Beijing China January 4 ANI Chinese Communist Party CCP has usually used China's economic achievements to denigrate democracy, but the CCP's problems threaten to put the country's economy off-kilter and could affect President Xi Jinping's goal of indefinite rule, even though he is about to start his third term in office.
The author of For Us, The Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth and founder of Citizen Power Initiatives for China, Jianli Yang, and the founder of Citizen Power Initiatives for China, said that 2022 will be a big year for Xi, but he must fix China's economic slide.
China's economic growth rate began to decline about 10 years ago. After 30 years of rapid development, a slowdown is normal, but the overlap with Xi's governance may indicate that the decline in economic growth is related to Xi's policies.
In the last few years - whether it was anti-corruption, building a personality cult, tightening the control of ideology and speech, strengthening the control of the party's control over the economy and society, or suppressing capital -- all may have come at the expense of economic growth, said Jianli.
This month, the political formulation of keeping economic development as the central task, almost disappeared in China's policies in recent years, suddenly appeared in the Central Economic Work Conference.
The recent Central Economic Work Conference acknowledged that China's economy is under three pressures: demand contraction, supply shock and weaker expectations, said Jianli.
Since Deng Xiaoping started reforms, the emphasis on China's economy had been an unwritten rule. Economic performance has not been a criterion for promotion, according to The Hill. In recent years, government officials have put less emphasis on economic development.
Some officials have panicked because of Xi's anti-corruption campaign and political evaluation of officials. They spend time and energy on political studies, political struggles, and dealing with tasks from above and guarding against rivals. Many do not want to work in such an atmosphere. The bureaucratic system is slack, and it has a negative impact on the economy. It's become evident that people can't eat Xi's whole process of democracy. CCP has claimed that Democracy can't be eaten. Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently portrayed China's political system as a whole process of people's democracy -- more democratic than any other democracy in the world, according to the CCP.
But many in China, perhaps including Xi himself, have come to realize that Xi's whole process of democracy can't be eaten, said Jianli.
China's economy is facing a difficult time. 2022 could be a special year for Xi. He may enter his third term of leadership and attempt to remain in power after the 20th National Party Congress, which is expected to be held in October. Unless something unusual and unexpected happens in the coming year, no one will be able to stop Xi from holding the Chinese military and the CCP, as the party's top leader, according to The Hill.
Xi is likely to know that even though no one in the CCP is making noise, many are privately questioning why he wants to change the decades-old system of an orderly succession of top leaders.