Opinion | Sixth plenum: with Xi at the helm, a new era when China becomes strong
- To appreciate the deep message of the sixth plenum, we should look to party history
- In Mao’s era, China ‘stood up’. In Deng’s era, China ‘became rich’. This plenum sets the stage for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, with Xi in charge
The sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party, according to the official language, “comprehensively reviews the major achievements made and the historical experience accumulated during the Party’s 100 years of struggle”.
As the party sees it, the sixth plenum stands at a “new historical starting point” of the “second centenary goal” – to transform China into a fully modernised, socialist nation by the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 2049 – and in this context, the sixth plenum can be said to be motivated by three “deep understandings”: historical context, learning the present to shed light on the future, and serving and satisfying the people.
The plenum holds up the banner, in the party’s argot, of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which requires strengthening the four consciousnesses, fortifying the four matters of confidence and achieving the two safeguards, thus ensuring that the whole party moves forward in unison.
In the run-up to the plenum, the party’s General Secretary Xi Jinping has been praised for “the magnificence, vision and grand strategy of a Marxist statesman” and lauded for his “extraordinary strategic determination, superb strategic thinking and scientific strategic decision-making”.
It comes as no surprise that to many foreigners, the language sounds turgid, repetitive, obsequious, opaque – party-speak of little consequence. To China watchers, the semiotics is blazing: the language consolidates and strengthens the leadership of the party in general and of Xi in specific.
However, notwithstanding the plethora of commentary, few see the sixth plenum for what it really is: one link, albeit a critical link, in a long chain of interconnected political events that culminate in the formal recognition of China’s “new era”, led by the Party and with Xi as the core of the Party’s Central Committee and of the whole party. Only a leader with overwhelming authority can reinterpret party history.
