Xi Jinping (center); from top left clockwise: Wang Yang, Li Keqiang, Han Zheng, Wang Huning, Li Zhanshu, Zhao Leji and Wang Yang.

The Chinese Communist Party concluded its 19th Congress on October 24, followed a day later by the first meeting of its newly-elected Central Committee, which selected the 25 members of the Politburo, and within the Politburo, the seven members of its Standing Committee, in hierarchical order: Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng.

Only Xi and Li were members of the previous Standing Committee, the other five are newcomers. Several of them will assume top state functions when the National People’s Congress (NPC) convenes its annual session next March. Li Zhanshu is expected to become Chairman of the NPC – China’s parliament – while Wang Yang would assume the top post in the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body to the NPC. Zhao Leji is heading the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s primary anti-corruption body. Han Zheng, who is stepping down as Party Secretary of Shanghai, is expected to become Executive Vice Premier next March. Wang Huning is heading the Secretariat of the Central Committee.

The Standing Committee Members were presented to the domestic and foreign press following the meeting of the Central Committee. For the first time, all Standing Committee Members were born after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. They began their political careers around the time of the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978.

There is no one in the Standing Committee who would still be young enough to take over from President Xi Jinping in five years’ time. Neither of the two men currently considered most likely to succeed Xi – Hu Chunhua and Chen Min’er – were elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee. At the Politburo level, Yang Jiechi is the first professional diplomat to become a member of the body for 15 years, and is now a front runner to become a Vice Premier. Li Qiang, Party Secretary of Jiangsu province, will take over from Han Zheng as Party Secretary of Shanghai.

As expected, the closing session of the Congress voted unanimously to include “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” in the Charter of the Communist Party.

The Chinese Communist Party is holding its 19th National Congress. On October 18, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered a landmark speech to the 2,280 delegates assembled in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing that lasted for three and a half hours. He gave an overview of his first five-year term in office and the country’s reform and development planned for the next five years and beyond. A new era to create a modern socialist country is starting, he declared, laying out a sweeping vision to transform China into a strong global power.

“Right now both China and the world are in the midst of profound and complex changes. China is still in an important period of strategic opportunity for development. The prospects are bright, but the challenges are severe,” he told the delegates. “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is no walk in the park or mere drumbeating and gong-clanging. The whole party must be prepared to make ever more difficult and harder efforts,” he said.

The principal contradiction facing Chinese society now is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. “While China’s overall productive forces have significantly improved and in many areas our production capacity leads the world, our problem is that our development is unbalanced and inadequate,” he said. Previously, the principal contradiction was described as one between “the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production.” The country is seeking to move from high-speed to high-quality growth, he added.

Xi pledged that China would continue to open up, make state-owned enterprises bigger and stronger, deepen financial reforms and fend off systemic financial risks. “Development remains the foundation and the key to all the problems China faces,” he said. He also raised the need for wealth distribution, environmental protection and poverty reduction, identifying the widening income gap as one of the grave issues that had not been adequately addressed.

Xi again promised greater market access to foreign investors to counter complaints from Washington and Brussels about Beijing’s protectionism. He said China would significantly lower the threshold for entrance to China’s markets, protect the legal interests of foreign businesses in China, and treat locally registered companies in an equal and fair way. “Opening leads to progress while closing only leads to backwardness. China won’t close its opened door – the door will only be opened wider and wider,” Xi Jinping said. However, pledges to business were only a small part of his speech, which focused on making China a “great modern socialist country”.

Fighting poverty was crucial for China to become a moderately prosperous society, Xi said. Addressing concerns over rising property prices, he said houses were for people to live in, not for speculation.

Party General Secretary Xi Jinping announced that a leading group for the comprehensive rule by law would be set up, that the anti-corruption struggle would continue and that there would be “zero tolerance” of graft. No one would be able to put themselves above the law, he said.

The key theories and thoughts of Xi Jinping are to be added to the Party’s charter as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”. It will be the guiding ideology for the country’s development in the coming years.

China has set 2020 as the target year to finish building a moderately prosperous society, just one year before the Communist Party celebrates its 100th anniversary. Two key components of the 2020 goal are to eradicate poverty nationwide, and to double the country’s GDP and per capita income from 2010 levels. By 2049 – the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China – it should become a “modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious” and with a pioneering global influence.