TOKYO – At the end of the month, the Chinese Communist Party announced that it would convene a key political assembly in October.

“The fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China will be held in Beijing in October,” the Xinhua article read. 

Attendees will assess the proposals for the next five-year plan that spans 2021 to 2025 “and future targets for 2035,” it said.

For China watchers around the world, the second half of that sentence is a coded message that could not go unnoticed. 

“President Xi Jinping intends to remain in force for the long term,” said one political expert. “This will have to be, in fact, the manifesto of the next 15 years.”

While China has modernized over the years, it still retains some vestiges of its era of planned socialist economy, adding the formulas of the five-year plans. Therefore, the resolution of talking about a new plan is no surprise.

But making plans a decade later, until 2035, doesn’t come from any manuals, and this has raised many doubts.

In a world where the short and long term becomes less and less clear, especially as the coronavirus pandemic breaks loose, seeing 15 years later is exaggerated, even for Chinese with strategic thinking. This would be to make three five-year plans at once.

What is the political intentions of this decision? Veterans Party officials will easily perceive what they are.

Upon learning of the very long-term plan for 2035, a politician responded by quoting a quote from Zhuge Liang, the master stratitre of the Three Kingdoms period.

“Don’t spare any effort until the last day.”

It’s a slogan that the senior official liked to use to make his determination when he entered the war.

Doing the most productive thing until his death might seem like a compliment to Xi’s determination, but the truth is that this expert spoke in a manner unique to China.

The key here is Mao Zedong, the founding father of the “new China,” which ruled China until his death at age 82.

For Xi, born in 1953, 2035 is the year he too will be birthday.

Mao the “eternal chairman” of the Communist Party. When compared to Mao, Xi seeks to pave the way for the moment the leader remains in effect for life.

Of course, not everyone at the party is delighted with Xi’s ambitious ambition. Those who oppose his ultra-long reign cannot speak, but do not resist employing various methods, perhaps becoming like a bee in a sting.

“Things are moving too soon,” said a veteran party source. Already in July, the feast of what to talk about at a meeting in October, pointed out.

According to the communist calendar, this summer will be a very important era that will be in the long term the era of Xi Jinping.

Indeed, ahead of the Party’s next Five-Year National Congress in 2022, it will be this year, next year, when the framework of the discussions meets. The prelude to a large-scale political war by the 2022 national congress is already underway.

In some cases, this year we will discuss the outlines of the main settings at the conference, adding express names.

From Xi’s point of view: victory is for the first step.

In fact, this is not the time to play defense. With the national economy stagnant and relations with the United States in ruins, Xi would not argue much if he defended himself by opposing party leaders.

If Xi can make others assured of their prestige, overseeing the party’s national congresses in 2022, then in 2027 and even 2032 as China’s de facto leader, party members, adding those outside Xi’s faction, will eventually serve the hard by their own intelligence at the end of the day.

On the other hand, Xi’s audacity can be counterproductive, leading to an even more difficult dispute with his rivals. If party elders or rivals see this summer as their last chance to make their point, there’s no shortage of problems chasing him.

In retrospect, Xi is also on the offensive at the party’s last national congress in 2017, the last national congress.

Shortly before the event, Sun Zhengcai, then a senior official in Chongqing and a candidate to succeed the long-term leader, was a victim of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.

At the party congress in 2017, five years after taking over as party leader, Xi also controlled doing anything that was impossible: enshrining his homonymous ideology in the party’s constitution.

Months later, he got rid of the two-year term limit.

In China today, many governmental programs have completion dates of 2035. The Xiong’an New Area, a massive new city in Hebei Province, is among them. The project is proceeding with Xi’s full backing.

Last month, Xi said the BeiDou satellite navigation formula, China’s reaction to GPS, had officially introduced global operations. A Chinese official in the formula rate has made it clear that it will be updated until 2035.

Chinese officials are publicly referring to “Made in China 2025” much less frequently now that the blueprint for upgrading the country’s high-tech industries has come under fire from the U.S. This shows a certain degree of consideration to the international political situation.

But the ultra-long-term plan for 2035 is at the core of Xi’s politics, and China will push ahead with it regardless of Beijing’s external relations if domestic politics demand it.

Naturally, China’s confrontation with the U.S. will intensify.

In mid-July, Chinese Internet users prematurely celebrated the culmination of a long-standing dream. It was the idea that the country’s gross domestic product in April-June nevertheless surpassed that of the United States.

“The great rejuvenation” had happened, they said, and the country had regained its status as the world’s top economy, which it had held before being defeated by the U.K. in the 1840-1842 Opium War. 

This was due to miscalculations in monthly comparisons and year-over-year expansion rates, however, it is true that China is coming to the United States in terms of economic size.

“No country or individual can avoid the historical speed of the Chinese nation’s wonderful rejuvenation,” Xi said repeatedly, reflecting his confidence in China’s ability to outperform the United States.

His supporters would say that extending his reign until 2035 is a component in achieving “the wonderful rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The cursed year of 2020 means little to the leader, if he thinks of much longer delays.

Would your plan be accepted under existing circumstances? An interim response to this consultation will be transparent at the end of the fifth plenary consultation in October.

Katsuji Nakazawa is editor and senior columnist in Tokyo in Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and then as head of the Chinese office. In 2014 he received the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist Award for International Reporting.

Sign up to our newsletters to get our best stories delivered straight to your inbox.

You want a subscription for Array ..