Lhe most notable fact of the annual session of the Chinese Parliament, open since March 4, is undoubtedly an absence. The press conference that, for thirty years, each prime minister has held at the end of this essentially formal assembly has disappeared. Xi Jinping, who has never deigned to answer questions from journalists since his accession to power in 2012, undoubtedly did not appreciate that in 2021 the then Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, took advantage of the sole the opportunity given to him each year to speak to the press to indicate that 600 million Chinese lived on less than 1,000 yuan (around 120 euros) per month. This statement seriously put into perspective the success of the fight against poverty that Xi Jinping claimed. With Li Keqiang having to leave office in 2023, Xi took the opportunity to put an end to this ritual.
It would be wrong to see only an ego quarrel in this decision. This is in fact accompanied by another reform: the reduction, since 2020, of the duration of this parliamentary session from around two to a single week.
The meaning of these two modifications is all too obvious. In Xi Jinping’s China, the State is above all in the service and orders of the Communist Party. Xi Jinping likes to boast on the international scene of his title of President of the Republic, but in reality his two other functions, general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the central military commission, are those which count the most in the exercise of the power.
Worrying return to basics
In the 2000s, Xi’s predecessors increased the prerogatives of the state to the detriment of the party. A way of proving to the eyes of the rest of the world, but also to the Chinese, that the page of Maoism had indeed been turned. But Xi has always seen this separation of powers – although very relative – as a threat. As a good Leninist, he is convinced of the primacy of the party over the country. It is indeed his flag, and not that of the People’s Republic of China, which covers Mao’s body in the mausoleum in Tiananmen Square.
This return to basics is worrying but not surprising. It is in line with the change in the Constitution which, since 2018, has put an end to term limits, allowing Xi to stay in power as long as he wishes, again breaking with the policy launched at the death of Mao in 1976.
Unsurprisingly, this primacy of ideology is accompanied by the strengthening of measures intended to protect “national security” which, in fact, gives more power to the party to attack its supposed “enemies” of the interior as well as foreigners. While Chinese leaders regularly assert, particularly in front of the international business community, that they want to deepen the policy of reform and opening-up, the facts show the opposite. More than ever, Xi Jinping only follows one compass: the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
The main victims of this all-powerful party are the Chinese themselves. Not only because any embryo of civil society is nipped in the bud, but also because this primacy of ideology threatens to disrupt the proper functioning of the economy. Is this tightening likely to last? The enrichment of the country in recent years has long made it acceptable. If prosperity were to run out of steam for a long time, its justification in the eyes of the Chinese could also end up fading.