Good evening. The name of Xi Jinping was first mentioned in The New York Times in 1992; it only reappeared in 2006. A lot has apparently changed in the past decade: Since 2013, Xi’s name has been mentioned in the Times an average of 1,409 times a year. Much has been written about Xi’s consolidation of power as the 20th Party Congress begins in Beijing. Our special cover story this week takes a slightly different approach, exemplifying Xi’s central position in the Chinese Communist Party and the sweeping changes he charts in numbers and charts. Elsewhere we have a report on China’s potential coal comeback; an interview with James Fok on the flawed dollar system; a commentary by Logan Wright on how China’s illusion of control could make a financial crisis more likely; and a comment on how Xi Jinping can strengthen the Chinese economy. If you are not already a paid subscriber to The Wire, please sign up here.
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Xi Jinping takes the podium to address the opening ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the ruling Chinese Communist Party held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on October 16, 2022. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein via `
Xi Jinping in numbers
Ten years after Xi Jinping rose to the top of the Chinese leadership, the Chinese Communist Party is a party that has been reinvented. More than ever before in the post-Mao era, it is an organization built around personalist rule, with power in the hands of a single man. Now, on the eve of the expected confirmation of Xi’s third term, The Wire’s Eliot Chen compiled a plethora of figures that illustrate his power and how the country has changed during his decade at the helm.
A coal-fired power plant in Huai’an city, Jiangsu province, Oct. 1, 2015. Source: Imaginechina via ` Images
Coal comeback?
China has announced plans to reduce the share of coal in the country’s overall energy mix, but after a summer of power shortages, two state-owned energy companies have started building a coal-fired power plant in Xinjiang. Isabella Borshoff reports on Beijing’s mixed messages on coal’s role in China.
A Q&A with James Fok
James A. Fok is a financial markets veteran, most recently as a senior officer at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx), the company that operates the Hong Kong stock market. His recent book Financial Cold War describes the economic and financial background to the current tensions between the US and China. In this week’s Q&A with Andrew Peaple, he discusses the flawed dollar system; the error of decoupling; China’s predicament in international markets; and why interdependence in the global financial system is in the self-interest of all countries.
James chap
Illustration by Lauren Crow
Security forces try to stop protesters over failed investment at Hunan Bofeng Asset Management Ltd. from a branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in Changsha, Hunan. Credit: Chinatopix via `
illusions of control
The public message that Xi Jinping is further consolidating his power at the 20th Congress would make a financial crisis in China more likely, not less, argues Logan Wright in this week’s op-ed. The Communist Party’s efforts to cultivate a notion of political stability have interacted with financial stability in ways that are often misunderstood, and the economic accord between the party and Chinese people that has by and large maintained that financial stability in the recent past has now changed fundamentally.
Xi Jinping on screens at the media center as he speaks at the opening ceremony of the third China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, China, 4 November 2020. Credit: Aly Song via Alamy
How Xi Jinping can strengthen the Chinese economy
Xi Jinping is expected to win a third term as the country’s supreme leader, but as Nancy Qian tells us in this op-ed, his management of the economy over the past decade has been far from outstanding. The country has faced a number of challenges including Covid and a declining labor force. But business is struggling under Xi in part because it has abandoned much of the flexible and experimental policies of the recent past in favor of his personal direction. This has to change for China’s economy to recover.
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