Xi Jinping tightens his grip on China at a difficult economic moment

As China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, moved to extend his rule, he pushed out rivals who had been perceived as pro-business. He praised Marxism over markets. He placed security ahead of the economy.
Now, with his grip on China tighter than it has ever been, Xi begins a groundbreaking third term this week poised to expand the influence of the Commun Party over the economy.
Xi’s belief in the primacy of the party could shift the world’s second-largest economy back toward a more state-led model. Xi’s consolidation of power points to a new era in China in which national security and ideology would be a higher priority than maintaining robust growth. That could be bad news for an economy that has already been dragged down official policies such as the stringent “zero Covid” strategy of lockdowns and mass testing.
Financial markets are already signalling their unease over what Xi’s extended rule — and his agenda — portend for China. In Hong Kong, share prices plummeted more than 6% on Monday, reaching 13-year lows as traders dumped huge numbers of shares to limit their exposure to whatever Xi might do next.
In mainland China, stock markets fell nearly 3% even though the Chinese government puts heavy pressure on institutional investors not to sell during politically sensitive moments. And China’s currency, the renminbi, dropped to a 14-year low against the dollar as companies and affluent families continued to send money out of the country in search of safety and higher interest rates.

U.S.-led shares of Chinese companies like Alibaba, https://t.co/Pf1ys7URfo and Baidu crashed after China’s President Xi Jinping’s new leadership team sparked worries that future economic policies would be ideology-driven rather than investor-friendly https://t.co/Gg0aPDz8jJ pic.twitter.com/j2q70XvgEl
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 25, 2022
The heavy selling in China was particularly striking given that the Chinese government announced stronger-than-expected data Monday. It showed that the country’s economy grew 3.9% in the three months that ended in September, from the same period a year earlier.
Xi has put a premium on politics and security, even at the cost of slowing economic growth and employment. In a speech at the opening of the party congress Oct. 16, Xi mentioned security six times as often as he mentioned the economy. Last week, as the congress was underway, the government unexpectedly delayed the normally routine release of quarterly economic data, without explanation.
Then over the weekend, as part of a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle, Xi moved many of his loyals into the top ranks of the party. He pushed out longtime economic policymakers like Premier Li Keqiang, whose doctoral dissertation won China’s top award in economics in 1994, and Wang Yang, an architect of the free market economic boom in southeastern China.
“The new adminration doesn’t look particularly business-friendly — there’s every indication that party loyalty trumps everything else,” said Richard Harris, the chief executive of Port Shelter Investment Management, a Hong Kong investment firm.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, left, and President Xi Jinping raise their hands to vote at the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress of China’s ruling Commun Party at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. (AP Photo)
Under Xi, regulators have clamped down on the tech sector, contributing to widespread layoffs among young employees. Dozens of the country’s private property developers have defaulted on debts after Beijing discouraged real estate speculation. Tycoons have been fleeing the country. Lockdowns in cities and regions across the country to stop outbreaks of Covid-19 have taken a heavy toll on economic growth.
Some observers and investors had hoped that Beijing would use the party congress to emphatically reassure private businesses and entrepreneurs that they were still welcome. Instead, the dominant rhetoric emerging from the conclave pointed to more state regulation.
The nosedive in financial markets was particularly focused around the shares of Chinese internet companies, which have been a key target of Xi’s expansive campaign to strengthen the party’s control over the economy.
“It is clear that before the party congress there had been a lot of wishful thinking in large swathes of the financial community that there would be some kind of clear signal of commitment to the traditional liberal economic reform, and that has now been exposed as a delusion,” said Arthur Kroeber, a founding partner and the head of research at Gavekal, a China-focused research firm.
He added that few had expected Xi to move so many of his loyals into the Politburo and particularly the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power in China.
“I think there was a fair bit of money placed on the idea that there would be a more balanced Politburo and a Standing Committee that consed of people who were not only direct acolytes of Xi,” Kroeber said.
Of particular concern is Xi’s signature “zero Covid” policy, which has stamped out numerous outbreaks but imposed major disruptions to daily life and the functioning of the economy.
Even though the headline figure for economic growth released Monday showed China on a path of recovery, it still fell short of Beijing’s target of 5.5% for this year. The details also illustrated the continuing impact of lockdowns. Consumer spending, which recovered over the summer from a lockdown in Shanghai last spring, slowed sharply in September, as a jump in Covid cases prompted authorities to confine people to their homes.
The lockdowns have particularly hurt small shops and eateries, which are a mainstay of urban employment. In Beijing, Wang Shixiong has run a store for more than 20 years selling incense and Buddh figurines directly across the street from Beijing’s Lama Temple, a popular tour destination. But his sales lately have been half of what they were before the pandemic.
During the recent Golden Week holiday in early October — normally a high point for tourism — his store was quiet. Neighbourhood officials kept stopping in every other day to check that he had disinfected the premises, he said. Security was subsequently stepped up across Beijing for the party congress.
“Then you add the pandemic, and there are just many fewer people,” Wang said. “If there weren’t a pandemic, there would be so many people in front of our door.”
China’s move to release important economic data Monday was as much of a surprise as its delay last week. Without explanation, the National Bureau of Statics put out the figures without holding its usual quarterly news conference to discuss the country’s economic performance.
The better-than-expected data suggested that the government’s motive in delaying the release was to avoid having any news last week that might dract from the party congress, rather than out of concern that the data would look bad. Still, economs said that the move had compromised international confidence in the reliability of China’s economic data.
“Dark clouds of political suspicion will undermine official Chinese statics for years to come,” said Stephen S. Roach, a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia who is now a senior econom at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. He described the economic growth information released on Monday as “not a credible report from a discredited statical agency.”
Over the longer term, one question is how far Xi will push his vision of “common prosperity,” a vaguely defined, egalitarian campaign of redributing wealth that has unnerved investors and could be a signal of higher taxes to come.
Xi spoke during the congress of making sure that income accrues to those who labour to earn it — an implicit rebuke to those who earn their livelihoods through trading or investment.
“The return to Marxism is deeper than many people would have thought,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor emeritus at Hong Kong Bapt University.