The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee wrapped up its fifth plenum on Thursday, with Xinhua news agency and international media detailing the party’s promises and goals for its next five-year plan, including “Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland” and “peaceful cross-strait development.”
The list of promises was the only thing the media could report, as the details, still to be worked out by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, are not to be revealed until the next annual meeting of the National People’s Congress next year.
One thing of note in the committee’s communique on Thursday was that although many of the goals were for 15 years down the road — for example, building a great socialist culture by 2035 — while a target date of 2049 was set for becoming “a modern socialist nation,” which not so coincidentally would be the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.
However, even at the news conference held yesterday in Beijing by several ministers and senior government officials to discuss all those goals, the emphasis was on buzzwords and a retrofitting of long-held ambitions that only served to highlight what a shell game the CCP’s five-year plans continue to be.
Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang (王志剛) grandly proclaimed that the nation needed a new development concept, because it had entered a new development phase — but all he meant was that the new five-year plan, China’s 14th, would have a chapter focused on technology.
Otherwise, the officials talked about prioritizing the quality of economic development, achieving technological self-reliance, strengthening the domestic market, continuing to open up to foreign investment, raising incomes, reforming property rights, further integrating Hong Kong and Macau with the rest of the nation, improving the social security system, and implementing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) idea of “dual circulation” for the economy.
Of course, the officials had plenty to say about the wisdom and guidance of Xi, the CCP’s general secretary, who had not only served as “helmsman” for the nation’s success in battling the COVID-19 pandemic, but had “personally made changes, and approved the draft” five-year plan and the “2035 vision.”
However, combating the rural-urban gap has been one of the party’s top goals for decades, but it has yet to achieve it, just like property rights reform — something that the party itself, from low-level cadres to high-level officials, continues to hinder.
One goal that the CCP could actually achieve is the Central Committee’s plan to start holding regularly scheduled news conferences, to be held in addition to those organized by the State Council, as a way of upholding the party’s overall leadership.
In case anyone was worried that the public might not be able to tell the difference between the briefings, officials said that there would be a helpful color scheme — the party’s news conferences would have a red background, while the government’s events would continue to use blue as a background color.
Cynics might wonder if that decision was a nod to The East is Red (東方紅), the 1960s song that was a paean to Mao Zedong (毛澤東), Xi’s role model.
It is hard not to be cynical when one of the reasons an official said the public could have confidence in the CCP’s goals was that a survey had shown that the party and the Chinese government had a 95 percent approval rating, “the highest in the world,” and proof of the superiority of China’s political system.
However, the only concrete goal spelled out in the communique and the news conference was Xi’s plan to stay in power past 2022, when he would normally be expected to step down after 10 years as general secretary, followed by leaving the presidency in 2023 — and that is a problem for Taiwan, given his desire to outdo Mao in the PRC’s history books by “returning Taiwan to the motherland.”
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