Washington:As the 20th national congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is drawing closer, President Xi Jinping is anxious to ensure that no calamity, not even the Coronavirus pandemic and the global pushback, loosens his grip on the party and the party's on the country, a Chinese dissident Jianli Yang said.
In an opinion piece in Washington Times, Jianli, a founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China, said Xi's Chinese Communist Party's Centenary speech emphasised that he was ready to lead the CCP towards the second centenary. The second centenary is in 2049. It will mark the 100th year of the formation of the People's Republic of China.
In his speech on July 1, Jianli said that Xi admitted to the centrality of the unchallenged position of the CCP to his plans for the party's march towards the next calendar goal. "The march will be in phases as Xi shifts focus from consolidation of power to innovation of power. The next phase will begin during the 20th national congress of the CCP in October-November, 2022, and the one after that will lead to the 21st congress in 2027. A decade is a small span in the Chinese understanding of time and space," Jianli noted.
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The CCP's centenary celebration comes at a time as the world has taken notice of its ruthless actions in Hong Kong, Tibet, and its criminal treatment of Turkic minority Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, with some defining it as genocide.
Internally, China's economy has faced unprecedented challenges and an undercurrent of unrest has emerged because of rampant unemployment, Jianli pointed out.
Xi's "new journey that lies before us" depends on one principle: "We must uphold the firm leadership of the Party. without the Communist Party of China, there would be no new China and no national rejuvenation," Jianli said.