While Americans decide their political fate this week by vote, the Chinese had their fate decided for them behind closed doors last week at a fortified nomenklatura hotel run by the People’s Liberation Army and famously used for show trials during the Cultural Revolution.
The Communist Party’s Fifth Plenum – setting out China’s economic and strategic path until 2035 – has ramifications for the world that may ultimately matter as much as the outcome of the US election.
The routemap marks a strategic rupture with the China we have come to know since Deng Xiaoping relaxed the Party’s authoritarian grip 40 years ago and ushered in a flowering of free enterprise. Xi Jinping’s regime is reverting to the Maoist doctrine of “autarkist self-sufficiency”, with an added hint of menace in the language of Thursday’s Plenum communique.
The text revives the potent term “prepare for war”, last evoked in a five-year plan during the late 1960s, coupled with a declaration that China will achieve military parity with the US within seven years.
It is driven by fears that a US-led alliance will step up the pressure and exploit the West’s strategic leverage, as is already happening with advanced semiconductor chips. “Dual circulation is just a fancy term for Chinese decoupling,” said George Magnus from Oxford University’s China Centre.
