What Will Happen at China 2016?
What Will Happen at China 2016?
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BEIJING - According to the Chinese zodiac, 2016 heralds the year of the monkey, an auspicious time for expectant parents hoping for quick-witted sprogs.
For the Communist party chief, Xi Jinping, who completes three years as president in January, the omens are less promising. Thus far, Xi has built a reputation as one of China’s most dominant leaders in decades: a super-sized centraliser whom headline writers call Big Daddy Xi.
He has cemented his grip on power with a ferocious assault on political rivals that has dragged some of the party’s most feared and influential figures through the mud and into jail. He has set about restoring the Middle Kingdom to the centre of world affairs, pursuing an increasingly audacious foreign policy and attempting to reforge China’s role within the United Nations.
September’s grand military parade in Beijing, to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese people’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression and the world anti-fascist war. Photograph: Yin Gang/Xinhua Press/Corbis
In September, the Chinese president celebrated his apparent supremacy by throwing a bombastic military parade at which nuclear missile launchers and thousands of troops paraded through Tiananmen Square.
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Yet for all Xi’s swagger, there was mounting evidence in 2015 of his weaknesses and those of the 87 million-strong party he leads.
There was the mismanaged stock market rout, an affair so badly handled that Xi reputedly lambasted top financial officials when he was pictured on the cover of the Economist desperately attempting to prop up plummeting stocks.
“I didn’t want to be on that cover,” Xi fumed. “But thanks to you, I made the cover.”
There were the catastrophic Tianjin explosions – a tragedy some described as a Chinese Katrina – which devastated lives and exposed deep-rooted problems of government corruption and incompetence. All the while, lurking just beneath the surface, was the near constant rumbling of political intrigue that has long threatened to tear the Communist party apart.
Those rumblings will intensify in 2016 as rival factions step up their opposition to Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and his stewardship of a rapidly sagging economy.
Facing growing political pressure from within, Xi will look to foreign policy and his domestic security apparatus to ensure public support. He will stoke up nationalism by further ratcheting up tensions in the South China Sea, already the scene of a controversial island-building campaign that has put Beijing and Washington at loggerheads. He will continue to escalate his war on corrupt Communist party “tigers” – aiming to snare perhaps his biggest victim to date in the second half of the year.
Chinese president Xi Jinping inspects troops.
And, with 2016 marking 50 years since the start of Chairman Mao’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution, the few who dare to speak out against China’s Big Daddy will face even harsher treatment as Beijing seeks to stifle any criticism of the party he leads.
Jubilant couples will pack maternity wards as China enters the year of the monkey. But for Xi it threatens to prove an annus horribilis.
For the Communist party chief, Xi Jinping, who completes three years as president in January, the omens are less promising. Thus far, Xi has built a reputation as one of China’s most dominant leaders in decades: a super-sized centraliser whom headline writers call Big Daddy Xi.
He has cemented his grip on power with a ferocious assault on political rivals that has dragged some of the party’s most feared and influential figures through the mud and into jail. He has set about restoring the Middle Kingdom to the centre of world affairs, pursuing an increasingly audacious foreign policy and attempting to reforge China’s role within the United Nations.
September’s grand military parade in Beijing, to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese people’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression and the world anti-fascist war. Photograph: Yin Gang/Xinhua Press/Corbis
In September, the Chinese president celebrated his apparent supremacy by throwing a bombastic military parade at which nuclear missile launchers and thousands of troops paraded through Tiananmen Square.
Advertisement
Yet for all Xi’s swagger, there was mounting evidence in 2015 of his weaknesses and those of the 87 million-strong party he leads.
There was the mismanaged stock market rout, an affair so badly handled that Xi reputedly lambasted top financial officials when he was pictured on the cover of the Economist desperately attempting to prop up plummeting stocks.
“I didn’t want to be on that cover,” Xi fumed. “But thanks to you, I made the cover.”
There were the catastrophic Tianjin explosions – a tragedy some described as a Chinese Katrina – which devastated lives and exposed deep-rooted problems of government corruption and incompetence. All the while, lurking just beneath the surface, was the near constant rumbling of political intrigue that has long threatened to tear the Communist party apart.
Those rumblings will intensify in 2016 as rival factions step up their opposition to Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and his stewardship of a rapidly sagging economy.
Facing growing political pressure from within, Xi will look to foreign policy and his domestic security apparatus to ensure public support. He will stoke up nationalism by further ratcheting up tensions in the South China Sea, already the scene of a controversial island-building campaign that has put Beijing and Washington at loggerheads. He will continue to escalate his war on corrupt Communist party “tigers” – aiming to snare perhaps his biggest victim to date in the second half of the year.
Chinese president Xi Jinping inspects troops.
And, with 2016 marking 50 years since the start of Chairman Mao’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution, the few who dare to speak out against China’s Big Daddy will face even harsher treatment as Beijing seeks to stifle any criticism of the party he leads.
Jubilant couples will pack maternity wards as China enters the year of the monkey. But for Xi it threatens to prove an annus horribilis.
(rnz)
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