Read more at the National Interest
This month Communist China is holding its annual “two sessions,” during which the members of two main political bodies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gather in Beijing to rubber-stamp the new policies and goals set forth by the party. This year’s agenda is particularly important because the CCP will formalize its next moves to achieve its “second centennial goal,” in essence, what it hopes to achieve in the years to come.
Prior to the “two sessions,” the CCP’s party chief Xi Jinping announced that China has attained the “first centennial goal,” which was “complete building a moderately prosperous society,” and officially ending poverty in the country. Xi boasted: “We have finished the arduous task of eradicating absolute poverty and created a miracle that shall go down in history,” despite the fact that China has six hundred million people living on a monthly income of one thousand yuan (U.S. $140) according to China’s Premier Li Keqiang. Not surprisingly, the CCP’s mouthpieces hailed Xi as a hero, responsible for “realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
The CCP’s first centennial goal is tied closely with this year’s celebration of the centennial anniversary of its 1921 founding. The announcement is designed, first, to provide the CCP’s with the self-justification to rule and oppress the Chinese people, what the CCP terms “socialism with Chinese characteristics. Second, to tout the greatness of the leader and the ruling party at a time when China’s economy purportedly is rapidly bouncing back from pandemic, while the rest of the world continues to struggle. These measures serve to legitimize and justify Xi’s dictatorial rule.
Xi is now showcasing an even more ambitious plan, which was decided last October during the fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, to make China a “great modern socialist country” by the mid-twenty-first century. This new plan is divided into two stages. The first stage, from 2020 to 2035, basically is to achieve socialist modernization; and from 2035 to 2049—the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China—to turn China into a “great modern socialist country.”