China's 20th Party Congress Analysis Hub

China's 20th Party Congress opened in Beijing on October 16, 2022, with a wide-ranging speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping laying out the Communist Party's agenda for China over the next five years. Asia Society Policy Institute experts analyze the outcomes of the Congress, and what it means for China's domestic and foreign policies.To get more news about China's 20th party congress, you can visit shine news official website.

In the immediate aftermath of the Congress, Center for China Analysis fellows shared their thoughts on the outcomes, their insights, and possible implications. We recorded quick analysis from:

Hi, China Watchers. This is Xi Jinping’s glide path week to a third term as China’s paramount leader. And my Brussels-based colleague Stuart Lau and I have a transatlantic analysis of what Xi’s foreign policy settings hold for China’s relations with the U.S. and the E.U. We’ll also parse the language in Xi’s work report speech to measure what his real priorities are, scrutinize Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning about Xi’s Taiwan intentions and look for the lessons in the People’s Liberation Army’s last attempt to invade Taiwan. Amid the bilateral relationship gloom, we’ll profile a book that votes for hope by urging a renewed U.S. diplomacy push aimed to moderate Xi’s policies.

Let’s get to it. — Phelim

Chinese President Xi Jinping has made clear at the ongoing 20th Party Congress in Beijing that U.S.-China relations aren’t going to improve anytime soon.

Xi’s much anticipated speech on the opening day of the ruling party meeting framed foreign relations - including those with the U.S. - as a struggle between China and “external attempts to suppress and contain” it.

Xi’s speech distilled the key points of his “work report” which will guide the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s domestic and foreign policy priorities until 2027

Siege mentality: And Xi depicted the CCP as a guardian of the one-party authoritarian state facing unspecified threats of “infiltration, sabotage, subversion, and separatist activities by hostile forces.”

The 20th Party Congress, a gathering of more than 2,000 CCP officials, is widely expected to conclude on Saturday with the confirmation of Xi’s third term as the country’s paramount leader. And the tone and substance of his speech differed sharply from the self-congratulatory English-language video that CCP propaganda minions started circulating on Tuesday

Xi’s implicit messaging: A key priority of his third term is to defend China’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” key components of his combative concept of “national rejuvenation.” That’s code for pursuing “reunification” with Taiwan, backed by Xi’s warning that the CCP “will never promise to renounce the use of force” to assert its claim to the self-governing island.

The Congress began just four days after the Biden administration released a National Security Strategy that focused on China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.”

Grim outlook: Xi’s speech provides a window into the Chinese leader’s increasingly bleak view of the future of U.S.-China relations and could intensify moves by the U.S. to pursue policies and partnerships to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

“What is striking … is how pessimistic China is in terms of assessing its overall security environment, particularly its external environment,” said BONNY LIN, former country director for China at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Many of the measures it lists China as needing to undertake are intended to prepare the PRC population for domestic or external crises.

By the numbers: The good people at Capital Economics did the hard work of analyzing key words and phrases in Xi’s 25,000-word speech and comparing their usage in past Party Congress speeches by Xi’s predecessors including HU JINTAO, JIANG ZEMIN and ZHAO ZIYANG. The results are telling. Xi mentioned “security” 91 times in his speech, compared to 36 times by Hu in 2012 and zero references by Zhao in 1987. Conversely, Zhao mentioned “reform” 136 times in his 1987 speech, while Xi’s 48 mentions of the word on Sunday marked the lowest tally of any Chinese leader on record. Perhaps mindful of China’s rocky economic and foreign policy environment, Xi used Xi’s used the word “persevere” 168 times on Sunday, outpacing its 128 mentions in Xi’s 2012 speech and far above the 36 times Zhao said the word in 1987.