Hua Guofeng. A symbolic appointment that shows how successful Xi Jinping has been in strengthening and centralizing his authority and how important the “Xi Jinping thought” will become in China.
One only has to look at Beijing's subsequent missteps over the past few months (and even years) to realize how much Xi is still in the saddle. A coup by a faction of the CCP is absurd since most anti-Xi Jinping groups have been purged.
After Hong Kong's rebellion in 2019, the metropolis lost its top spot as Asia's financial center to Singapore. Young people are leaving at an alarming rate, and foreign companies and investors are starting to pack up. It probably wasn't worth the “gain” of abolishing Hong Kong's special privileges from China. With the number of mainland migrants pouring in daily, the pro-democracy protesters in the region would never be supported by a majority of residents under normal circumstances anyway.
China's economic growth is currently slowing down, severely stifled by Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy. The endless and arbitrary confinements are beginning to anger the Chinese population and put pressure on industrial production.
Deteriorating weather conditions are only exacerbating this problem: the country is likely to experience more frequent droughts and floods in the future. Last summer's extreme heat had already forced factories to halt production so that families could keep the lights on.
Meanwhile, Beijing continues to crack down on its own technology companies, especially those with ambitions to make large overseas IPOs and conquer foreign markets. It has made the country as a whole much less attractive to investors and damaged the reputation for innovation that it had slowly built through amazing success stories like DJI, Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi, Huawei, and many others.
Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan has put a bit of a damper on the strong foreign policy that Xi Jinping wants to maintain. Even though China showed that it was capable of organizing a blockade on the democratic island, the affair mostly ended in a big win for the United States. Cooperation between the United States, its Asian allies, and Taiwan has only intensified since then, while Xi Jinping seems to prefer the long-term strategy of “unification” with Taiwan in a peaceful manner. Given Taiwan's strong desire to develop its own national identity and promote new relations and international recognition, it seems more unlikely than ever that Beijing will be able to achieve this.
It is also worth noting that the situation in Taiwan does not bring China any closer to developing the booming chip industry that it so desperately needs and wants. Those who help Taipei will have early access to TSMC's chips and perhaps even to some of its closely guarded industry secrets. Lithuania may see some segments of a Taiwanese chip chain installed on its territory after the opening of a Taiwanese embassy in Vilnius.
Finally, there is the ever-widening real estate crisis, stemming from the massive debts accumulated by construction companies like Evergrande. As more and more developers default and the government's stimulus package is only a stopgap measure, it has become clear that this reliable engine of China's growth - 30% of GDP - has long since stalled.
Nevertheless, Xi Jinping is likely to continue in his third term and further consolidate his power. Party policy within the CCP, which already tends largely towards Xi Jinping's desires, will be reduced to zero. This means even less flexibility in the central government. Even more, inability to address the above challenges and change course if necessary.
The real coup in Beijing will take place on October 16, 2022, by Xi Jinping, which could prove catastrophic for China's promising future.