XI’S COMMITMENT TO ECONOMIC REFORMS

THE ‘CHINESE DREAM’ AS ENGINEERED BY XI JINPING

Jayadeva Ranade

DNA, January 3, 2013

Recently appointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping, has moved with an alacrity very unusual for senior Chinese leaders to leave his imprimatur on the policies and programmes that China will follow for the next five years. In the process he has set himself apart from all the six other members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) and raised popular expectations.

Xi Jinping started this barely a month after the 18th Party Congress, held in Beijing from November 8-14, 2012, appointed him chief of the Party and chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission. The Party Congress also cleared the way for his appointment as president of China by the first session of the National People’s Congress, due to convene in Beijing on March 5, 2013.

Xi Jinping publicly signalled the priority areas for his first term in office in early December. He selected the prosperous Guangdong province for his first visit outside Beijing after assuming office. The choice of Guangdong was deliberate and laden with meaning. The party secretary of the province, Wang Yang, had the reputation of being pro-reform and had the support of Hu Deping, son of the former, popular and liberal party general secretary Hu Yaobang. Hu Deping had identified Guangdong as the province with the potential to resolve the vexatious land reform issue. Deng Xiaoping had visited Guangdong on his well-known ‘southern’, or nanxun, tour in 1992 to give a push to economic reforms when they had threatened to stall, and commentators and journalists promptly compared Xi Jinping’s visit with Deng Xiaoping’s ‘nanxun’ in 1992. Xi Jinping’s visit signalled his commitment to economic reforms.

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