This autumn, the Chinese Communist Party holds its most important political event in five years. The congress will select a new set of Party leaders and set policy direction for the next half-decade
TRIVIUM - JULY 27, 2017
What’s the big deal?
This autumn the Chinese Communist Party will hold its five-yearly Party congress. Likely to take place in October, this year’s congress will be the 19th since the CCP’s founding in 1921, and it will accomplish two important tasks:
Setting the direction of policy for the next five years
Selecting a new Party leadership
Much of the analysis around Party congresses focuses primarily on the second question, but the issue of policy direction is equally important for China’s trajectory.
How to Think About the Congress
This year’s congress can be best understood as a referendum on Xi Jinping’s first term, which has seen Xi promote a conservative agenda that has attempted to reinsert the Party more forcefully into politics, society and the economy. The outcomes of the congress will indicate how successfully (or not) Xi has consolidated power, how much support there is for his agenda, and how this agenda will evolve in the coming years. In order to conceptualize the potential impact of the congress, we look at six questions:
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