China’s President Xi Jinping giving a speech at the opening session of the Chinese Communist Party’s five-yearly Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, yesterday.
In a three-hour-long speech punctuated by multiple rounds of applause, Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday outlined what the Communist Party of China (CPC) says it has achieved in governing the vast nation of 1.5 billion over the last five years. Opening the vaunted 19th National Congress of the CPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Xi addressed national security to defence policy to Socialist literature amid high expectations from the Party leadership.
Xi said the “principal contradiction facing Chinese society in the new era is that between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever growing need for a better life.”
The second largest economy in the world, China ranks 69 in terms of per capita income. Its successive leaders have tried to raise income levels in the country that is the outsourcing hub of almost the entire world.
The Congress that has the world’s eyes on it for major announcements including the likely extension of Xi’s term for the next five years, opened yesterday with area around the Great Hall of the People steeped in high security. The area around the parliament building was a sea of red banners, flowers and security personnel of all hues and denominations.
Xi stressed the need to uphold the principle of “one country, two systems” at a time Hong Kong has been hit by demand for electoral reforms amid student protesters determined to push for a change in the political system.
“We must uphold the one-China principle and the 1992 consensus,and promote the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations,” Xi said alluding to the dispute with Taiwan, which China claims to be its own territory.
“Blood is thicker than water. People on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are brothers and sisters; we share the bond of kinship,” Xi added in his speech.
Anti-corruption crackdown
Taking the anti-corruption narrative further, the Communist Party of China (CPC) will secure a “sweeping victory” in its anti-graft fight to avoid the historical cycle of rise and fall, Xi Jinping said.
Calling corruption “the greatest threat” the Party faces, Xi said the fight against corruption never ends and currently remains grave and complex. “We must remain as firm as a rock in our resolve to build on the overwhelming momentum and secure a sweeping victory,” Xinhua reported the president as saying.
Xi reaffirmed the Party’s zero tolerance for corruption, saying both those who take bribes and those who offer them will be punished and interest groups will be prevented from rising within the Party.
Xi also said wherever offenders may flee, they shall be brought back and brought to justice.
The Party will work for the adoption of national anti-corruption legislation and create a corruption reporting platform that covers both disciplinary inspection commissions and supervision agencies, he said
The Party will enhance deterrence so that officials dare not commit corruption, strengthen the institutional cage so that they have no way to commit corruption, and raise their consciousness of staying away from corruption, he said.
Thousands of delegates are attending the Congress from all provinces including the autonomous regions, creating a political pageantry worth watching for tourists and journalists who have congregated in Bejing from across the world.
